The yellow evening lowers now, through the young, shining leaves of the oak trees, creating new recesses of darkness. Tides of fire hang above the water. There are snatches of bird song through the woods: a robin; the silver pealing of a wood thrush; a towhee; a whippoorwill, starting in on its over-and-over-again, the loud repetitious whistling that makes the night known even as the day hangs on. And finally faint stirrings here and there, easings down, last faint pips and trills before the dark. I am conscious of the tenancy of nature, in which there is more putting forth, more endurance, more population, in fact, than any visitor or local man might ever begin to realize. The great world we live in is no longer one for hide-outs. If this makes for intolerable pressure and despair, it also brings much more into view. Local recognition becomes a general need, and there are more possibilities in it than we have been told. While the human race has been approaching three billions in number, and making ready to put its mark on the moon or hang its hearing aids off Venus, I seem to have spent many years missing, or unwittingly avoiding, almost as many lives and chances close to home. How can I begin to compensate? _An Entry_ I had decided to start this book in July, with the idea that this was the time embodying the full, crowded height of life--the noise, the color, the jostle of creatures in wonderful variety, just like that load of passengers getting off the boat at Provincetown to see the sights. The leaves are fresh. The motions of greed and fulfillment are in full course. Even so, I hardly knew what riches to snatch at first. In fact, another bold, heat-heavy day, with its crowds and its pride of accident, had the effect of making me recoil. I was muttering: “Slow down. Slow down. Why so thick and fast?” On my way back from walking to the mailbox just now, I stepped off the road into the oak trees through which it runs, dropped the newspapers and the letters, watched and waited. I sat on the upper edge of a hollow where dappled shadows rocked lightly between the trees, on their gray trunks, and across the sloping ground. There was a pervading swish of leaves around me, an occasional stirring at the tree tops. I heard the slow, dragged caroling of a red-eyed vireo. Filtered light played on the low growth of sarsaparilla, hazelnut, huckleberry, and bracken, or dry land fern, with the brown floor of oak leaves in dead but useful attendance, holding moisture, shelter, and fruition in reserve.