I began to catch on to the ways of this snow; I
began, as it were, to study the mentality of my enemy.
Though I never kill, I am after all something of a
sportsman. And still another thing gave me back that
mental equilibrium which you need in order to see things
and to reason calmly about them. Every dash of two hundred
yards or so brought me that much nearer to my goal. Up
to the "half way farms" I had, as it were, been working
uphill: there was more ahead than behind. This was now
reversed: there was more behind than ahead, and as yet
I did not worry about the return trip.
Now I have already said that snow is the only really
plastic element in which the wind can carve the vagaries
of its mood and leave a record of at least some permanency.
The surface of the sea is a wonderful book to be read
with a lightning-quick eye; I do not know anything better
to do as a cure for ragged nerves--provided you are a
good sailor. But the forms are too fleeting, they change
too quickly--so quickly, indeed, that I have never
succeeded in so fixing their record upon my memory as to
be able to develop one form from the other in descriptive
notes.
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