WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS?
"My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately
the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall
become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take
from all their beauty and enjoy their glory."--RICHARD JEFFERIES:
The Life of the Fields.
It was the little lad that asked the question; and the answer also,
as you will see, was mainly his.
We had been keeping Sunday afternoon together in our favourite
fashion, following out that pleasant text which tells us to "behold
the fowls of the air." There is no injunction of Holy Writ less
burdensome in acceptance, or more profitable in obedience, than this
easy out-of-doors commandment. For several hours we walked in the
way of this precept, through the untangled woods that lie behind the
Forest Hills Lodge, where a pair of pigeon-hawks had their nest; and
around the brambly shores of the small pond, where Maryland yellow-
throats and song-sparrows were settled; and under the lofty hemlocks
of the fragment of forest across the road, where rare warblers
flitted silently among the tree-tops. The light beneath the
evergreens was growing dim as we came out from their shadow into the
widespread glow of the sunset, on the edge of a grassy hill,
overlooking the long valley of the Gale River, and uplooking to the
Franconia Mountains.