However, in those last months of riding across the golden landscape of California she felt she was flying free, like a condor. She was awakened one morning by the whinnying of her horse with the full light of dawn in her face, surrounded by tall sequoias that, like centenary guards, had watched over her sleep, by gentle hills, and, far in the distance, purple mountaintops; at that moment she was filled with an atavistic happiness that was entirely new. She realized that she had lost the feeling of panic that had lain curled in the pit of her stomach like a rat, threatening to gnaw her entrails. Her fears had dissipated in the awesome grandeur of this landscape. To the measure that she confronted danger, she was becoming bolder: she had lost her fear of fear. "I am finding new strength in myself; I may always have had it and just didn't know because I'd never had to call on it. I don't know at what turn in the road I shed the person I used to be, Tao. Now I am only one of thousands of adventurers scattered along the banks of these crystal-clear rivers and among the foothills of these eternal mountains. Here men are proud, with no one above them but the sky overhead; they bow to no one because they are inventing equality. And I want to be one of them. Some are winners with sacks of gold slung over their backs; some, defeated, carry nothing but disillusion and debts, but they all believe they are masters of their destiny, of the ground they walk on, of the future, of their own undeniable dignity. After knowing them I can never again be the lady Miss Rose intended me to be. Finally I understand Joaquín, why he stole precious hours from our love to talk to me about freedom. So, this was what he meant . . . It was this euphoria, this light, this happiness as intense as the few moments of shared love I can remember.
( Isabel Allende )
[ Daughter of Fortune ]
www.QuoteSweet.com