Читать книгу The Drama of the Forests онлайн
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INTRODUCTION
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[Pg ix]
It was in childhood that the primitive spirit first came whispering to me. It was then that I had my first day-dreams of the Northland—of its forests, its rivers and lakes, its hunters and trappers and traders, its fur-runners and mounted police, its voyageurs and packeteers, its missionaries and Indians and prospectors, its animals, its birds and its fishes, its trees and its flowers, and its seasons.
Even in childhood I was for ever wondering ... what is daily going on in the Great Northern Forest? ... not just this week, this month, or this season, but what is actually occurring day by day, throughout the cycle of an entire year? It was that thought that fascinated me, and when I grew into boyhood, I began delving into books of northern travel, but I did not find the answer there. With the years this ever-present wonder grew, until it so possessed me that at last it spirited me away from the city, while I was still in my teens, and led me along a path of ever-changing and ever-increasing pleasure, showing me the world, not as men had mauled and marred it, but as the Master of Life had made it, in all its original beauty and splendour. Nor was this all. It led me to observe and ponder over the daily pages of the most profound and yet the most fascinating book that man has ever tried to read; and though, it seemed to me, my feeble attempts to decipher its text were always futile, it has, nevertheless, not only taught me to love Nature with an ever-increasing passion, but it has inspired in me an infinite homage toward the Almighty; for, as Emerson says: "In the woods we return to reason and faith. Then I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me [Pg x] my eyes)—which Nature cannot repair. Standing on tile bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egoism vanishes.... I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty."