Z for Zachariah

Mapping exercise

The following are excerpts from Ann’s diary about her valley. Use these to make an
accurate map (as much as you can).

When we used to go in the truck, Claypool ridge is 15 miles, although it looks closer, and
the smoke was coming from behind that. Beyond Claypool ridge there was Ogdentown
town about ten miles further.

At the crossroads just on the other side of the ridge the east west highway, the Deantown
road, crosses our road. It is route no. 9 a state highway bigger than our road which is
country road 793.

He came down from the north. Now he is camping in that spot, the crossroads, and
exploring east and west on no.9 the Deantown road.

The Amish farms where just south of our valley.

But if I had waited till he came over the ridge and then over burden hill where I could see
him where my valley begins

There is still good grass in the fields down the road. I am sitting at the entrance of the
cave. From here I can see most of the valley, my own house and barn, the roof of the
store, the little steeple on the old church, and part of the brook that runs by about 50 feet
away. And I can see the road where it comes over burden hill, and almost to where it
disappears again through the pass- about 4 miles all-together.

…the cave, since it is half way up the hillside behind the house,

If he came over the ridge. He must have seen the valley and the green trees because the
ridge is higher than burden hill. You can see it from there, I know, the far end of it at
least, because I’ve done it so many times myself in the old days.

Tomorrow morning I may go up towards the top of burden hill, climb a tree and watch. I
wont go on the road. There is a path that goes in the same direction, but it is in the woods
higher up the hillside.

There was – there is- a drilled well near the house… so that left me a choice of two
brooks. The one that flows past the cave, the one I can see from here, goes on down
towards the house, but then turns left into the pasture, where it widens into a big pond- a
small lake, really, clear and quite deep, with bream and bass in it. The other, named
burden creek (after my family, like the hill), is bigger and wider, also nearer to the house.
It flows more or less parallel to the road, and out of the valley through the gap to the
south.

I found a dead turtle on the bank. This stream flows out of the valley through a sort of
cleft in the rock ridge, to the left of burden hill- the water comes from outside and it was
poisoned.

There is a flat place where the road first reaches the top of the hill- a stretch of about 100
yards or so before it starts descending again into the valley. When you get just past the
middle of this you can see it all, the river, the house, the barn, the trees and the pasture.

It is nearly a mile from the hilltop to the house, when he got to the house he put the
wagon shaft in the garden.

He had obviously looked out the kitchen window and seen the woodshed.

In the chicken yard I could see him back there, because there are some big bushes (lilac
and forsythia) between the house and the fence,

He started out down the road in the direction of the church and the store-and the cows.
He saw the cows right away, as soon as he got past the barn and the fence, they where off
by the barn in the far field. My father used to grow oats there. He started to follow the
cows, then changed his mind and started to walk to the edge of the pond.

And that was why, when he got back to the house, he made the mistake. He went
swimming, and took a bath, in the dead stream, burden creek.

He thought,, not knowing the geography of the valley very well, that it was all the same
stream. He did not know that there were two streams.

The stream merges with the other one, the pond stream, further down the valley, and they
flow out of the gap as one. Downstream from where they merge they are both dead.

When they first settled into the valley they thought it would grow into a village. It never
did, since for years afterwards there was no road in, but just a horse trail; the road ended
past Ogdentown.

He walked on down the road, heading south towards the far end of the valley, towards the
gap. He did not slow down much until he reached the culvert. At that point the small
stream, having flowed into the pond and out again, and meandered along through the
meadow, runs into a rise (the beginning of the end of the valley, I suppose), turns right,
and is joined by burden creek.

He was approaching the end of the valley, and the beginning of the deadness beyond,
where the road leads onto the Amish farms. It is hard to believe there is any way out of
the valleys at the south end, that is because the gap is in the shape of a very large s, and
until you are right on top of it you are coming to a solid wall of rock and trees. Then the
road and the stream beside it turns sharply right, left, and right again, cutting through
the ridge like a tunnel. With burden hill on the other end the result is the valley is
completely closed in.
Faro ran round the house, up the hill, and came to see me at the cave.

“But there are 2 petrol pumps at the store. There must be petrol there.”

I walked along the road, past the pond, then turned left across the field. Behind me in the
pond I heard a big fish…

There, 20 feet ahead of me, on the edge of the woods, was a crab apple tree in full bloom.

As you head back from the house to the barn, the pasture, the far field, the pond and the
brook all lay to your right. To the left there are a few fruit trees and the, further left,
another small field of about an acre and a half.

Mr Loomis came out of the door, walked quickly to the road then started out towards the
store. He did not stay on the road tarmac, but instead went along the edge, the side
towards burden creek, walking where the trees and bushes would hide him.

At the pond out of sight, I put down the can and ran up the hill, staying safely in the
woods on the far side of the stream.

I walked to the barn and sat a few minutes, leaning my back against the rear wall,
looking out into the pasture and thinking.

As I walked I kept looking back to see if he was following, and when I reached the bend-
a little beyond it – I stopped and waited to see if he would comeback to his grove of trees
again. He didn’t, though I was sure he had watched me from the kitchen window.

When I got my things from the store I debated whether or not to go directly up the hill to
the cave.

From the pond as I sat I could look down on the field of wheat and the other acre that
stretched towards the gap;

I carried Faro’s body to the east ridge of the valley and laid it on the ground, and
covered it with stones.

I was walking towards the deadness. The creek flowed past the roadside, coming from the
outside.