Gaining knowledge is not something that happens subtly in youth, but rather occurs in shimmering explosions in the origins of the mind - instant mountains of knowledge are created in a mere moment's time, and the discovery of which only calls you away from what is familiar and draws you into the unknown. In Jewett's passage she tells of a "silly girl" who sets her sight on the top of a pine tree in a forest near her home. As the girl beings to climb the tree awakens, at first resistant, then encouraging as it senses the new life on its branches. As it guides her upward she not only ascends from the earth, but gives herself celestial wings that bear her naivity away, and leave her to experience the trees, the sky, and the sea which testify of her new "vast and awesome world."

Half a mile...