A Traveler Excerpt
By Adam Gentry
It was a nice place. The trees grew thick, sheltering anyone
from the rain or sun, but not so thick as to slip together and blot out the
blue sky. Bushes with wild berries grew in abundance, both tart and gently
sweet, and even the mildly moist, consumed more for thirst than appetite. Paths
were marked only by bare light brown earth, and a few scant patches of grass.
No one can say why these paths were, because there were far too few inhabitants
for their trodden feet to maintain and discourage regrowth. No, if anything,
the trees and bushes knew their place better than those that lived beneath
them, who were as likely to tumble onto the path from between bushes as to walk
calmly across it. Even the land was just so. Large patches just waiting to be
tilled and given roots to nourish, budding caves and holes waiting to be
finished and inhabited. That’s how the land must have looked when Jacob first
arrived.
