Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

to loaf today, look for new material, and eventually go home. ; Route 555, mostly what is termed “improved” dirt road (to some of it was under construction) proved to go thru a most wild and desolate section of country. For miles the only human touch would be, besides the road, the single track railroad running alongside. Mile after mile of great tree-covered hills, without a house or sign of habitation. A sulphur stream ran thru the valley, and being shrunken by the dry weather, revealed the rocky bed, heavily encrusted with sulphurous or iron sediment, - a brilliant orange in color, unbearable in its intensity. It had a ghostly, almost frightening appearance. ; The heat was terrific; it came into the car in waves off of the road – the hills seemed to withe and quiver as paper will on a red-hot stove. ; I went thru several forlorn villages, and eventually after coming into more open country, arrived at Weedville, where a man directed me to route 255 to St. Mary’s; which he referred to with unmistakable pride in his voice, as the “million-dollar” high-way, so proud we are, of things that costly [sic] enormously.; Expensive or not, the road was a car-driver’s-joy- smooth cement road, so perfectly graded that it seems unnecessary almost to even put one’s hands on the wheel. Driving then becomes entirely automatic. ; By now I was growing hungry, and began to look for a hiking hill where I could eat my lunch. I had not gone far on 255 when I came to the village of Byrnedale, which is as