Hollister built a fire on a patch of dry ground at the base of a
six-foot fir. He set up his tent, made his bed, cooked his supper, sat
with his feet to the fire, smoking a pipe.
After four years of clamor and crowds, he marveled at the astonishing
contentment which could settle on him here in this hushed valley,
where silence rested like a fog. His fire was a red spot with a yellow
nimbus. Beyond that ruddy circle, valley and cliff and clouded sky
merged into an impenetrable blackness. Hollister had been cold and wet
and hungry. Now he was warm and dry and fed. He lay with his feet
stretched to the fire. For the time he almost ceased to think,
relaxed as he was into a pleasant, animal well-being. And so presently
he fell asleep.
In winter, north of the forty-ninth parallel, and especially in those
deep clefts like the Toba, dusk falls at four in the afternoon, and
day has not grown to its full strength at nine in the morning.
Hollister had finished his breakfast before the first gleam of light
touched the east. When day let him see the Alpine crevasses that
notched the northern wall of the valley, he buckled on a belt that
carried a sheath-ax, took up his rifle and began first of all a
cursory exploration of the flat on which he camped.
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