Muir was a quintessential romantic frontier figure. Unarmed, carrying only a few crusts of bread, a tin cup a small portion of tea, a notebook, and a few scientific instruments, Muir walked into the vastness of the Sierras to search out truths. Single- minded, he did not hesitate to challenge the accepted the accepted authorities and their explanations regarding the wilderness he loved. He formulated his own theories and carefully searched out the evidence. America has always loved its rebels, even if it turns out later that they have not discovered the whole truth.
Tag: nature writing
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But I am more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what particular diet the maiden fed on. The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, — as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever a cheek toward the sun.
– Henry Thoreau
I didn’t realize how poetic Thoreau’s prose was. That’s why one must read, must discover, these works for yourself.
Experience them on your own.
Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. p. 282
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The recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard, remind us that each hour of the night is crowded with events, and the primeval nature is still working and making tracks in the snow.
Henry D. ThoreauNature doesn’t pause. This is something we inherently know, but it takes a keen observer like Thoreau to call our attention to it.
Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. pp28
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Occasionally I speculate what sort of chap he can be who takes ten winters out of whatever work he does simply for the purpose of watching peregrines. One must inevitably feel curious about anyone possessed and driven by such a monomania. I experienced a kind of awe, an astonishment, and a real excitement … No bird has ever had such a Boswell.
John MooreFor everyone out their observing and cataloging things for no apparent reason.
Keep going.
Saunders, Hetty. My House of Sky: The life and work of J.A. Baker. Lower Dairy, Toller Fratrum, Dorset: Little Toller Books, 2017. pp113
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As a child I loved the autumn. Leaves fell from a large chestnut tree and gathered into drifts in the garden. I raked them into a pile and tended it carefully, adding fresh armfuls as the weeks went by. Before long, the piles grew large enough to fill several bathtubs. Again and again, I’d leap into the leaves from the low branches of the tree. Once inside, I’d wriggle until I was entirely submerged and lie buried in the rustle, lost in the curious smells.
– My leaf piles were both places to hide and worlds to explore. But as months went by, the piles shrank. It became harder to submerge myself. I investigated, reaching down into the deepest regions of the the heap, pulling out damp handfuls of what looked less and less like leaves, and more and more like soil. Worms started to appear. Were they carrying the soil up into the pile, or the leaves down into the soil? I was never sure. My sense was that the pile of leaves was sinking, but if it was sinking, what was it sinking into? How deep was the soil? What kept the world afloat on this solid sea?
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. pgs 223, 224We’ll let biologist Merlin Sheldrake usher us into autumn.
His book Entangled Life deserves its plaudits.
Floodlights and Goalposts 