I went away only a few hundred steps up the hill, and turned and started home. And then I saw the pasture green under the trees, the open hillside, the little ponds, our house, cistern, woodshed, and barn, the river bending in its valley, our garden new-planted beside it. All around, the woods that had been stark in the harsh air of March, had turned soft with new leaves. Birdsong had returned to the branches: the stream sang in the fold of the hill. In its time and its patience beauty had come upon us, greater than I had imagined.
