^* I confess—we might as well get it all out on the table—that at instants in my adult life the old belief returns, with abrupt and poignant force: a sudden snap of twigs (Robert Plant’s “bustle in your hedgerow”) while I was tramping across a field near Avebury, a fleeting glint of silver among the shadows under a stand of ancient redwoods outside Ukiah, and the heart leaps. Such moments are rare, however, and the old habit of paying attention, of watching the shadowy corners of the world, has been yoked to more humdrum ends.