Photo of the Day

Some words from Walt Whitman:

“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

Construction of a lock on the Erie Canal in central New York State, c. 1850.

Here the profound lesson of reception, [not] preference [not] denial,

The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;

The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,

The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,

The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,

They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted.

From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,

From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.

Mississippi River flatboat, c. 1879.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,

I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,

I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,

I think whoever I see must be happy.

Corduroy road in Washington State, 1895.

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,

Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,

Listening to others, considering well what they say,

Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,

Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

Alaska Railroad track at Wasilla, Alaska, May 1917.

I inhale great draughts of space,

The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,

I did not know I held so much goodness.

Tacoma, Washington, 1919.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,

It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Japanese-Americans wave goodbye to friends and neighbors who are being sent away to an internment camp, April 1942. Dorothea Lange photo.

Here a great personal deed has room,

Here is the test of wisdom,

Route 66 (now Main Street) passing through the business district of Barstow, California, c. 1948.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,

They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Soapbox Derby, Scott's Bluff, Nebraska, c. 1950.

Here is realization,

Here is a man tallied—

On the road to California, 1937. Dorothea Lange photo.

he realizes here what he has in him.”

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road,” 1856. Edited for brevity.