After a long day of teaching, after a long drive back to my digs, what I needed was a walk and some silence. And so I trudged up Pleasant Street, along the lake, until I came to this slate quarry, one of several that dot the environs around Monson. The quarry walls climb up from the pond-hole below, and even the slag pile has a stern elegance under the dotted ice and the doughty trees that colonize it. And the sky was full of cloud-voice, wind tearing at twigs and old grasses.

It was a relief to be alone and out of doors, to listen to my boots trudging up the gritty road. A dog barked at me. A man in a pickup waved. And meanwhile the quarry--moonscape disguised as earth--delivered its sermon.