First, Phoenix scares away the little animals that seem to make the thicket quiver near her. She tells these animals to stay away from her, to "keep out from under [her] feet," and to keep the "big wild hogs" out of her way, because she has a long way to go. She does not want to trip, nor does she want to come up to an animal that might attack her.

Next, she encounters a big hill, and she moves slowly up through the pines and then back down the other side, through the oaks. She feels like she has "chains" on her feet because of the difficulty of the climb. Once she is down the hill, a bush catches at her skirts, and she untangles it, not wanting to tear her clothes.

Soon, she must endure "the trial" of walking across a log laid over a creek. She gets up, "shut[s] her eyes," and marches on, trusting her feet to know the way. She does, in fact, make it safely across, perhaps because she has made this journey so many times. Next, she must creep through a barbed-wire fence; she "spread[s] her knees and stretch[es] her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps." She talks to herself all the while. Phoenix passes through a corn field and dances with a scarecrow, whom she first thinks to be a ghost. She parts the dried stalks with her cane and eventually, having made her way through this field, she reaches the "wagon track," where she knows that things get easier.