812 feet, the highest point in Rhode Island
You will not recognize any bald knob of granite or sheer cliff face silhouetted against clouds, in fact, you won't realize you're anywhere at all except by this bullet-riddled sign by the road that curves through these scraggled third growth woods that was once a grove of giant pines that were cut down for masts that were used to build ships to sail away to the rest of the world from the docks of Providence Harbor, their holds filled with wool from the sheep that grazed in the field that had once been the giant pines till the shepherds died off and the applers took over and grew orchards of Cortlands and Macintosh Delicious to fill the holds of the ships that sailed to the rest of the world from the docks of Providence Harbor with masts made from the giant pines till the orchards moved west along with everything else to less glacial land and the fields became overgrowth of berries and hobblebush crisscrossed by walls made of stones that had slept beneath one inch of topsoil for twelve thousand years till the settlers found when they tried to plant crops that this was a country that grew only rocks which they made into walls to pen in the sheep that provided the wool that filled the holds of the ships that sailed to the rest of the world from the docks of Providence Harbor.
From Sad Jazz by Tom Chandler, published by Table Rock Books. Copyright © 2002 by Tom Chandler. Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved.