Ridge in the Big Woods (Location Key)

This "ridge" appears in "The Old People" (both as a short story and as a chapter in Go Down, Moses) and "The Bear," but only a woodsman can recognize it. In "The Old People" it is described as invisible from within the woods. The narrator discerns that they have reached the edge of the ridge when he notices that "the earth had risen slightly because the underbrush had thinned a little, the ground sloping invisibly away toward a dense wall of cane" (171). The text also comments that where the ridge begins there is "a tremendous pin oak" (208). The path along the ridge is intersected at intervals by deer crossings. In "The Bear," one end of the ridge lies next to the river; Ike, Sam and Boon "plunge" down its "bluff," which must be fairly high (227).