Prospect Hill
Prospect Hill is a low, grassy rise located behind the Creed family's new house in Ludlow, Maine. On a late-summer Saturday, during the family's first week in town, Jud Crandall leads Louis, Rachel, Ellie, and Gage up the mown path that crosses the back field and climbs the hill. The hill itself is not high, but when they reach its crest, a view opens behind them that stops the entire party. Jud Crandall, putting a piece of timothy grass between his teeth, calls it "pretty" — a quintessential Yankee understatement. Rachel Creed breathes that it is "gorgeous," and turns to Louis almost accusingly, asking why he never told her about this place. Louis admits he did not know it was there, and feels a little ashamed that he had never found time to climb the hill until that day, even though it is still on their own property.
The View and Its Significance
From the top of Prospect Hill, the land falls away in a golden and dozy late-summer dream. The Penobscot River flows wide and peacefully, and Louis can make out the towns of Hampden and Winterport on the far side, as well as trace the black, river-paralleling snake of Route 15 nearly all the way to Bucksport. The spire of the North Ludlow Baptist Church pokes through a canopy of old elms, and to the right, the square brick sturdiness of Ellie's school is visible. Overhead, white clouds move slowly toward a horizon the color of faded denim. Everywhere are the late-summer fields, used up at the end of the cycle, dormant but not dead, an incredible tawny color. Jud Crandall explains that in the old days, people called it Prospect Hill, though the name has mostly been forgotten now that younger people have moved into town. He gestures with one hand and falls silent, and Rachel Creed says in a low, awed voice, "You can see everything." When she asks Louis if they own this view, Jud answers before Louis can: "It's part of the property, oh yes." Louis notes to himself that this is not quite the same thing as owning the hill itself.
The Threshold of the Woods
Prospect Hill is not merely a scenic overlook; it is the threshold between the settled, domestic world of the Creed house and the wild, unknown woods that stretch for fifty miles or more. After the family has taken in the view, they continue along the path, which descends into the cooler shade of the pines and spruces. Jud warns Ellie to always stay on the path, explaining that beyond the hill, there is nothing but woods for fifty miles or more — the North Ludlow Woods, which hit a corner of Orrington, then go over to Rockford, and end up on the state lands the Micmac Indians want back. He tells her, "It sounds funny to say your nice little house there on the main road, with its phone and electric lights and cable TV and all, is on the edge of a wilderness, but it is." This warning, delivered on the hill's far slope, establishes the hill as a dividing line: behind the family lies the familiar, cultivated landscape of the river valley; ahead lies the forest that contains the Pet Sematary and, beyond it, the Micmac burying ground with its ancient, dangerous power. The hill's modest height and its ability to reveal "everything" thus become ironic — what it reveals is only the surface; the true secrets lie in the direction it points, deeper into the woods.
