January 20, 1930

Below is most of a very long and fascinating journal entry in which he discusses what he would come to call his "flashes of insight" and their meaning and importance. Note his anecdote about Robinson Peak, which eventually would become the centerpiece of the most important essay in his book The Singing Wilderness, the essay titled "Silence."

Have been reading Hudson's Far Away and Long Ago. The more I read of the great naturalist poets the more is my belief vindicated. They are akin to me in every action every thought. Hudson in his attempt to explain his feeling toward supernatural in nature tells the feeling he has at certain times, moonlit nights in particular toward trees, horizons, space a feeling of awe and reverence almost akin as it developes to fear but intensely fascinating and impossible to subdue. How well do I recognize the same in my own reactions. Yesterday while on my skis, pausing on the high ridge north of Grassy Lake and overlooking twenty miles of wilderness valley to the great range to the southward, for a moment I had the sensation of harmony with the infinite. As Hudson expresses it when he had climbed a hill to look for the sunset, "I sat down and waited for it to take me." This being taken expresses it so perfectly that any further attempt would be superfluous. One is taken body and soul and while the illusion lasts one is filled with an elation, transported as it were into another world far from the strife of this. It does not last long, can be broken as mine was yesterday by the approach of a truck along the road a quarter mile away. For perhaps a full minute, I stood on my skis steeping myself in the glory of the scene before me. All thought of time had flown or of past and subsequent events, for a moment I was transported. Then like an unpleasant memory I was aware of a hostile influence approaching and I began to retrace the way to the matter of fact. It was nothing but the click, click of a chain striking a fender but it was enough to break the spell. It drew closer and closer until the air was filled with the unpleasant clangor of metal upon metal. I looked up in disgust but the truck was hidden by the trees. It grew fainter and fainter and at last was lost entirely. I stayed for a moment to try and recapture what I had lost but although I did for a brief moment, it was impossible to regain the complete beauty of the first. I pushed on my ski sticks and slid down the trail toward the lake. Once more I had had one of the moments for which I go out. Not always am I so successful. Some days I see nothing, hear nothing, on others every view gives me a glimmer of the goal.

On my canoe trips, much to the secret amusement of my parties, I used to steal away for a silent paddle by myself after the others had gone to bed. They used to chide me about my peculiarities in the morning and make inferences as to my poetic leanings. Many of them would understand however and I would detect a feeling of understanding and sympathy. Most men would do likewise if they could. Few can or are able to see what I see, very few. One must have a peculiar harmony with the infinite, one must be a mystic to see the supernatural. Most of all would I find what I sought on brilliant starlit nights. I would paddle out swiftly onto the open lake if the moon was shining down its path. It never failed to come to me when going down that brilliant shining highway into space. Most completely of all would I be taken when lying on my back looking at the stars. The gentle motion of the canoe softly swaying, the sense of space and infinity given by the stars, gave me the sensation of being suspended in the ether. My body had no weight my soul was detached and I careened freely through a delightfulness of infinite distance. All sense of the present would leave me, all responsibility and worry would flee. Sometimes the night cry of the loon would enhance the illusion. For long periods, I would lay having lost track of time and location. A slap of a wavelet would jerk me back into the present and I would paddle back to the glowing coals of the deserted campfire, there to sit gazing into the coals trying to fathom the depths of the experience I had been through.

In the morning I would receive the jibes of my party with good grace. I knew what they thought, "Moon struck, the yearning of calf love." Little did they know and how far removed I had been from them. How much would they not give could they have had one of my moments with me. I laugh with them and let them think I am peculiar. I would not think of quarrelling because I have really cheated them out of something they cannot feel.

I remember a sunset on the top of Robinson Peak alone as I must always be if I am to receive the vision in its entirety. The sun a round red ball on the horizons separated from me by leagues and leagues of primitive wilderness. It hung suspended swelling glowing palpitating with energy. For a brief moment I experienced the sensation of feeling the earth move away from the sun. Nothing akin to it had I ever felt. Here was I an atom of life on the rim of the world watching it turn. Never before had I experienced anything which placed me so in harmony with the infinite. The play of gorgeous color on water sky and land no doubt helped to creat the setting but the main sensation the illusion governing the whole was a union of myself with the plan of creation. Then more than at any other time did I feel that I was a part of the beautiful life I loved. From that moment on I was a spiritualist. Nothing could ever take from me what I had found.

Years passed before I could analyze those moments and know in what their attraction for my lay. Now that I know I can see the explanation of many things I have done.

There is no doubt that others have the same feeling though I doubt that they have it to the same degree. Many have a certain appreciation of nature but fail to recognize or if they do recognize do not permit themselves to submit to it thereby losing its completeness. Those who do not see it scoff and call it sentimentalism. And how the sentimentalists are derided. It might hurt that criticism were it justified, but how can such criticism hurt when one's intellect can see so far beyond the pale of ordinary human perception. Could any criticism of jibe take from the me moment on Robinson Peak or a moment in a canoe in the path of moonlight. Nothing ever said or done can rob me of those moments. I am beyond criticism for I know.

The feeling of the supernatural comes not only on rare occasions but may come at any time lasting perhaps only a fraction of an instant. These fragmentary glimpses into the infinite are fully as inspirational as the longer ones but are not always recognized. The difference between living a drab and uninteresting life and one filled to the brim with thrilling adventures is just that, being able to see and know life's great moments when they come to you. Someone has said that to be happy one must know that one is happy and supremely happy. One cannot be happy wondering if one is lacking something. To get the full benefit out of anything one must abandon oneself entirely to it to the exclusion of everything else. Through long effort it is graduatlly becoming possible for me to get the maximum of pleasure and enjoyment out of my moments when they come. My greatest moments of happiness are then. I come from them with a new vision of the beauty of life. That is no doubt the secret of my devotion to the outdoors. It is not fishing and hunting or the physical enjoyment of being out but the knowledge that perhaps I will get another one of those glimpses into the unknown. Of late years it has become a mania with me and I will go to any lengths to satisfy it. A day that does not have at least one opportunity to satisfy it, seems to me a day wasted. Days when I have seen my vision are glorious beads on the chain of my life, the others are drab unbrightened stones.

There are few who see what I see, very few. Even the great writers of nature, many of them have failed. Occasionally there crops out an inkling of it but none of the clearness of perception and depth of feeling that I know. Why I should have it I cannot know, perhaps it is an inherited instinct from some far ancestral mystic. Surely none of my family have it, if they do it is hidden and unrecognizable. In me has been concentrated the natureal mysticism of centuries of my race. I have been given the seeing eye. It is my mission to give my vision to the race in return for the beauty that has been shown me. I cannot go through life keeping it to myself. That would be rank ungratitude to the nature, I worship....