XLVIII. WINDING ROADS 



"0, down the valley do they go, where all is sweet and still, 

 To gently wind and turn about and hide behind the hill. 

 They are not as the city's streets; they have no clash and roar 

 But high and wide above them do the songbirds wheel and soar; 

 And bordering their sides are vines, that spill their wealth of bloom 

 Through which the sunshine spatters like jewels in the gloom. 

 Where do they go ? the little roads that find the hidden ways, 

 As memories that ramble down through misty yesterdays." 



— Wilbur D. Nesbit (The Winding Roads). 



This is our last field trip together. Let us betake ourselves 

 to some little winding roadway that has escaped the "march 

 of progress." No fine highway for us today ; no boulevard, 

 graded like a speedway, raw in its newness, full of dust and 

 din, or stinking with oil. No, let it be a little unimproved 

 roadway winding among the hills; a roadway with a past, 

 and with no concern about the future, settled, peaceful, 

 redolent with the fragrance of bordering woods and fields; 

 a roadway circling the hills and not demanding their removal ; 

 a roadway with the scars of its ancient struggle for existence 

 all healed; its embankments hidden by graceful drapery of 

 verdure let down over them from the bordering woods. 

 And, if it be a dusty roadway, may the dust be clean and cool, 

 dappled with the shadows of pleasant trees or pitted with the 

 fall of the great drops of the summer rain, or printed with 

 the feet of men or animals, or with the wheels of lazy 

 vehicles. 



If such it be, we shall see few people passing, but we may 

 see other inhabitants : for the bushes by such a roadside are 

 full of birds, and rabbits and gophers sit nibbling at the way- 

 side clovers. The signs of other passers-by will not be lack- 

 ing. A sinuous trail through the dust may show where a 

 garter snake crossed the road; the streaks radiating from a 

 "chuck-hole" in a rut may show where a grouse took a dust- 



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