Once, years ago, on a short walk in the Cévennes Mountains in the south of France, I came across one of those ferny ravines with a stream running through. It was a hot day, I had been walking for a w

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hile, and this fresh bubbling brook offered a cooling respite. I took off my shoes, soakedmy feet for a while, then lay back on the bank. I fell into one of those dreamy half sleeps. I was awake and could still hear clearly the riffles of the brook and, beyond the ravine, the incessant shushing sound of the cicadas, and far off, somewhere beyond the high walls, the distant clang of goat bells. Maybe I fell asleep.

Maybe I dreamed what came next, but suddenly there was a little cascade of rocks, and in the leafy tangle across the stream, I saw a bearded goatlike face, with loose lips, great curling horns, and a strangely human nose and mouth. I sat up abruptly to get a better look, but whatever it was ducked out of sight. In the dry valleys and hills of the Cévennes there were many little herds of goats and sheep; you could almost always hear their bells on the distant slopes, and sometimes in the late afternoons, you could hear the sharp whistles and shouts of the goatherds bringing down their charges for the evening milking. In fact, what I had seen probably was a goat. But I could not shake the thought that I had seen this face before somewhere. About an hour later, it came to me. It was the face of Pan, the Lord of the Wood, one of the ancient deities of this part of the world.

Of all the Greek and Roman gods and heroes, from Zeus to Athena, Apollo, and Artemis, Pan is the only one who would be instantly recognizable to people in the 21st century. He is the horned god who haunted the pre-Christian forests, the oldest and most powerful—half man, half goat, horns, beard, hooves, and shaggy limbs. He is the old Arcadian god of wild places, transformed by Christianity into the Archdemon himself, the Devil. Pan’s image is still with us, either in his devil form, or with his pipes as Pan himself. Pan has even come to the New World. I’ve seen him not five miles from my home, in a pine grove behind the tea garden at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, where there is a hideous, grinning statue of the lecherous goatman, my hero.