WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The end of the trail cover

The end of the trail

Chapter 32: XV THE MAP THAT IS HALF UNROLLED
Open in WeRead

About This Book

A travel narrative tracing a motor journey across the western frontier from New Mexico toward British Columbia, blending vivid landscape description, encounters with frontier communities and Native pueblos, and practical observations on routes, road conditions, agriculture, mining, and local industries. The author intersperses personal adventure anecdotes with guidebook-style information about climates, land values, and resources, and portrays the continuing presence of pioneer livelihoods—pack trains, ranching, prospecting—alongside emerging coastal development and orchards. Chapters alternate regional sketches, cultural notes, and travel advice, offering both evocative scenes and factual material for prospective settlers and adventurous motorists.

XV
THE MAP THAT IS HALF UNROLLED

“Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God’s sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.”