Jean heard familiar sounds of deer crackling the dead twigs; and the chatter of squirrels was incessant.

This fragrant, cool retreat under the Rim brought back to him the dim recesses of Oregon forests.

After all, Jean felt that he would not miss anything that he had loved in the Cascades.

But what was the vague sense of all not being well with him--the essence of a faint regret--the insistence of a hovering shadow?
And then flashed again, etched more vividly by the repetition in memory, a picture of eyes, of lips--of something he had to forget.
Wild and broken as this rolling Basin floor had appeared from the Rim, the reality of traveling over it made that first impression a deceit of distance.

Down here all was on a big, rough, broken scale.