CHAPTER VIII
WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE
Have I proof of my contention here? Throughout this book, on many sides of the question, I have argued that the earth is as young as it ever was; that Nature, though it can all but be destroyed in spots, as in New York City, cannot be tamed; that we are still the stuff of dreams, if we could find rest for our souls and the chance to dream. We are not lacking imagination and the power for high endeavor. We master material things; we can also handle the raw materials of the spirit and give them enduring form. But how can we come by the raw materials of the spirit? And where shall we find new patterns on which to mould our new and enduring forms? Matter and pattern are still to be found in nature—substance, essence, presence,
“Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”
I have had much to do with young people, especially with those of creative minds, divinely capable minds, could they be freed from the doubt of their times, and the fear of their own powers. Here let me give them a glimpse of an old man of their own times, these evil times when all of the raw material of books has been used up; an old man with a boy’s eyes and a child’s heart and a pen and a bluebird or two, and a woodchuck—and, of course, a magical chance.
It was an October day. And how it rained that day! An October day in the Catskills, and I was making my way, with my friend DeLoach, out of the little village of Roxbury by the road that winds up the hills to Woodchuck Lodge. Hardscrabble Creek knew it was raining, and met me noisily at a turn of the road, just before I came to the square stone schoolhouse (now a dwelling) where little Johnny Burroughs had gone for his book learning some seventy-five years before. Leaving the creek, I found myself on a roller-coaster road athwart the hills, making up with spurt and dip to a low, weathered farmhouse, thin and gray and old, that seemed to be resting by the roadside thus far over the mountain on its way to the valley.