Volume 17, Number 5 · October 7, 1971
In Maine
By Elizabeth Hardwick
The fading lilacs of June, wild lupine along the road, standing in rows of spiky pinks and jagged blues. Pines and spruces—and then a patch of road with white birch groves dressed in their pale paper sheets of bark. In the evenings the lights of your car startle the blazing eyes of the big, furry Maine cats. They are strangely impressive, especially the bizarre matings of blacks and browns and yellows, the colors smeared in patches or fixed in stripes—ugly, anarchic. These large cats seem well suited to the northern part of the country, but there is a desperation about them too as they slink into the lonely, silent, black canals of wet earth next to the roads. No lights in the distance, no paths cut through the trees, no domestic breaks in the forest of alders.
Feature, 3951 words
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