After my first encounter in the glade, I took to walking through the forest whenever I could. I often encountered the prophets as I walked. I never heard more than a fragment at a time, but as December gave way to 1845, the songs the prophets sang grew clearer. The prophets sang campmeeting songs, in four parts, and on the notes before on the words. At least I imagined that the songs had words. I had only ever heard the prophets sing – for fleeting seconds – the shapes that preceded the strange songs' verses.

At first I would walk all day. beginning in the early morning, and taking care to find my way back to the road into town around dusk. But as the days passed, it became harder and harder to find the prophets, and to distinguish their singing voices from the wind. I found it necessary to journey further into the woods. I would travel with a knapsack containing a blanket and enough provisions for a few days. I often became lost. I would sometimes find the forest's edge in the farmland near Varick or Ovid, or by the booming industry at Seneca Falls when I wandered north. Once I emerged where the woods met the shining green Cayuga lake.

But no matter where I walked, even as my fleeting encounters with the singing prophets expanded my knowledge of celestial song, my encounters with the prophets grew ever more rare, and the glades where I once reliably found them went vacant.