To the early explorers and settlers who sailed to the New  World,the first hint of the beauty of northeast America was carried on the wind.Far out at sea they smelled the fragrance of land,of forests and wild strawberries and flowers "as if we had been inthe midst of some delicate garden, "one seafarer wrote.The Italian navigator Verrazano,exploring the coast here in 1524,noted that the trees "for a long distance,exhaled the sweet-est odors,"and he detected their scents hunhdreds of miles from shore.

Since the days of discovery and colonization,we have celebrated the beauty of our New World,fashinoing dreams from the lovely fabric of the America landscape.The well-trod and weather-worn land of northeast America,so long settled and known,hold a collection of scenic places as beloved and familiar as poems memorized in school places that inspired early artists,writers,and philosophers whose works helped shape America’s ideals and destiny.Traveling in the Northeast,where they have both visited and lived,they always feel close to a wellspring of America thought.In the contemplative seasons of autumn and winter the made a piligrimage around the region’s hills,valleys,woodlands,and seacoasts,to places both famed and unsung,to discover the quit beauty that has stirred imaginations from the time of their ancestors’ first breath of the new continent.

When the Mayflower Pilgrims sighted land in November 1620,itr was not Phymouth but the highlands of Cape Cod.They came ashore and fell to theri knees,happy to leave the sea behind.But their pleasure faded when they looked aroun the Cape_ and they left after a few weeks,bound for Plymouth.

The Pilgrims might have stayed longer had they arrived in summer,when the Cape is balmy and grren,the skies are cornflower blue,and the sea sets boats rocking likwe a bady’s cradle.
The sun set,and the bright color drained from the sky,as if the cold had frozen the gaity out of the light,chilling it ot wan pastels,like the hues of ice.They grasses turned brown,rasping in the wind,and we both fell silent.