Even now, I can feel the lucid silence of a cedar swamp - tomblike, tangled, ancient as the Book. And above the swamp the brown ridge rests in perpetual peace. This is the ridge eastward of peeled spruce cabin, whose walls blend more and more with the surroundings as the seasons mellow them.

Forty-one steps from the cabin door the waters of Third Chain Lake have washed the stones and lapped at the cedar roots for centuries. Evening and morning in November the white mist coils to catch the sun. You breathe its almost tangible humidity. You hear the hum of silence - so imperious that you shame at the drip of your own paddle or the damp splutter of your pipe.

Across the lake is the greatest of the long brown ridges - Duck Lake Mountain; and another to the north; and only to southwest is the skyline low, where the carry leads to Unknown.