A Clearing in the forest by Gloria Whelan Page A

stopping to rest until its men came to the riverbank, where they had to decide the best way to cross. One man pointed toward a shallow spot in front of Frances’s cabin, but the others shook their heads. Instead, they took off shoes and socks, rolled up pant legs, and waded across a somewhat deeper spot, holding their equipment out of the water. The stream’s iciness surprised them and they laughed and shrieked like school children.
    On the other side of the river, they stopped to dry off. A couple of the men knelt down to drink the clear water from the stream. Finally they picked up their gear and disappeared into the woods.
    Frances had been at the window all morning. Now she knew how the early settlers who loved the woods must have felt when the landlookers and cruisers came through the countryside buying up whole forests for the lumbering companies to cut down. The dog, hackles up, ran back and forth, yelping nervously each time a charge went off. When the explosions were no longer audible, she left the window and hurried outside.
    She expected some drastic change—bits of the earth’s crust scattered over the ground, a fire, craters. However, apart from the trampled bracken and some bare spots about the size of a saucer where the charges had been exploded, there was nothing to see. Perversely, it was not what she wanted. She would have been pleased to find beer cans, trash, dead birds and animals, the earth ripped open, anything to justify the rage she felt over the assault on her land.
    But nothing was there except a July day full of yellow flowers. Goldenrod was in bloom, as was the St.-John’s-wort, with its butter-yellow petals. The mullein blossoms had begun their long climb. Cinquefoil trailed along the ground, and beside the stream was a stand of jewelweed where dragonflies came and went.
    Frances walked along the river, telling herself nothing would come of the tests, confident the river would contrive some spell to throw the machines off. She saw men in Texas puzzling over the computer results, “Look here, look at what that tape does when we get near the river, certainly can’t be any oil there. We’ll have to try elsewhere.”
    Her fantasy was interrupted by a rustling on the ground: a meadow vole after last fall’s acorns. She passed some sickly chokecherry trees, shrouded with deserted-tent worm webs. The milkweed growing along the trail gave off a cloying smell. She stopped to pick some blueberries which grew on the steep bank. A white-throated sparrow sang from the top of a nearby pine. As she stopped picking to listen, the dog trotted by and upset her berry basket.
    Reaching out to save the basket, she let go of a sapling she was holding onto to keep her balance on the bank. A rock under her foot gave way and she slipped down the hill, her arms and legs scraping against sand and sharp twigs. She tried to catch hold of a branch, but she was moving too fast. When she finally came to rest at the bottom of the hill, the basket lay empty a few yards beyond her. The dog had taken off after a chipmunk.
    She tried to sit up, moving with great care. Her arms and one leg seemed to be all right, but the other leg was twisted under her body. There was a sharp stab of pain when she tried to move it. She felt it carefully. There didn’t seem to be any break. Possibly it was no more than a bad sprain. Even so, it would be difficult to get back to the cabin.
    She heard the voices of men calling to one another. At first she felt relief at the possibility of help. Then it occurred to her it must be the team from the survey company returning to their truck. It was insupportable that they should find her sprawled here, helpless. But how to get away? On her hands and knees? They would overtake her. She decided to stay perfectly quiet. If they discovered her, she would pretend nothing was wrong. She retrieved her basket with a stick so they would think she was picking berries. As she