Tipping points, points of no return

You get that far and it seems as though the landscape you are looking at could stay that way for ever, pleasantly placid, with a few bends, a few rises and falls and the odd unexpected hairpin turn, because the panoramas granted to human beings are never arranged according to criteria of perfection and stasis. For a long time you imagine that your future will have the same colours as the past, the same shades, the same flourishes.