But he did not say you could find freedom
In your own village—in your own heart.
O no, that’s political,
You must go a long way to find that.
WHEREVER THEY LOCATE
THEY BUILD TEMPLES
XXXVII. A VISIT TO THE MORMONS
We tramped from ranch to ranch by the rutty roads that skirt the sections, walked away from the mountain-walls, and ever as we went the terrain extended. The sky had become wider; no rocky walls closed us in. The backs of our necks became swollen from the unusual heat of the sun on them. We kicked up dust as we walked, dust again! Our eyes traversed the scene to light, not on cascades or possible camping-grounds, but on far-away farmhouses. We met the oats and wheat and barley fields striving over the moors, and walked till all moor disappeared, till there was nothing in front of us but gold. Made dream-like by the forest fires, the long range of the Rockies seemed unreal—the mountains which we had climbed became remote and shadowy—and not part of our destiny. Our only reality was golden Alberta, which seemed to extend to infinitude, the plateau only gradually losing its altitude, unfolding and undulating downward—one vast resplendent area of golden harvest fields.
The sun gleamed on numberless shocks on the right, on the left, and ahead, and the whole horizon was massed with newly mobilised golden armies. We walked the rutty roads and were exhilarated, and counted the wheatfields which we passed, knowing that each, being a whole section, was a whole mile long.
We discussed a tragical line in one of Lindsay’s poems: