“From Smith’s Hill I looked toward
the mountain line. Who can believe that the mountain peak which he beholds
fifty miles off in the horizon, rising far and faintly blue above an
intermediate range, while he stands on his trivial native hills or in the dusty
highway, can be the same with which he looked up at once near at hand from a
gorge in the midst of primitive woods? For a part of two days I traveled across
lots once, loitering by the way, through primitive wood and swamps over the
highest peak of the Peterboro Hills to Monadnock, by ways from which all
landlords and stage-drivers endeavored to dissuade us. It was not a month ago.
But now that I look across the globe in an instant to the dim Monadnock peak, and
these familiar fields and copsewoods appear to occupy the greater part of the
interval, I cannot realize that Joe Eavely’s house still stands there at the
base of the mountain, and all that long tramp through wild woods with
invigorating scents before I got to it. I cannot realize that on the tops of
those cool blue ridges are in abundance berries still, bluer than themselves,
as if they borrowed their blueness from their locality. From the mountains we
do not discern our native hills; but from our native hills we look out easily
to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them. As I look
northwestward to that summit from a Concord cornfield, how little can I realize
all the life that is passing between me and it,—the retired up-country
farmhouses, the lonely mills, wooded vales, wild rocky pastures, and new
clearings on stark mountain-sides, and rivers murmuring through primitive
woods! All these, and how much more, I overlook. I see the very peak,—there can
be no mistake,—but how much I do not see, that is between me and it! How much I
overlook! In this way we see stars. What is it but a faint blue cloud, a mist
that may vanish? But what is it, on the other hand, to one who has traveled to
it day after day, has threaded the forest and climbed the hills that are
between this and that, has tasted the raspberries or the blueberries that grow
on it, and the springs that gush from it, has been wearied with climbing its
rocky sides, felt the coolness of its summit, and been lost in the clouds
there?
—From
the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), September 27, 1852.