And for us, setting out over unknown country, there would be those austere and breath-taking moments when, looking down on inaccessible territory, one realizes that no one has seen that spot before. It is fresh, still and untouched as the night’s new-fallen snow. Unchanged from the day it was made. One looks terrified for a visible sign of piercing with the light of human eye the darkness of a hitherto unseen world. The intruding gaze, one feels, must make some mark or leave an impression, as a stone shatters the unbroken stillness of a pool.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient