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Show HI Wanderers Wishing no obligation to gates and bridges we cross the water on the ice-slicked stones, scrambling up the steep bank among the leafless rose and dogwood where cattle cannot reach the stream's margin. Plowed furrows undecided between frost and thaw lie across our tracks, evidence of some other process and other persons, unseen. We weave separate ways through sage, around boulders as the sky loses depth and the wind rushes over us. We strike a trail along the contour of the hill's bosom bared by grazing horses toward a shadow under the outcrop that leans with the thrust of layered time. The horses do not come this far: crevices in the lichened limestone would catch and hold their hooves where our boots find entrance. It is dry under the overhang-- dust and a bed of cured grass flattened in an oval where some animal has lain: bobcat, coyote, deer? |