For three afternoons in a row I took the path by the woods. The first day, the rain screamed in my face; on the second, the wind roared; by the third, a smothering fog had fallen. As I trudged through the gloom of that third afternoon, it would have been hard to imagine a bleaker landscape. The trees were skeletal; the ground half flooded. I was working my way through the razor-wire coils of brambles when a field vole darted across my path and disappeared into its hole.
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