[bagpipe music]
- Narrator: One night, my father came in
with the most wonderful news that wild boys ever heard:
"Bairns," he said, "you need not learn your lessons tonight,
for we're going to America in the morning."
My father started with the intention
of going to the backwoods of upper Canada.
Before the end of the voyage, however,
he was persuaded that the States offered superior advantages,
especially Wisconsin.
He had found fine land for a farm
and sunny, open woods on the side of a lake.
Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness.
Here, without knowing it, we were still at school.
Every wild lesson, a love lesson.
Not whipped, but charmed into us.
These were my first excurcsions,
the beginnings of lifelong wanderings.
John Muir, Portage, Wisconsin, 1901.
[dreamy music]