He looked north and east and west; by rising and moving he looked south. The horizon rim lay very far. Using knowledge, he let it farther drop away, drop away. Underneath him was the bulk of the earth. Use power and make it as crystal, penetrable as water or air! Overhead and all around was air, thinning afar into ether. He saw his globe in space and time. A ten-minute road of light ran between it and the sun. He sat very still, but within he moved into the land of contemplation. Here much time came into no-time, so subtle swift was motion. He entered into touch with much for which he had not yet found name or names. He might say, there is deep water and rich land. He might say, the world is other than we thought it. There are Americas ripe for discovery, and there are farther and future Americas forming.
By degrees might lessened. Muscle could not yet hold, nor sense be aware. He came nearer surface. Yet still there was vision. Phosphor was paling, the moon a dim curve of pearl, and all the spread of earth in stronger light. Curtin gazed, and the eyes of the mind outran the eyes of the flesh. Not just Virginia, but all the forty-eight states. Not just the forty-eight, but all America, Canada, and Mexico, and the islands and the republics of the South. He looked to the Atlantic and saw on the farther side Europe and Africa, and on to the east Asia and the Pacific. He saw the continents and the nations. It was not so much that he saw their earth, their body, though he saw that, too. But he saw them, touched them, heard them, as persons. The most of them had lately been at fierce war, fibers of each dissenting, but the bulk warring. Exhausted from war, haggard and torn, yet still they made gestures with broken weapons. He saw them in the throes of economic and political change, of change from knowledge to knowledge, and of religious change. He saw traits and actions, deep, deep; yesterdays at the point of to-day, and all the morrows being built of yesterdays and to-days. He saw as it were stain and chaff and guilt, and through all these white-running Fire and Life and Upspringing. They were Persons, but a greater Person held them. Light broke. He saw the earth and the world and the heavens as Person. Upon him broke in deluge the vaster Selfhood.
The sun rose over Rock Mountain, the long ranges and the vales. The air had the exquisite fresh energy of Hope. Curtin moved down the path to the cabins. All his being seemed lit and harmonized. "It is what the old saints called conversion. My times fall into the hand of the One that I Am!"
The rosy light shone on Hall's below him as it shone on Sweet Rocket and Alder and the Virginia farms and villages and towns, and the farms and villages and towns of every state, and of all the Americas, and of the earth. Fragrant smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard the cheerful voices. A great love of the neighbor pervaded Curtin's consciousness, and with it entered the neighbor. His consciousness and the neighbor's consciousness became to a degree one.
XII
The men at work had breakfast at Hall's in great beauty of weather. Afterward Curtin went with them along the proposed line of road. It proved a cheerful group, doing basic work well. The wine of the air and the lift of the earth and the beams of the sun helped amain. Axes rang, pick and shovel sounded. There was a center of work and there were outlying explorations. One hallooed to another. Morris was a master whistler, and you heard him like a redbird. Dave Hall had an interminable mountain ballad which he chanted as he worked. The buzz of the whole might be caught a long way over the mountain slope. Where they worked would be a great driveway for holiday folk. Young and old would pass that way, drinking the great views and the mountain air, pierced by beauty and largeness. Young and old, man and woman, a many and a many, through years heaped like sand!
"I like public work!" said Randall.
Drew answered: "I like it, too! If a scholar wants to help all and a teacher wants to help all, then going to school and teaching are public works. But I'm coming back to help hold the forests for themselves and the people."