As we relax and restore ourselves, here is a lovely lush and woodsy prose passage
by Walt Whitman from one of his journals to inspire and delight us:
“I write this memorandum in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy — what I call weather-beaten and let-alone — a rich underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early morning wildflowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle from the hoarse, impetuous, copious fall — the greenish-tawny, darkly transparent waters, plunging with velocity down the rocks. With patches of milk-white foam — a stream of hurrying amber, 30 feet wide, risen far back in the hills and woods, now rushing with volume — every hundred rods a fall, and sometimes three or four in the distance. A primitive forest, druidic, solitary and savage — not ten visitors a year — broken rocks everywhere — shade overhead, thick underfoot with leaves — a just palpable wild and delicate aroma.”
May we all share Walt’s all-seeing eye and all-feeling heart! Write on.