human
I've never loved nature--she's a brute, and crawly besides. It's what man has done with nature that counts; it's nature with a human past. Peaks that have been fought for, and fought on, crossed by the feet of men, stared at by poets and saints. Most of these peaks aren't even named. Did you know that? Nature! What is Nature good for, I should like to know, except to kill us all in the end? Don't Ruskinize to me, my dear man.
gpt
I won't. I couldn't. But, all the same, beauty is beauty, wherever and whatever. And, look where you will here, your eyes can't go wrong.
human
I never look. I looked when I first came, and the stupidity, the emptiness, the mere wood and dirt and rock of it seemed like a personal insult. I should prefer the worst huddle of a Chinese city, I verily believe.
gpt
You've not precisely the spirit of the pioneer, I can see.
human
I should hope not. 'But, God if a God there be, is the substance of men, which is man.' I have to stay in the man-made ruts. They're sacred to me. I'll look with pleasure at the Alps, if only for the sake of Hannibal and Goethe; but I never could look with pleasure at your untutored Rockies. They're so unintentional, you know. Nature is nothing until history has touched her. And as for this geological display outside my windows--you'll kindly permit me to turn my back on it. It's not peevishness. She lifted her hand protestingly.
gpt
Only, for weeks, I stared myself blind to see the beauty you talk of. I can't see it. That's honest. I've tried. But there is none that I can see. I am very conventional, you know, very self-distrustful. I have to wait for a Byron to show it to me. American mountains--poor hulking things--have never had a poet to look at them. At least, Poe never wasted his time that way. I don't imagine that Poe would have been much happier here than I am. I haven't even the thrill of the explorer, for I'm not the first one to see them. A few thin generations of people have stared at these hills--and much the hills have done for them! Melora Meigs is the child of these mountains; and Melora's sense of beauty is amply expressed in the Orthodox church in Hebron. This landscape, I assure you --she smiled--