No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.
Of all the everyday plants of the earth, grass is the least pretentious and the most important to mankind. It clothes the earth is an unmistakable way. Directly or indirectly it provides the bulk of man's food, his meat, his bread, every scrap of his cereal diet. Without grass we would all starve, we and all our animals. And what a dismal place this world would be!
If you ever wondered why fishing is probably the most popular sport in this country, watch that boy beside on the water and you will learn. If you are really perceptive you will. For he already knows that fishing is only one part fish.
There it is, fog, atmospheric moisture still uncertain in destination, not quite weather and not altogether mood, yet partaking of both.
All our yesterdays are summarized in our now, and all the tomorrows are ours to shape.
The longer I live and the more I read, the more certain I become that the real poems about spring aren't written on paper. They are written in the back pasture and the near meadow, and they are issued in a new revised edition every April.
If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.
March is a tomboy with tousled hair, a mischievous smile, mud on her shoes and a laugh in her voice.
April is a promise that May is bound to keep.
The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.
To know after absence the familiar street and road and village and house is to know again the satisfaction of home.
Time after time ... today's crisis shrinks to next week's footnote to a newly headline disaster.
Each new season grows from the leftovers from the past. That is the essence of change, and change is the basic law.
All man has to do is cooperate with the big forces, the sun, the rain, the growing urge. Seeds sprout, stems grow, leaves spread in the sunlight. Man plants, weeds, cultivates and harvests. It sounds simple, and it is simple, with the simplicity of great truths.
To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May is to partake of continuity.
You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.
The earth's distances invite the eye. And as the eye reaches, so must the mind stretch to meet these new horizons. I challenge anyone to stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see a new expanse not only around him, but in him, too.
A root, a stem, a leaf, some means of capturing sunlight and air and making food - in sum, a plant. The green substance of this earth, the chlorophyll, is all summed up in the plants. Without them we perish, all of us who are flesh and blood.
Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves.... The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes.
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words.
The earth turns, and the seasons, and for all his pride and power man cannot temper the winds or change their course. They are the unseen tides that shape our days and our years.
Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable...the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street...by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.
Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.
You cn't be suspicious of a tree, accuse a bird or squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet
A snowdrift is a beautiful thing-if it doesn't lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination.
Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed.
October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.
All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.
