Embrace the changing of the seasons with some thoughts from former UN Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dag Hammarskjold, translated from Swedish by Leif Sjoberg and W.H. Auden. Vägmärken or Markings, is the journal where Hammarskjold collected his thoughts beginning in 1925 when he was 20 years old. This journal was discovered in the wreckage of the plane crash in 1961 that killed him and 15 others on a diplomatic mission to the Congo. IHC Board Member Mary Ann Allison recommends his Markings from August 24th, 61.
August 24th, 61
I awoke
To an ordinary morning with grey light
Reflected from the street,
but still remembered
The dark-blue night
Above the tree-line,
The open moor in moonlight,
The crest in shadow.
Remembered other dreams
Of the same mountain country:
twice I stood on its summits,
I stayed by its remotest lake,
And followed the river
Towards its source.
The seasons have changed
And the light
And the weather
And the hour.
But it is the same land.
And I begin to know the map
And to get my bearings.
