Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

21. like fantastic octopi – in some places the slender stream disappeared, and traveled underground-

The hollow finally dwindled out in a dense woods of young trees thru which I could see an impromptu lumber “mill” – consisting of a buzz-saw, & a truck – I resented it’s [sic] banality and turned aside into the woods.

Here I found a colony of painted trillium. I eat ate my lunch on the roots of a large maple, in the sunlight, after which I dug a number of the trillium and a few Indian cucumber. I then retraced my way down the hollow.

In that brief times, the whole aspect of the place had changed; the sun shone more or less steadily, it was warmer. I came upon a little pool that lay between slabs of rock – an angular patch of crystal clear water that lay in full sunlight, on which were a number of skippers. The air-bubbles on which they float made relatively enormous shadows on the floor of the pool, - dark, rimmed with an intense light – their bodies were clearly shadowed but had no rim of light – I sat here some time, gazing into the pool, almost with out [sic] thoughts at all, except to sense the wonder of this little world of water among the rocks, sun-shot, the skippers, breeding, idiling to &