In the centuries before its settlement by white men, among the most characteristic and pleasing features of the floor of this valley, and of the stream banks on its slopes, were the forests and the groves of great beech trees. With their silver bark and their light graceful foliage, turning gold in the fall, they were surely as lovely as any forests that ever grew on earth. I think so because I have seen their diminished descendants, which have returned to stand in the wasted places that we have so quickly misused and given up. But those old forests are all gone. We will never know them as they were. We have driven them beyond the reach of our minds, only a vague hint of their presence returning to haunt us, as though in dreams—a fugitive rumor of the nobility and beauty and abundance of the squandered maidenhood of our world—so that, do what will, we will never quite be satisfied ever again to be here.
I wonder also what bounty my native land displayed in prior ages. Many times I've sat on the banks of the Kankakee and soaked in its simple beauty. I've watched the easy current carry sticks and leaves westward, passing a backdrop of oak and birch trees. In the winter I’ve perched upon a rock and found solace as I looked over the motionless chunks of ice stretching between banks. If I could sit there long enough, I’ve often thought, perhaps the signals of the modern age—the hollow sound of passing cars, the distant blinking light atop a cell phone tower, the rumble of jet planes, the beer cans and candy wrappers poking through the leaves on the ground, the fishermen buzzing past in their boats—maybe these would fade away for just a moment. Then, perhaps, I would be able to see and taste, in a small way, the nobility and maidenhood of the natural order that Berry describes.
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