Travels With Charley: In Search of America

by John Steinbeck

For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?

So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.

And this is why, on my journey which was designed for observation, I stayed as much as possible on secondary roads where there was much to see and hear and smell, and avoided the great wide traffic slashes which promote the self by fostering daydreams.

Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.

Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?

We have overcome all enemies but ourselves.