Read "Under the Maples" by John Burroughs online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
One August a few years ago (1918) I set out with some friends for a two weeks' automobile trip into the land of Dixie -- joy-riders with a luxurious outfit calculated to be proof against any form of discomfort.
We were headed for the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. I confess that mountains and men that do not smoke suit me better. Still I can stand both, and I started out with the hope that the great Appalachian range held something new and interesting for me. Yet I knew it was a risky thing for an octogenarian to go a-gypsying, and with younger men. Old blood has lost some of its red corpuscles, and does not warm up easily over the things that moved one so deeply when one was younger. More than that, what did I need of an outing? All the latter half of my life has been an outing, and an "inning" seemed more in order. Then, after fourscore years, the desire for change, for new scenes and new people, is at low ebb. The old and familiar draw more strongly. Yet I was fairly enlisted and bound to see the Old Smokies.