THE OPEN ROAD

"To make space for wandering is it that the world was made so wide."

--GOETHE, _Wilhelm Meister_.

I love sometimes to have a day alone--a riotous day. Sometimes I do not

care to see even my best friends: but I give myself up to the full

enjoyment of the world around me. I go out of my door in the

morning--preferably a sunny morning, though any morning will do well

enough--and walk straight out into the world. I take with me the burden

of no duty or responsibility. I draw in the fresh air, odour-laden from

orchard and wood. I look about me as if everything were new--and behold

everything _is_ new. My barn, my oaks, my fences--I declare I never saw

them before. I have no preconceived impressions, or beliefs, or

opinions. My lane fence is the end of the known earth. I am a discoverer

of new fields among old ones. I see, feel, hear, smell, taste all these

wonderful things for the first time. I have no idea what discoveries I

shall make!

So I go down the lane, looking up and about me. I cross the town road

and climb the fence on the other side. I brush one shoulder among the

bushes as I pass: I feel the solid yet easy pressure of the sod. The

long blades of the timothy-grass clasp at my legs and let go with

reluctance. I break off a twig here and there and taste the tart or

bitter sap. I take off my hat and let the warm sun shine on my head. I

am an adventurer upon a new earth.

Is it not marvellous how far afield some of us are willing to travel in

pursuit of that beauty which we leave behind us at home? We mistake

unfamiliarity for beauty; we darken our perceptions with idle

foreignness. For want of that ardent inner curiosity which is the only

true foundation for the appreciation of beauty--for beauty is inward,

not outward--we find ourselves hastening from land to land, gathering

mere curious resemblances which, like unassimilated property, possess no

power of fecundation. With what pathetic diligence we collect peaks and

passes in Switzerland; how we come laden from England with vain

cathedrals!

Beauty? What is it but a new way of approach? For wilderness, for

foreignness, I have no need to go a mile: I have only to come up through

my thicket or cross my field from my own roadside--and behold, a new

heaven and a new earth!

Things grow old and stale, not because they are old, but because we

cease to see them. Whole vibrant significant worlds around us disappear

within the sombre mists of familiarity. Whichever way we look the roads

are dull and barren. There is a tree at our gate we have not seen in

years: a flower blooms in our door-yard more wonderful than the shining

heights of the Alps!

It has seemed to me sometimes as though I could see men hardening before

my eyes, drawing in a feeler here, walling up an opening there. Naming

things! Objects fall into categories for them and wear little sure

channels in the brain. A mountain is a mountain, a tree a tree to them,

a field forever a field. Life solidifies itself in words. And finally

how everything wearies them and that is old age!

Is it not the prime struggle of life to keep the mind plastic? To see

and feel and hear things newly? To accept nothing as settled; to defend

the eternal right of the questioner? To reject every conclusion of

yesterday before the surer observations of to-day?--is not that the best

life we know?

And so to the Open Road! Not many miles from my farm there is a tamarack

swamp. The soft dark green of it fills the round bowl of a valley.

Around it spread rising forests and fields; fences divide it from the

known land. Coming across my fields one day, I saw it there. I felt the

habit of avoidance. It is a custom, well enough in a practical land, to

shun such a spot of perplexity; but on that day I was following the Open

Road, and it led me straight to the moist dark stillness of the

tamaracks. I cannot here tell all the marvels I found in that place. I

trod where human foot had never trod before. Cobwebs barred my passage

(the bars to most passages when we came to them are only cobwebs), the

earth was soft with the thick swamp mosses, and with many an autumn of

fallen dead, brown leaves. I crossed the track of a muskrat, I saw the

nest of a hawk--and how, how many other things of the wilderness I must

not here relate. And I came out of it renewed and refreshed; I know now

the feeling of the pioneer and the discoverer. Peary has no more than I;

Stanley tells me nothing I have not experienced!

What more than that is the accomplishment of the great inventor, poet,

painter? Such cannot abide habit-hedged wildernesses. They follow the

Open Road, they see for themselves, and will not accept the paths or the

names of the world. And Sight, kept clear, becomes, curiously, Insight.

A thousand had seen apples fall before Newton. But Newton was dowered

with the spirit of the Open Road!

Sometimes as I walk, seeking to see, hear, feel, everything newly, I

devise secret words for the things I see: words that convey to me alone

the thought, or impression, or emotion of a peculiar spot. All this, I

know, to some will seem the acme of foolish illusion. Indeed, I am not

telling of it because it is practical; there is no cash at the end of

it. I am reporting it as an experience in life; those who understand

will understand. And thus out of my journeys I have words which bring

back to me with indescribable poignancy the particular impression of a

time or a place. I prize them more highly than almost any other of my

possessions, for they come to me seemingly out of the air, and the

remembrance of them enables me to recall or live over a past experience

with scarcely diminished emotion.

And one of these words--how it brings to me the very mood of a gray

October day! A sleepy west wind blowing. The fields are bare, the corn

shocks brown, and the long road looks flat and dull. Away in the marsh I

hear a single melancholy crow. A heavy day, namelessly sad! Old sorrows

flock to one's memory and old regrets. The creeper is red in the swamp

and the grass is brown on the hill. It comes to me that I was a boy

once----

So to the flat road and away! And turn at the turning and rise with the

hill. Will the mood change: will the day? I see a lone man in the top of

a pasture crying "Coo-ee, coo-ee." I do not see at first why he cries

and then over the hill come the ewes, a dense gray flock of them,

huddling toward me. The yokel behind has a stick in each hand. "Coo-ee,

coo-ee," he also cries. And the two men, gathering in, threatening,

sidling, advancing slowly, the sheep turning uncertainly this way and

that, come at last to the boarded pen.

"That's the idee," says the helper.

"A poor lot," remarks the leader: "such is the farmer's life."

From the roadway they back their frame-decked wagon to the fence and

unhook their team. The leader throws off his coat and stands thick and

muscular in his blue jeans--a roistering fellow with a red face, thick

neck and chapped hands.

"I'll pass 'em up," he says; "that's a man's work. You stand in the

wagon and put 'em in."

So he springs into the yard and the sheep huddle close into the corner,

here and there raising a timid head, here and there darting aside in a

panic.

"Hi there, it's for you," shouts the leader, and thrusts his hands deep

in the wool of one of the ewes.

"Come up here, you Southdown with the bare belly," says the man in the

wagon.

"That's my old game--wrastling," the leader remarks, struggling with the

next ewe. "Stiddy, stiddy, now I got you, up with you dang you!"

"That's the idee," says the man in the wagon.

So I watch and they pass up the sheep one by one and as I go down the

road I hear the leader's thick voice, "Stiddy, stiddy," and the response

of the other, "That's the idee." And so on into the gray day!

My Open Road leads not only to beauty, not only to fresh adventures in

outer observation. I believe in the Open Road in religion, in education,

in politics: there is nothing really settled, fenced in, nor finally

decided upon this earth, Nothing that is not questionable. I do not

mean that I would immediately tear down well-built fences or do away

with established and beaten roads. By no means. The wisdom of past ages

is likely to be wiser than any hasty conclusions of mine. I would not

invite any other person to follow my road until I had well proven it a

better way toward truth than that which time had established. And yet I

would have every man tread the Open Road; I would have him upon occasion

question the smuggest institution and look askance upon the most ancient

habit. I would have him throw a doubt upon Newton and defy Darwin! I

would have him look straight at men and nature with his own eyes. He

should acknowledge no common gods unless he proved them gods for

himself. The "equality of men" which we worship: is there not a higher

inequality? The material progress which we deify: is it real progress?

Democracy--is it after all better than monarchy? I would have him

question the canons of art, literature, music, morals: so will he

continue young and useful!

And yet sometimes I ask myself. What do I travel for? Why all this

excitement and eagerness of inquiry? What is it that I go forth to

find? Am I better for keeping my roads open than my neighbour is who

travels with contentment the paths of ancient habit? I am gnawed by the

tooth of unrest--to what end? Often as I travel I ask myself that

question and I have never had a convincing answer. I am looking for

something I cannot find. My Open Road is open, too, at the end! What is

it that drives a man onward, that scourges him with unanswered

questions! We only know that we are driven; we do not know who drives.

We travel, we inquire, we look, we work--only knowing that these

activities satisfy a certain deep and secret demand within us. We have

Faith that there is a Reason: and is there not a present Joy in

following the Open Road?

"And O the joy that is never won,

But follows and follows the journeying sun."

And at the end of the day the Open Road, if we follow it with wisdom as

well as fervour, will bring us safely home again. For after all the Open

Road must return to the Beaten Path. The Open Road is for adventure;

and adventure is not the food of life, but the spice.

Thus I came back this evening from rioting in my fields. As I walked

down the lane I heard the soft tinkle of a cowbell, a certain earthy

exhalation, as of work, came out of the bare fields, the duties of my

daily life crowded upon me bringing a pleasant calmness of spirit, and I

said to myself:

"Lord be praised for that which is common."

And after I had done my chores I came in, hungry, to my supper.