On to the wild land we turned, where the snow underfoot
was soft and free from those hard clods that cause the
horses' feet to stumble. I beguiled the time by watching
the distance through the surrounding brush. Everybody,
of course, has noticed how the open landscape seems to
turn when you speed along. The distance seems to stand
still, while the foreground rushes past you. The whole
countryside seems to become a revolving, horizontal wheel
with its hub at the horizon. It is different when you
travel fast through half open bush, so that the eye on
its way to the edge of the visible world looks past trees
and shrubs. In that case there are two points which speed
along: you yourself, and with you, engaged, as it were,
in a race with you, the distance. You can go many miles
before your horizon changes. But between it and yourself
the foreground is rushed back like a ribbon. There is no
impression of wheeling; there is no depth to that ribbon
which moves backward and past. You are also more distinctly
aware that it is not the objects near you which move,
but you yourself. Only a short distance from you trees
and objects seem rather to move with you, though more
slowly; and faster and faster all things seem to be moving
in the same direction with you, the farther away they
are, till at last the utmost distance rushes along at an
equal speed, behind all the stems of the shrubs and the
trees, and keeps up with you.
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