How is one to distinguish “the chisel work” of the glacier from “the wear of iron wagon wheels”? Perhaps the wear of the wagon wheels runs in a different direction, northeast-southwest, the direction of wagon wheels departing southwestward, as the “village cultures” of New England abandoned their rocky farms and flowed through the Cumberland Gap and other passes in the Appalachian chain, bound for the rich soils of the Mississippi watershed.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
How is one to distinguish “the chisel work” of the glacier from “the wear of iron wagon wheels”? Perhaps the wear of the wagon wheels runs in a different direction, northeast-southwest, the direction of wagon wheels departing southwestward, as the “village cultures” of New England abandoned their rocky farms and flowed through the Cumberland Gap and other passes in the Appalachian chain, bound for the rich soils of the Mississippi watershed.
