It seems to us that no traveler has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the wonders which science is elsewhere revealing every day, who would not like to hear their annals? Our humble villages in the plain are their contribution. We borrow from the forest the boards which shelter and the sticks which warm us. How important is their evergreen to the winter, that portion of the summer which does not fade, the permanent year, the unwithered grass! Thus simply, and with little expense of altitude, is the surface of the earth diversified.
ATTRIBUTION:
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. “A Winter Walk” (1843), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 5, p. 169, Houghton Mifflin (1906).
