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By Root 460 0

the knob has more than an easy roll to it, and sometimes you have to turn and tilt your head to see the tops of the foothills as you are driving along the state highway from Norway. The knob is seventy-one miles from the sea—a straight line east would touch the coast at Camden, but the natural direction to the sea follows the contour of the land, south by southeast, which is the path the Saco River takes to the Gulf of Maine. The hillside occupies the north end of the Saco watershed. All the water that falls from the sky or gurgles from the earth in a wedgeshaped basin whose west wall is New Hampshire’s Presidential Range flows, in a variety of brooks, streams and rivers, to the Saco, and then to the big sandy beaches at Camp Ellis and Biddeford Pool. A watershed is a marvelous thing. It embraces plants and animals at high and low elevations, in swamps and atop dry escarpments, making a natural community through topography, climate and gravity. It provides a metaphor for harmony, diversity and wonder. The rain that would drip off my metal roof might eventually be sipped by a deer in the eddy of some brook twenty miles away, or by a lady serving tea in Biddeford.

The cabin would be about seven hundred feet above sea level, which meant that the average declination to the beach at Camp Ellis would be about ten feet per mile. If I could pull a string from the top of the knob above the cabin to the seaweed lying on the beach at low tide at Biddeford Pool, the line would seem nearly as flat as a billiard table, maybe with the west end of the table propped up with a few dimes. But of course it’s not the average declination that matters. The land between the sea and the knob is mostly unvarying coastal plain until you get within a mile or two of the cabin; then it begins to rise, giving the Saco River its quicker upper currents and my hillside its steep slope.

The five us, with Maddik on Paul’s shoulders, meandered up the hillside, getting a better sense of its shape and the possibilities for holding the cabin in one of those flat places that seems like a natural terrace. Ferns had sprung up among the trees in the cool dark places along the logger’s path, and near the bases of the pine trees mayflowers tendriled along the ground and put out small bursts of white blossoms. The ground was moist underfoot, even a little spongy, still full of snowmelt and spring rain, pulsing water out of old leaves to form small brooks.

We dispersed on the way up the hill, giving the impression of a search party. This was just what we were. We found two or three good sites for the cabin. The places were high and dry, somewhat flat, and two of them afforded a partial view of the pond across the road. After a thorough surveillance, we regathered on a big flat rock, sat and talked it over. We narrowed the choices to two, and then put one over the other because it was closer to the right-of-way and therefore would require removal of fewer trees and a shorter path, which meant less expense and less disruption to the hillside. While the others stayed at the rock and dozed in the sun, I went back to have a second look. I wanted to stand there quietly and alone and open myself to the sight, sound and feel of the spot. Paul had understood and had made no effort to come with me.

I put myself in the place, roughly, that would represent the center of the cabin. My mind ranged over the hillside, in all of its folds, creases and flat places, like a dog looking for a place to lie down.

The site was on the far side and upper end of the ledge we had successfully avoided blasting. It was a kind of small tabletop set within the descent of the hillside, which made it good for building since it would not require scraping to create a flat space out of the hill’s slope, and it was more open than the other locations we had considered. A few beech and hemlock trees grew on it, and some spindly striped maples, which in Maine are often called moose-wood. There was a stand of tall red pines uphill of the site and slightly back, a good spot, I couldn’t help thinking, that