The River and I by John G. Neihardt, 1910 University of Nebraska Press
(from page 132)... Perhaps that is what an outing is for -- to strip one down to the lean essentials, press in upon one the glorious privilege of being one's self, unique in all the universe of innumerable unique things....Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a pitiful thing in the last analysis. But somehow you feel that there is something bigger -- not beyond it, but all about it continually. And you wonder that you ever hated anyone....
And expanded by the bigness of the empty silent spaces about you, like a spirit independent of it and outside of it all, you love the great red straining Heart of Man more than you could ever love it at your desk in town. What you seek is at the end of the rainbow; it is in the azure of distance; it is just behind the glow of the sunset, and close under the dawn. And the glorious thing about it is that you know you'll never find it until you reach that lone, ghostly land where the North Star sets, perhaps. You're merely glad to know that you're not a vegetable -- and that the trail never really ends anywhere.
That is what I felt when I was young. It is what, I'm sure, my children felt when they turned their noses and dreams toward California. It is a feeling, I am convinced, that keeps one young: always curious, searching, questing. I'll sleep when I'm dead, sings Warren Zevon. I'll be a vegetable just a day or two before that. Until then, I need to re-read this passage, and take more trips, and re-fresh the feeling of youth.
(from page 132)... Perhaps that is what an outing is for -- to strip one down to the lean essentials, press in upon one the glorious privilege of being one's self, unique in all the universe of innumerable unique things....Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a pitiful thing in the last analysis. But somehow you feel that there is something bigger -- not beyond it, but all about it continually. And you wonder that you ever hated anyone....
And expanded by the bigness of the empty silent spaces about you, like a spirit independent of it and outside of it all, you love the great red straining Heart of Man more than you could ever love it at your desk in town. What you seek is at the end of the rainbow; it is in the azure of distance; it is just behind the glow of the sunset, and close under the dawn. And the glorious thing about it is that you know you'll never find it until you reach that lone, ghostly land where the North Star sets, perhaps. You're merely glad to know that you're not a vegetable -- and that the trail never really ends anywhere.
That is what I felt when I was young. It is what, I'm sure, my children felt when they turned their noses and dreams toward California. It is a feeling, I am convinced, that keeps one young: always curious, searching, questing. I'll sleep when I'm dead, sings Warren Zevon. I'll be a vegetable just a day or two before that. Until then, I need to re-read this passage, and take more trips, and re-fresh the feeling of youth.
PHOTOS: The Missouri River in North Dakota; train tracks headed west on the Empire Builder
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