Two way of viewing a river

In “Two Ways of Viewing a River” Samuel Clemens explains how beautiful and passionate a new experience can be to someone. He speaks of how beautiful nature can be in his quote “ a clean stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun.” At first everything is so new and majestic that it seemed to mezmorize Clemens, but after time goes by and he sees that beauty a countless amount of times it loses its mystery and majesty. Eventually he sees the once beautiful clean stemmed tree as a rotting stump as ordinary and knows that it will soon be gone sinking to the bottom of the river. In a way Clemens is stating a life lesson, that passion and beauty are not everlasting and every good thing has its inevitable end. The happiness he had once felt for steamboat piloting had turned into a distant memory that he longed for. Clemens feels a level of sadness for others that work with such natural beauty regularly because in time they too will lose that sense of utter gratefulness and appreciation for what surrounds them. Perspective changed for Clemens because through time the world, the people, and the beauty always change in someway.