At last the scrub spruce, and the
sandy soil, and the blue, restless waters of the Great Lake. With the
appearance of the fish-tug early the following day the summer ended.
How often have I ruminated in the long marches the problem of the
Forest! Subtle she is, and mysterious, and gifted with a charm that
lures. Vast she is, and dreadful, so that man bows before her fiercer
moods, a little thing. Gentle she is, and kindly, so that she denies
nothing, whether of the material or spiritual, to those of her chosen
who will seek. August she is, and yet of a homely, sprightly
gentleness. Variable she is in her many moods. Night, day, sun, cloud,
rain, snow, wind, lend to her their best of warmth and cold, of comfort
and awe, of peace and of many shoutings, and she accepts them, but yet
remains greater and more enduring than they. In her is all the
sweetness of little things. Murmurs of water and of breeze, faint
odours, wandering streams of tepid air, stray bird-songs in fragment as
when a door is opened and closed, the softness of moss, the coolness of
shade, the glimpse of occult affairs in the woods life, accompany her
as Titania her court. How to express these things; how to fix on paper
in a record, as one would describe the Capitol at Washington, what the
Forest is--that is what I have asked myself often, and that is what I
have never yet found out.
This is the wisdom reflection has taught. One cannot imprison the ocean
in a vial of sea-water; one cannot imprison the Forest inside the
covers of a book.
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