"The road led to a ramshackle tobacco barn on the ridge, then curved up one last little rise before leveling as a slash through thickets of ash and cedar. In his later years after developing a reflective nature, John would form a psychic bond with the unknown dead men who had built the barn and once hauled tobacco to it over the old dug road from fields long gone back to woods. He paused near the barn as day and night stood in perfect balance. In the years ahead, John would watch this interplay of light and darkness many times at the beginnings and endings of untold days. The delicate shades would become to him metaphoric of the forces that move the universe." This passage from "John's First Gobbler" typifies Sam Bevard's approach to the outdoor experience in this eclectic collection of stories.
