childhood at Glenmerle

His bed had been drawn up to the east window where he could see the moonrise over the orchard and sometimes be wakened by the dawn. Across a short stretch of lawn to the north was the giant beech at the edge of the wood. At night when he went to sleep, often with his pillow on the window-sill, his last sight of the world would be the dark trees and the bright stars overhead. What was the line? 'We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.' A thousand times he had imagined himself a small animal, like Mole or Rat, stealing to the edge of that familiar, friendly wood and peering out the sheltering shadows. No, he thought, for anyone brought up like that, the woods and the night would hold no terrors, only safety. ~Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy