"
We now and then meet with people who profess to care little for
a path when walking through a forest solitude. They do not
choose to travel a beaten path, even though it was made
centuries ago. They are welcome to this freak. "Our own genius
for adventure is less highly developed and we love to wander
along some beaten path, no matter how often it has been traveled
before; and if really awake, we may daily greet new beauties and
think new thoughts, and return to the old highway with a new
lease on life, which, after all, is the main consideration,
whether traveling on old or new trails."
Then the force of those old associations, how they gild the most
ordinary objects! The trail you may be traveling may wander here
and there, beset by tangles of briers or marshy ground or loses
itself in a wilderness of barberry bushes, yet how much more
wonderful to travel it, for its soil has been pressed by pilgrim
feet. Some path may chance to lead you where a few old lilac
bushes, a mound or perhaps a gray and moss-grown house, still
stands where some hardy pioneer builded.
You will probably come across parties of boys who have spent
hours in the broiling sun, picking blueberries or huckleberries
in the woods or old stony pastures. Here grow a number of
varieties, which make the woods beautiful and fragrant. They
belong to the heath family and help to feed the world.
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