And I wonder, a century hence, who will camp here where I am camping, and here discover again the woods of Maine? For the native shall return. And as “every creature is better alive than dead, man and moose and pine tree”; and as “he who understands it aright will rather preserve _his_ life than destroy it” so shall he seek his healing here. The light had gone out of the sky. It was after nine o’clock. A deep purple had flowed in and filled the basin of the pond, thickening about its margins till nothing but the long chalk-marks of the birches showed double along the shore. The high, inverted cone of Spencer stood just in front of the canoe as we headed out across the pond toward the camp, its shadow and its substance only faint suggestions now, for all things had turned to shadow, the solid substance of the day having been dissolved in this purple flood and poured into the beaker of the night. A moose “barked” off on a marshy point near the dam behind us; a loon went laughing over, shaking the hollow sides of Spencer and all the echoing walls of the woods with his weird and mirthless cry. Against the black base of the mountain a faint bluish cloud appeared--the smoke of our camp-fire that, slowly sinking through the heavy air, spread out to meet us over the hushed and sleeping pond. CHAPTER VIII WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE 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.