Here is one of my favorite spots: a level grassy field, with a ruined house and barn behind me, between the road and a swampy patch, and in front “all the mountains,” from Moosilauke to Adams. How many times I have stopped here to admire them! I look at them now, and then fall to watching the bluebirds and the barn swallows, that are here at home. A Boston lady holds the legal title to the property (be it said in her honor that she bought it to save the pine wood from destruction), but the birds are its actual owners. Six bluebirds sit in a row on the wire, while the swallows go twittering over the field. Once I fancy that I hear the sharp call of a horned lark; but the note is not repeated, and though I beat the grass over I discover nothing.[12] Beyond this level clearing the road winds to the left and begins its climb to the height of land, whence it pitches down into Bethlehem village. Every stage of the course is familiar. Here a pileated woodpecker once came out of the woods and disported himself about the trunk of an apple tree for my delectation--mine and a friend’s who walked with me; here a hare sat quiet till I was close upon him, and then scampered across the field with flying jumps; here is a backward valley prospect that I never can have enough of; and here, just over the wall, I once surprised myself by finding a bunch of yellow lady’s-slippers. All this, and much else, I now live over again. So advantageous is it to walk in one’s own steps. Many times as I have come this way, I have never come in fairer weather.