But no, something was secretly saying to me all the time, that it was
more than what I have said which continued to draw me to this vacant
place--more than the mere relief experienced on coming back to nature
and solitude, and the freedom of a wide earth and sky. I was not fully
conscious of what the something more was until after repeated visits. On
each occasion it was a pleasure to leave Salisbury behind and set out on
that long, hilly road, and the feeling would keep with me all the
journey, even in bad weather, sultry or cold, or with the wind hard
against me, blowing the white chalk dust into my eyes. From the time I
left the turnpike to go the last two and a half to three miles by the
side-road I would gaze eagerly ahead for a sight of my destination long
before it could possibly be seen; until, on gaining the summit of a low,
intervening down, the wished scene would be disclosed--the vale-like,
wide depression, with its line of trees, blue-green in the distance,
flecks of red and grey colour of the houses among them--and at that
sight there would come a sense of elation, like that of coming home.

This in fact was the secret! This empty place was, in its aspect,
despite the difference in configuration between down and undulating
plain, more like the home of my early years than any other place known
to me in the country. I can note many differences, but they do not
deprive me of this home feeling; it is the likenesses that hold me, the
spirit of the place, one which is not a desert with the desert's
melancholy or sense of desolation, but inhabited, although thinly and by
humble-minded men whose work and dwellings are unobtrusive. The final
effect of this wide, green space with signs of human life and labour on
it, and sight of animals--sheep and cattle--at various distances, is
that we are not aliens here, intruders or invaders on the earth, living
in it but apart, perhaps hating and spoiling it, but with the other