that wordless moment.

A quote from Alexis de Tocqueville's "Two Weeks in the Wilderness":

"How is it that human speech, which has the words for every suffering, encounters an invincible difficulty in conveying the gentlest and most natural emotions of the heart?  Who will ever faithfully depict those exceptionally rare times in life when your physical wellbeing shapes you for a moral peacefulness and when your eyes perceive before them a perfect balance in the universe; a time when the soul, halfway toward sleep, hovers between the present and the future, the real and the possible; when man, surrounded by the beauty of nature, inhaling a calm, cool air, at peace with himself in the midst of a universal quiet, listens closely to the even throb of his arteries, each beat of which thus registers the passage of time, seemingly flowing drop by drop into eternity."

Recommended to me by my grandfather, Bobber, this essay was a wonderful read.  What a uniquely eye-opening experience to see rugged, untouched America through the eyes of a Frenchman.