but at the same time he knew hed miss this home , and the day after he buried his father , he was up at dawn to watch the mist lift from the hills , and he memorized every mood of the landscape from dawn until darkest night and walked every mile of the county , slowly and carefully storing up memories for the next phase of his life as he imagined it would be , lonely and dangerous and , of course , mysterious , like the fairy tales his father had told him , almost right up to the end .