But The Real Heart And Core Of The Country
Are Not To Be Come At In A Month's Vacation.
One must
summer and winter with the land and wait its occasions.
Pine woods
that take two and three seasons to the ripening of cones, roots
that lie by in the sand seven years awaiting a growing rain, firs
that grow fifty years before flowering,--these do not scrape
acquaintance. But if ever you come beyond the borders as far as
the town that lies in a hill dimple at the foot of Kearsarge, never
leave it until you have knocked at the door of the brown house
under the willow-tree at the end of the village street, and there
you shall have such news of the land, of its trails and what is
astir in them, as one lover of it can give to another.
THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN
East away from the Sierras, south from Panamint and Amargosa, east
and south many an uncounted mile, is the Country of Lost Borders.
Ute, Paiute, Mojave, and Shoshone inhabit its frontiers, and
as far into the heart of it as a man dare go. Not the law, but the
land sets the limit. Desert is the name it wears upon the maps,
but the Indian's is the better word. Desert is a loose term to
indicate land that supports no man; whether the land can be bitted
and broken to that purpose is not proven. Void of life it never
is, however dry the air and villainous the soil.
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