Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/28

18 above. A dozen people passed us early in the afternoon while we sat there,—men and women on their way down from the summit, this suddenly very pleasant day after a lowering one, having attracted them.

Having risen above the dwarfish woods (in which mountain ash was very common) which reached higher up along the ravine we had traversed than elsewhere, and nearly all the visitors having descended, we proceeded to find a place for and to prepare our camp at mid We wished it to be near water, out of the way of the wind—which was northwest—and of the path, and also near to spruce-trees, for a bed. There is a good place, if you would be near the top, within a stone's-throw of it, on the north side, under some spruce-trees. We chose a sunken yard in a rocky plateau on the southeast side of the mountain, perhaps half a mile from the summit by the path, a rod and a half wide by many more in length, with a mossy and bushy floor about five or six feet beneath the general level, where a dozen black spruce-trees grew, though the surrounding rock was generally bare. There was a pretty good spring within a dozen rods, and the western wall shelved over a foot or two. We slanted two scraggy spruce-trees, long since bleached, from the western wall; and, cutting many spruce boughs with our knives, made