A Native Hill by Wendell Berry — Read

Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. / Learn of the green world what can be thy place. / -Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI

THE HILL IS NOT a hill in the usual sense. It has no "other side. " It is an arm of Kentucky's central upland known as The Bluegrass; one can think of it as a ridge reaching out from that center, progressively cut and divided, made ever narrower by the valleys of the creeks that drain it. The town of Port Royal in Henry County stands on one of the last heights of this upland, the valleys of two creeks, Gullion's Branch and Cane Run, opening on either side of it into the valley of the Kentucky River. My house backs against the hill's foot where it descends from the town to the river. The river, whose waters have carved the hill and so descended from it, lies within a hundred steps of my door.