Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 139, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1915 — YEARNING FOR THE HILLS [ARTICLE]

YEARNING FOR THE HILLS

Influence of Early Environment la for Each of Us the Iron Ring of Destiny. How much of the influence of early environment, of the habituated reactions which comprise for each of us the iron ring of his destiny, there is in even our deeper attitude toward the external world —toward what we call Nature! Not long ago I spent many weeks in the prairie country of the West, a sense of oppression constantly increasing in weight upon my spirit. Those endless, level plains! Those roads that stretched without a break to infinity! A house, a group of barns, a fruit orchard, and then a clump of hardwoods, alone broke the endless, flat monotony of snow-cov-ered fields —no, not fields, but infinitudes where a single furrow could put a girdle about an entire township in my home land! My soul hungered for a hill; my heart craved, with a dull longing, the sight of a naked birch tree flung aloft against the winter sky. Back through the endless plains of Illinois the train crawled, away from the setting sun. But the next daylight disclosed the gentle, rolling slopes of the Mohawk valley, and before many hours had passed the Berkshire hills were all about us, like familiar things recovered. The camel-hump of Greylock to the north was sapphire-blue and beckoning. The nearer mountains wore their reddish mantles, pricked with green, above the snowy intervals, and laid their up-reared outlines stark against the sky. Shadowy ravines let into their flanks, suggestive of roaring brooks and the mystery of the wilderness. The clouds trailed purple shadow-anchors; the sun flashed from the ice on their scarred ledges. And a weight seemed suddenly lifted from my spirit. The words of the ancient psalmist comes to my lips unconsciously: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from God.” —Walter Prichard Eaton in Harper’s Magazine.