It took thirty minutes down the winding road to the floor of the valley, past the shack with the covered porch where the guards sat on their haunches and watched the flowers grow alongside the fields. When we got to the river, I told the driver to turn around and go back.

“Why?”

“Either we go back or I get out right here.”

It took another half hour, past the guard shack again, up the winding road to my house. I went inside and took my time going through the box of wood chips. I already knew the choices were limited. Pine, oak, and chestnut-not an ideal mix under the circumstances. Something-some part of the ancient brain-warned me to keep looking. I rooted around for whatever could cope with complexity or anxiety, or both. Pine was too simple-minded; oak and chestnut were both stubborn in their own way. I remembered a piece of larch, a very calm tree, leaning against the back wall and was thinking of cutting off a couple of chips when a horn sounded, four impatient blasts. Back in the car, the driver was annoyed, eyes blinking furiously like a ferret that has been told it is not an ox.

“Late,” he said. “We’ll be late and they’ll want to know why.”

“Tell them it was my fault.”

“That’s what I plan to do. Don’t say we went back to get your damned wood chips. They warned me about you and wood.”

Down the winding road again, the turns taken close to the edge; past the guards, who were now alarmed and trying to bring their telephone to life; across the river, which was reduced to an autumn trickle over the rocks; another three hours on rutted dirt roads to the highway, and almost two more to Pyongyang. The sunlight was gone by the time we hit the outskirts.

“Why so many checkpoints?” I stared out at the line of cars on the side of the road. “We never needed this many before. Even those we had were seriously overmanned.”