"It's gotten so nowadays you can't see a mountain 'thout craning your
neck around some fellow's shack; cabins everywhere cluttering up the
scenery."

I recalled my father's chuckling about the pioneers always moving on as
soon as a country got settled up. Surely the Parson was having his
little joke!

One day when I was out looking for Mr. and Mrs. Peg, I ran upon an old
trapper.

"Huh!" he said, "won't be long till they won't be no critters atall.
They ain't enough now to pay for trap-bait. Game ain't what it useter
be in these parts, I tell you, sonny. I'm goin' ter pull up stakes for
a real game country!"

To me, lately from the thickly settled prairies of Kansas, practically
destitute of game, their fears seemed unfounded. I thought they
exaggerated, and could not understand their point of view. But I came
to understand. I lived to see even greater changes take place, in the
twenty-five years I wandered through the country, that Parson Lamb had
witnessed from the day he hewed his way through the forest, that he
might get his covered wagon into the valley, to that night when I fell
across his threshold after pushing my bicycle over Bald Mountain.

For even as I rambled and camped, a subtle change was taking place so
slowly that for some time I was unaware of it. I saw fewer animals in
a day's journey. At first, when I missed bands of deer or wild sheep,
or some familiar bear, from their usual haunts, I assumed that they had
shifted their range to more distant mountains. All at once I realized
that for a long time I had not come upon a single elk nor even the
tracks of one. I was startled. I made far excursions into the more
remote regions, to verify my assumption that the game had merely
retreated from the more settled parts. From the tops of lofty peaks, I
looked down upon countless valleys with the hope that somewhere,
surely, I would find them. I saw only a few stragglers.

The wilds were like an empty house where once had lived happy children,
where there had been music and laughter, shouts and romping, but now
remained only silence, freighted with sadness. A great loneliness
surged over me. Despite the grumbling complaints of the old settlers,
I had taken for granted that the country would always stay as I had
found it, that other boys would have it to explore, and that it would
thrill them even as it had thrilled me. I awoke at last to the
distressing truth that few of the easily accessi