I think it likely that people who have not been here will be
interested to know what it is like. I arrived on the thirtieth of
November, fresh from carefree & frivolous 69, & was disappointed.
There is nothing novel about it, nothing striking, nothing to thrill
you & make your eye glitter & your tongue cry out, “Oh, it is
wonderful, perfectly wonderful!” Yes, it is disappointing. You
say, “Is this it?--this? after all this talk and fuss of a thousand
generations of travelers who have crossed this frontier & looked
about them & told what they saw & felt? Why, it looks just like
69.”
And that is true. Also it is natural, for you have not come by the
fast express; you have been lagging & dragging across the world's
continents behind oxen; when that is your pace one country melts
into the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the
change; 70 looks like 69; 69 looked like 68; 68 looked like 67--& so
on back & back to the beginning. If you climb to a summit & look
back--ah, then you see!
Down that far-reaching perspective you can make out each country &
climate that you crossed, all the way up from the hot equator to the
ice-summit where you are perched. You can make out where Infancy
verged into Boyhood; Boyhood into down-lipped Youth; Youth into
bearded, indefinite Young-Manhood; indefinite Young-Manhood into
definite Manhood; definite Manhood, with large, aggressive
ambitions, into sobered & heedful Husbandhood & Fatherhood; these
into troubled & foreboding Age, with graying hair; this into Old
Age, white-headed, the temple empty, the idols broken, the
worshipers in their graves, nothing left but You, a remnant, a
tradition, belated fag-end of a foolish dream, a dream that was so
ingeniously dreamed that it seemed real all the time; nothing left
but You, center of a snowy desolation, perched on the ice-summit,
gazing out over the stages of that long trek & asking Yourself,
“Would you do it again if you had the chance?”