“As we bounced along the dirt road winding through the hills, I could distinctly hear the rhythm of drums and see fires on the distant mountains. Mrs. Allen, who was with us, explained that in the 1940’s devout members of the Catholic faith considered the Voodoo rites an abomination of their faith.”
“Night followed day and day followed night over and over again. Sylvester on the hill woke up less and less often. When he was awake, he was only hopeless and unhappy.”
“Then suddenly it was quiet. Slowly the dirt settled down. The smoke and steam cleared away, and there was the cellar, all finished. The sun was just going down behind the hill. ”
″ ‘I love you all the way down the lane as far as the river,’ cried Little Nutbrown Hare. ‘I love you across the river and over the hills,’ said Big Nutbrown Hare. ”
“Hundred of years ago they had climbed through the hills, carrying the few things they owned on their back, looking for somewhere in this strange land that they could claim as their own. They had come from far away, across the sea. They had fought a terrible enemy. On the coast they had heard, from the wandering native people called the Travelers, of a place at the bottom of a forbidden mountain in the high country far inland.”
“Little Bear and Little Sal’s mother and Little Sal and Little Bear’s mother were all mixed up with each other among the blueberries on Blueberry Hill.”
“On the other side of Blueberry Hill, Little Bear came with his mother to eat blueberries. ‘Little Bear,’ she said, ‘eat lots of berries and grow big and fat. We must store up food for the long, cold winter’. “
“When his cart was full, he waved good-bye to his wife, his daughter, and his son and he walked at his ox’s head for ten days over hills, through valleys, by streams past farms and villages until he came to Portsmouth and Portsmouth Market.”
“Suddenly he was aware of the deep whine of machines in the hills behind Sarah’s to the north. He raised his arm so that his hand seemed to slide over the perfect roll and curve of the hill range before him to the south. He fluffed the trees out there and smoothed out the sky. All was still and ordered, the way he liked to pretend he arranged it every day.”
“As if in a trance, M.C. gazed out over the rolling hills. He sensed Sarah moving through undergrowth up the mountainside. As if past were present. As if he were a ghost, waiting, and she, the living.”
“And so he went back over the sunny hills and down through the cool valleys, to show all his pretty kittens to the very old woman. It was very funny to see those hundreds and thousands and millions and billions and trillions of cats following him.”
“From where she was across-river, she could look away to these hills. She might even be able to see M.C.‘s needle of a pole. No, not likely. But maybe a sparkle, maybe a piercing flash in the corner of her eye. She would have to smile and come on home. Jones sighed contentedly.”
“It’s always easier once you get to the destination to forget about the hills and winding roads you had to take to get there, but I knew that there was a lot of doubt and desire and hope all mixed together on the way.”
“The Litte House was very happy as she sat on the hill and watched the countryside around her. She watched the sun rise in the morning and she watched the sun set in the evening.”
“Now Hemlock Mountain was not a mountain at all, it was a hill, and not a very big one. But someone had started calling it Hemlock Mountain, and the name had stuck. Now everyone talked about ‘going over Hemlock Mountain.”
“Roving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of the heart, the very sunshine of my existence. In childhood, in boyhood, and in man’s estate, I have been a rover; not a mere rambler among the woody glens and upon the hill-tops of my own native land, but an enthusiastic rover throughout the length and breadth of the wide wide world.”
“Often Katy would wish that she someday could be
something quiet and simple like a lovely elm tree,
or a ramshackle barn all alone on a hill
where the noisiest thing was a squeaky windmill.”