Childhood camping trips in the forest are a memory that nearly everyone has experienced. Even if the excursion occurred years ago, it is amazing at what clarity and lucidity the memory can be recalled at. The experience is never left empty and meaningless but rather allows for enduring changes and implications. These alterations are expressed in Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron" where the main character Sylvia undergoes a transformation in the forest that will affect her for the rest of her life. Jewett was born and raised in a New England town in the state of Maine. She was well known for her use of local color and used her knowledge of the people and customs of New England as the basis for her stories. Jewett, a conservationist who admired nature, has also been praised for her excellent use of setting in her stories. The object of Sylvia's struggle is the white heron, also known as the snowy egret, a bird on the verge of extinction at the end of the nineteenth century. Jewett masterfully uses the setting to bring a depth to the story, which would otherwise be unattainable. The setting in "A White Heron" shapes Sylvia as a character throughout the story by use of the virgin forest, the quaint cottage farm, and the landmark pine tree.
             The virgin forest sculpts Sylvia at the beginning of the story into an innocent child and also represents freedom and innocence. Removed from a large manufacturing town by her grandmother, Sylvia quickly becomes one with the forest and delights in its activities. She travels in the forest on a June evening, when the shadows are starting to appear, completely alone and unafraid. She has lived in the backcountry with her grandmother for about a year and she has nothing to fear from the forest. Jewett illustrates this, "They were going away from whatever light there was, and striking deep into the woods" (Jewett 119). Sylvia has no reason to be afr...