Ernest Buckler: A Remarkable Nova Scotia Novelist

"Inside the woods, the snow on the log road was packed down so hard and smooth that at every dip in it the hind sled slid up against the front.

The road glinted in the sun or was colored the lining of shells. The silence had none of the loneliness in it of silences that speak only of sounds elsewhere or of sounds gone by. It was as if sound itself was wrapped warm and near beneath the snow, like a face you watch sleeping in the same room.

You draw the tip of the whip handle in a steady runnel along the shelf of the snow beside the road. The slow, measuring pace of the oxen and the silencing sound of the bells set your thoughts lapping like windless waves against a peaceful shore."
Ox Bells and Fireflies, pp. 92-93

Reference: Ernest Buckler  Nova Scotia Archives MG 1, volume 2511