I felt the
habit of avoidance. It is a custom, well enough in a practical land, to
shun such a spot of perplexity; but on that day I was following the Open
Road, and it led me straight to the moist dark stillness of the
tamaracks. I cannot here tell all the marvels I found in that place. I
trod where human foot had never trod before. Cobwebs barred my passage
(the bars to most passages when we came to them are only cobwebs), the
earth was soft with the thick swamp mosses, and with many an autumn of
fallen dead, brown leaves. I crossed the track of a muskrat, I saw the
nest of a hawk--and how, how many other things of the wilderness I must
not here relate. And I came out of it renewed and refreshed; I know now
the feeling of the pioneer and the discoverer. Peary has no more than I;
Stanley tells me nothing I have not experienced!
What more than that is the accomplishment of the great inventor, poet,
painter? Such cannot abide habit-hedged wildernesses. They follow the
Open Road, they see for themselves, and will not accept the paths or the
names of the world. And Sight, kept clear, becomes, curiously, Insight.
A thousand had seen apples fall before Newton. But Newton was dowered
with the spirit of the Open Road!
Sometimes as I walk, seeking to see, hear, feel, everything newly, I
devise secret words for the things I see: words that convey to me alone
the thought, or impression, or emotion of a peculiar spot.
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