CIRCUIT OF THE SUMMER HILLS 



a home; the Western farm is the place to grow 

 wheat, pork, and beef. Oh, the flat, featureless, 

 monotonous, cornstalk-littered Middle West! how 

 can the rural virtues of contentment and domesticity 

 thrive there? There is no spot to make your nest 

 except right out on the rim of the world; no spot 

 for a walk or a picnic except in the featureless open 

 of a thousand miles of black prairie the roads 

 black, straight lines of mud or dust through the 

 landscape; the streams slow, indolent channels of 

 muddy water; the woods, where there are woods, a 

 dull assemblage of straight-trunked trees; the sky a 

 brazen dome that shuts down upon you; there are 

 no hills or mountains to lift it up. The prairie 

 draws no strong distinct lines against the sky; the 

 horizon is vague and baffling. Ah, my mountains 

 are very old measured by the geologic calendar! 

 Yet how foreign to our experience or ways of think- 

 ing it seems to speak of mountains as either old or 

 young, as if birth and death applied to them also. But 

 such is the fact: mountains have their day, which 

 day is the geologist's day of millions of years. My 

 mountains were being carved out of a great plateau 

 by the elements while the prairies were still under 

 the sea, and while most of the Rocky Mountains 

 and the Alps and the Himalayas were gestating in 

 the vast earth-womb. In point of age, these moun- 

 tains beside the Catskills are like infants beside 

 their great-grandfathers. Yet it is a singular con- 

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