April 14, 1936 - July 2, 1938
Handmade volume with cardboard covers, unlined paper
9 1/2 x 11 1/4 inches
Much of the woods is overgrown, but the path is still here. The part of the woods fronting the road is not the same; there is no openness, the blackberry bushes growing in great profusion; many of the trees are gone, there is none of that dignity I used to feel here.
Under a great oak, at the first turning of the path beyond where the crooked beech stood. The tremulous leaves quivering in the heat-haze, the hot sun pouring down; all the weeks & months of futile blind worry seemed to fall away- this was all one needs to know of God.
Once I threw myself down in a little open space flat on my back, and stretched out to the sun. Wave on wave of heat poured over me and thru me. One could grow drunk on such a thing.
The little grove of maples in the open pasture. I lay here and looked out over to the north; the late summer feel to the soft spasmodic wind rustling the tree-tops; the far expanse of the valley, and low hills shimmering blue in the heat - the whole center of the landscape, in the spiritual aspect, seems to be just where the completely vanished distance comes in contact with the edge of the nearest hill. Dreaming; -there is a feeling of coal mines to the north or of looking out from under deep recesses of rocky ledges - there should be tables for picnics, long unused with the soft silky ashen gray of weathered boards; back of me, I feel the Southeast of great wide sunlit valleys of the old wheezing railroad at black-berrying time. A cicada jars the air.
I sat down for a moment of the edge of the hill above the road. The Bottoms shimmering in the noonday heat