No
books or teachers were needed to tell me about flowing water and
fish, how hawks raised their broods and kept house, about the softly
cooing doves of the spice thickets, the cuckoos slipping snakelike
in and out of the wild crab-apple bushes, or the brown thrush's
weird call from the thorn bush. I knew what they said and did, but
their names, where they came from, where they went when the wind
blew and the snow fell--how was I going to find out that? Worse
yet were the flowers, butterflies, and moths; they were mysteries
past learning alone, and while the names I made up for them were
pretty and suitable, I knew in all reason they wouldn't be the same
in the books. I had to go, but no one will ever know what it cost.
(Laddie 118-9) |