What is the use of describing it?
I am never going to forget. It is mirror’d deep down into my soul,
forever. And who else cares?
I am so happy and so completely at peace. It is less than a year since
I went to Russia, and it has been the fullest year of my life. During
that year I have hardly at all been alone, and I am very very tired.
Peace, (the most beautiful word in the English language) “the Peace
that passeth all understanding” is mine at last.
When I die my Heaven will be like this. It will be warm and sunny, full
of butterflies, flowers and water falling, water rushing and water
pools that trickle. How I love water and the sound of it! I have found
a little secluded place that I come to all alone. When I left the camp,
crossing the river and the rapids, I walked half a mile and then I
came to a wide shallow rivulet. Amidstream there is a tree and a big
shady rock. I reach it by stepping stones. It is my castle. The stream
tumbles from one pool into a lower one. The water is clear as crystal.
I can see the shoal of big trout as they swim together against the
current. There seems to be a myriad butterflies of every description.
They hover quite near me, as though they had never seen a human, and so
were unafraid. There is an irridescent one of sapphire blue as big as a
bat. It is luminous in the sunlight, it dances around me tantalizingly
like some great living jewel that I may not touch. I have heard of
golden butterflies, but I thought it was an exaggeration of speech, but
I have found one here. It settled on my foot and opened wide its wings,
they seemed to have been cut out of gold tinsel and sewn together
with an orange thread. On the branches of the tree over my head there
are clumps of white orchids, and a pair of wild green parrots shriek
noisily in their flight. I have loved spring days in England, with
their mist of bluebells in the woods, and brimstone butterflies the
color of the primroses, but this seasonless country, that has never
known frost, this Heaven of eternal Sunshine and riot of beauty, is
almost too wonderful to enjoy. It is as if one had picked all the best
things from every corner of the Earth and put them here, and made a
composition picture.
Last night I came back by moonlight across the island among the sugar
cane. In the distance the lights glimmered from our thatched roof
beneath which, at the foot of the mountain, our tents are pitched. On
one side of me were bamboo, palm trees and tall feathery reeds and
the moon caught the flat of the leaves and turned them to silver. I
threw my arms out wide as though to embrace it all. I seemed not to be
a mere stranger, a passerby. I, who have no sense of “home” suddenly
felt that I “belonged.” My father had a ranch in Wyoming before I was
born, and perhaps something hitherto untouched had awakened in me.
I have no sense of possession. I do not desire to own. I know that
these mountains are as completely mine as some man’s garden for which
he has paid. I may climb the mountain, shoot, live, cut fuel, build a
house, just as I may fish in the stream, build bridges over it, dam
it, treat it in fact as though I had a title deed, but I do not feel
that I own them so much as they own me. I belong here ... I do not
belong to London, New York, Paris or Mexico City. I do not belong to
people or to any social community. I belong to this garden that God has
planted. This is not Mexico, it is just Arcady. It is not anywhere in
particular, it is just a place “somewhere on God’s Earth.” I may live
here all my life if I please. I can afford to live here without ever
doing another day’s work. I need make no further effort so long as I
live. I need never worry about food, fuel, roof nor raiment. I need
never again see the misery of civilization, the poverty, the crime,
the sordidness, the ugliness. I need never hear of wars, and the
sufferings of humanity. I have strayed into a garden of Peace.
But Vasconselos said the truth: if humans are content, they are no
better than the brutes, if they have imagination, they suffer always.
And I know, that although I have found beauty and my dreams have been
outdreamed, and although I have free choice, my decision will not keep
me here. I know this may only be a rest by the wayside; that some day I
must arise, strengthened, rested, and get back into the fray. I have an
ambition, the task is set, I may not give up. This is self-indulgence.
No one has a right to continue to live and leave no foot print. One may
do some good, or one may do some harm, but one _must_ do something in
the world, or forfeit the right to live.
My children, what would they become, brought up “in Heaven?” It may not
be. They have to pass through the maelstrom to become worthwhile.
But this is good, surpassing good, and my heart is full of a deep
gratitude. Perhaps some day when the work is done, my soul may rest in
“Peace.”