Within the first few pages he realized that he had read the book as a boy, sitting entranced under a walnut tree on his childhood farm in Ohio. He soon made the same discovery about other Stratton-Porter books, for in his youth he had read everything he could find about birds, and birds figured in almost everything she wrote. And all this time she was the reason I got excited whenever I thought about the Limberlost. It seemed so bright and full of life. Here in this healing fragment of the original swamp, life trickles and sprouts and sings all around us.
New grass brushes at our knees.
Wind strokes our faces with pollen. On logs in the creek, turtles catch the sun. In the mud beside a pool, we study the tracks of raccoon, fox, possum, and deer. Overhead, crows hustle about on raucous errands, and turkey vultures tilt round and round in lazy loops. We halt on the bank next to a beaver dam, an intricate weaving of sticks.