Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
This poem by Robert Frost was running through my head as I was hiking and camping the Appalachian trail this weekend. Now that I am back in the city and all the greens have been replaced by grays (sky, sidewalks, buildings), the wealth of green seems all the more precious and fleeting. In my mind, they seems as glittering and varied as they do in Klimt’s The Park, a riot of densely undulating color.
Beautiful piece from Mr Frost, I hadn’t come across it before… guess I need to read more Frost. Although we all no doubt read The Road Not Taken in school at some point, or at least I hope so, there are no doubt many more, many more, which should be compulsory.
The Appalachian Trail runs rather a long way from Maine to Georgia, (or is it Georgia to Maine ?) which part were you hiking ? The little bit of it I hiked in Pennsylvania long ago was gorgeous…
Runs either way I suppose. I was hiking part of the New York state trail and amazingly you can take public transportation from Manhattan and be dropped off on a platform into the Appalachian mountains. What a pair of extremes!