Meg's still in historian mode as we start up Spring Gulch. She tells me that a schoolhouse once stood in the vacant meadow off to our right. "Just a one-room grade school with a couple of outhouses in the back."

As the gulch narrows, the meadow gives way to a lush, thick tangle of leafy shrubs and undergrowth. Dad's striding out in front in his easygoing, hike-all-day pace that I remember When I was little, he'd usually slow it down so I could keep up, but sometimes he'd forget and then I'd have to run a couple of steps for every few I walked. Now it's Amy who's doing the walk-run, and the two of them are talking as fast as her feet are going.

"Amy sure is a happy kid," I comment.

"Mostly," Meg replies. "We've moved around a lot and she hasn't always had the easiest time fitting in to new places, but this past year's she's really blossomed and developed some confidence. That's largely your dad's doing, of course." Meg smiles ruefully. "Though sometimes she's a little too confident for her own good."

Meg waves toward a distant pair of bushy trees that tower maybe a hundred feet tall. "What do you want to bet there used to be a house there?" she says.

"How can you tell?" I ask.

"Those Lombardy poplars are a sure giveaway. They're not native to this area, so somebody planted them, probably as a shelter from wind. And now, although the people are gone, the trees show where they once lived."

"Cool," I say, impressed even if the explanation is obvious now that I've heard it. And when I spot three scraggly apple trees a ways farther on, I say, "And those must have been planted, too, right?"

"Right you are," Meg says. "Somebody's orchard. Lombardy poplars, lilacs, apple trees—none is native to Montana, so when you see them growing in what seems like a wilderness, you know it hasn't always been completely wild."

By now, Amy's back to rapping Latin, and she's got Dad doing it with her Apparently the full name of the rust-orange hummer was Stelasphorus rufus. Stel-as-phor-us-ru-fus, Stel-hmu-la-ca-li-o-pe.

Meg asks me, "How much more Latin do you think your dad knows?"

"I don't know," I answer "but I saw him put his bird book in his pack."

She shows me one more remnant of the valley's history, a caved-in section of bank that she says is the remains of an exploratory mining pit. "Back when gold and silver were coming out of places not fifty miles away, prospectors had high hopes all over this area."

"Did they ever find anything?" I ask.

"Not around here, although I know of at least one small mine that was worked off and on for years, and I imagine there were others."

The trail makes a hairpin turn around the head of Spring Gulch, and with that we start really climbing. The valley bottom drops rapidly behind us, a spreading panorama of many shades of green, and my legs and lungs start to feel the strain of the long ascent. When, finally, Dad announces, "Lunchtime," I'm the first to hit the ground.

WE EAT SPRAWLED against our backpacks, on a slope where huckleberry bushes thick with the beginnings of berries grow in open shade. Dad says we should remember the spot and come back when it's time for picking.

Meg says, "I think I'll take a little walk," and disappears around a bend in the trail.

"She has to use the bathroom," Amy tells me.

"I figured."

"So when we get home, will you teach me to play your violin?" she asks.

"What made you think of that?"

"Nothing Will you?"

"We'll see," I say. I lean back and close my eyes.

A minute later I'm startled upright by a loud squeal. Amy is grinning at me from behind her cupped hands, and a blade of grass is stretched taut between her pressed-together thumbs. She says, "Say you'll teach me your violin!"

"I said, we'll see."

"If you don't, I'll make you sorry!" She blows the grass blade right in my ear I push her away and we end up rolling into Dad, who groans.

"So," Amy says to me, "how long will it take me to get good?"

"At what?"

"Your violin! When you teach me!"

"That's if I teach you," I say. "And it would depend on what you mean by 'good.' But a long time, anyway."

"How long?"

"I don't know."

"How long did it take you?"

"I don't know," I repeat. "There's still an awful lot I haven't learned but ... Good enough so somebody would want to hear me play? I guess half a dozen years. That's about how long it took before I played my first recital."

"Six years?" Amy says. "My best friend at school only started piano last fall, and she's already played in two recitals."

Meg, returning in time to hear Amy, says, "Those were different from the kind of recital Tess is talking about." She looks at the uphill trail in front of us, sighs, and asks, "Well, shall we do it?"