Two kinds of popple leaves – trembling and big-toothed – and three different birches – white, yellow, and gray. There’s just enough snow on them, beginning to soften in the morning sun, that the walking is almost noiseless. The iron skirt of an old cook stove leans against the trunk of a tree. Hunters who stumble across things like that almost always pull them up out of their graves of leaves and duff and lean them up like that.

White ash leaves. They fell early, and are almost covered by the later maples. I pass an ancient hollow log, lying in a boggy spot and apparently miraculously preserved. But for years it was filled with rock salt for the deer. A sagging, crazily collapsing wooden tree stand in a nearby maple speaks of long-ago illegal behavior. I look for tracks in the mud. There are none.

Beech leaves, bright copper and a little crisper and noisier than the others. Moose maple and witch hobble leaves, still uncertain what color to be when the chlorophyll deserts them. Some of the larger beeches have bear tracks in their smooth bark, where Bruin has been climbing up to bite off nut-bearing branches before they’re ready to fall. He must have confidence in his claws; the tracks go a long way up to the first branches.

I pass the false notch and Hummingbird Notch, and finally turn left away from the brook, into Beartrap Notch. Way up at its head is the Old Beech Log, where we’ve stood for over fifty years to watch for deer stirred up by the drivers in the Popple Notch, half a mile below. That old log is now but a wet, black, shrunken memory of what it was, but I nod as I go by.

The trail steepens. Slowly, very slowly, to avoid sweating, I plod up over bare ledges of dark granite with windrows of brown pine needles along their edges. First my tuque comes off; then the orange fleece overshirt. I tie it around my waist by its sleeves. The radio crackles in my pocket. “Where are you now?” Charlie asks.

“Just up at the first big ledge. I’m goin’ slow, so I won’t get het up. Should be at the sneaky peephole in about ten minutes.”

“Don’t rush. Don’t rush. I’m just out in the flat beyond the beech log. Call me when you can see both ways.” Which I do, about ten minutes later. I use a different handle each time I call.

“Silver Fox, this is Woodrow Wilson. I’m at the sneaky hole. Send me some company.”

Nothing appears during the next half hour except a flock of chickadees and a melanistic red squirrel. The biggest maples I’ve ever seen occupy this square mile of woods. The most impressive reach up about fifty feet before they branch out, and their trunks are well over twelve feet around. This is a poor place to be in a windstorm. Far below me I can see a dead maple where a pileated woodpecker struck the mother lode; you could use that tree for a hog trough.

These thoughts are diverting, but nothing else is happening. Finally Charlie calls to tell me he’s going down, and I’m on my own. With over six hours of a beautiful sunny day still ahead, the possibilities are almost limitless: I can go up or down, left or right, by trail or bushwhack, and either hunt or climb. I’m not far from an old logging camp site I’ve never seen before. It’s up near the 2600-foot contour. Charlie’s described the setting, and I do love rustic archeology. It’s time to go look for the camp; at my age, you never know which chance’ll be your last.

His directions are almost perfect, and I follow them at least as well. Past a granite knob on my right, I look left as directed, toward a little screen of evergreens about fifty yards off. Pushing through them into a little flat in an otherwise plunging valley, I trudge this way and that, trying to pick a spot where I’d build a cookshack if I were setting up a camp here. And suddenly there they are: the remains of three old iron stoves, broken and tumbled as if on purpose. “Wilkinson,” reads one, “Patents from July 30, 1867 to Jan’y 27, 1874.” Old-fashioned floral-pattern castings. Over to one side, a tiny brook hidden in leaves; the cookee must have dug out a dipping hole for water. The view is southwesterly, toward the high peaks. This was apparently a small camp, with a few choppers and teamsters, and a forge for repairing tools and shoeing horses. And right through the stoves wanders the only deer track I’ve seen all morning.

I find a dry spot, brush off the snow, pile up a few leaves, sit down, and lean back against a mossy rock. It’s fairly warm in the sun, a little above freezing, with no wind. I pull out a book I have with me, and half a Mr. Goodbar. I reach over to the little brook with the plastic cup I’ve carried with me since 1956 and dip up a little communion wine to share with the ghosts of this lovely, silent place. It’s just eleven o’clock in the morning, and all my options are still open. Behind me, the mountain beckons: a little less than a mile by trail and about 500 feet higher. Time to decide after I read a bit, have a little lunch, and maybe even take a nap.