THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



To feel to the full the peace of the hills, one must 

 choose his hills, and see to it that they are gentle 

 and restful in character. Abruptness, jagged lines, 

 sharp angles, frowning precipices, while they may 

 add an element of picturesqueness, interfere with 

 the feeling of ease and restfulness that the peace of 

 the hills implies. The eye is disturbed by a confusion 

 of broken and abrupt lines as is the ear by a volume 

 of discordant sounds. Long, undulating mountain 

 lines, broad, cradle-like valleys, easy basking hill- 

 slopes, as well as the absence of loud and discordant 

 sounds, are a factor in the restfulness of any land- 

 scape. 



My landscape is very old geologically, as old as 

 the order of vertebrate animals, but young histori- 

 cally, having been settled only about one hundred 

 and fifty years. The original forests still cover the 

 tops of the mountains with a dark-green mantle, 

 which comes well down upon their sides, where it is 

 cut and torn and notched into by the upper fields 

 of the valley farms. 



I call my place Woodchuck Lodge, as I tell my 

 friends, because we are beleagured by these rodents. 

 There is a cordon of woodchuck-holes all around us. 

 In the orchard, in the meadows, in the pastures, 

 these whistling marmots have their dens. Here one 

 might easily have woodchuck venison for dinner 

 every day, yea, and for supper and breakfast, too, 

 if one could acquire a taste for it. I tried to dine on 

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