And he would tell them.
He would tell of the wind and the rain and the snow; of the cattalo
herds that roamed to the west and the cities that lay to the east and
the stars and the Moon that they never had seen. He would claim to have
been in the endless forests and on the treeless plains and to have
tasted the salt ocean and drunk of the freshwater lakes and rivers.
The children would have heard, in their lessons and from their elders,
enough to know what he was talking about. Sometimes they would tire of
it, and ask him to tell of the distant planets and their far-off suns.
But this he would not do.
"You already hear too much about them," he'd say. "I want you to know
Earth. Your own country. The one planet on which these plastic-covered
cities are unnecessary, where you can actually go out and roll on the
grass."