On Catoctin, Time grows confused. 


Once a few children grew up here, and ran the deerpaths. They had few human-

made possesions, but knew the lure of the mountain laurel and whippoorwill, and 
listened in peace, revelling in the hoot owl, and the gurgle of the stream. 


They knew the harsh bite of winter, and so appreciated the heat of the 
crackling, sweet smelling fires the few of them built from hand-sawn wood. They 
savored the summer wind that walked along the heights and the flowing waters 
that ran down the hollows cooled their skin. They knew they dwelt in a special 
place, and some weren't drawn down by the dollar. Not long ago, you could walk 
those deerpaths, and see not a sign of man, nor hear the roar of his creations. 
Some felt the pull of this enough and it kept them here, but often they or 
their children didn't see and were drawn down into the gaudy lowland ways. 


Later up crept those who had forgotten the ways of the hills, or simply sought 
to live above their fellows. They 


came with their screaming spinning axes and their specialist's planned, 
mechanically repeated dwellings. Those who may have sold their mortal souls to 
the dollar in the lowlands sought to regain them in the hills. But in their 
misguided seeking, they cut the once timeless soul from the hills as well. 


Acid spewn from lowland industry swept down from the yellowed clouds and burnt 
the treetops, and sometimes sludge and filth was carelessly allowed to ooze or 
be vomitted into the womb of the once-virgin wood. Humans spread lifeless black 
tar along the denuded ridgetops and unnatural colors stole up and conquered the 
slopes in their dwellings and conveyances. The oldest. most venerable trees 
were dragged down and destroyed. Those noble cohorts of the deer- the coyote, 
the lion and the wolf- were driven off or murdered, so the now-rampant deer 
multiplied beyond reason and were wasted, as they starved, or were cut down by 
metal. The owl lost its place, and the whippoorwill slipped away, seeking more 
peaceful woods. The most delicate birdsong was lost in the clatter and 
cacaphony, and the flash of graceful wings and the tones of the endlessly 
varied and subtle skies they flew through meant little in light of the harsh, 
garish backgrounds the humans lived against. 


All this happened quickly, over a couple centuries at most, but seemed to 
humans to happen slowly. Metal and pavement didnt take the million year old 
hills all at once, as sometimes happened in the lowlands. The trees clung there 
longer. It was harder to build their soulless dwellings here, and to climb from 
their daily toils to these aeries. 


Humans know tainted waters are purified as they seeped down through the leaves 
into the rocky soil and out again and humans know the value of this. Some knew 
the value of keeping the hills as they were, or even know it still, and seek to 
preserve refuge from their teeming fellows here, but in so doing, by their very 
grip lose what they value, like the barren dry soil blows from their fields, or 
as water seeks ground through clenching fingers. 

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