My pal Hal

 For a couple of years now I've occasionally shared an essay by the late naturalist writer Hal Borland here on the blog. Yesterday I got a comment from Neil (Yorkshire Pudding) asking me if there was any evidence that Borland was strongly religious as he had such a feeling for Nature and the passing of the seasons. I had never considered the question and my first impulse was to say no, that he was not, but I decided to do a little internet research to see. I didn't recall ever seeing any mention of religion in his writings. 

Here's the quick Wikipedia summary of his life and work:

Harold "Hal" Glen Borland (May 14, 1900 – February 22, 1978) was an American author, journalist and naturalist. In addition to writing many non-fiction and fiction books about the outdoors, he was a staff writer and editorialist for The New York Times. 

Borland was born on the plains in Sterling, Nebraska, to Sarah M (née Clinaburg) and William Arthur Borland. When Hal was 10, the family moved 30 miles south of Brush, Colorado, where his father staked out a homesteader's claim on the prairie. Hal later detailed his experience on the homestead in his book "High, Wide, and Lonesome." After proving out on the homestead claim, his father sold the homestead and bought a weekly newspaper in Flagler, Colorado, where Hal finished his school years. This experience is detailed in his book "Country Editor's Boy." After attending local schools, he studied at the University of Colorado from 1918-1920, majoring in engineering. While there, he held jobs at the Denver Post and the Flagler News. It was during this time he realized his true calling was as an author, and he soon moved to New York where he studied journalism and graduated from Columbia University in 1923 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature.

Borland started writing as a journalist for publications such as The Denver Post and the Flagler News. While attending Columbia University he wrote for the Brooklyn Times, the United Press, and King Features Service. After graduation Borland worked for a variety of newspapers across the United States, eventually settling in Philadelphia and working for Curtis Newspapers, the Philadelphia Morning Sun, and the Philadelphia Morning Ledger from 1926 until 1937.

In 1937 Borland began writing for The New York Times, first as a staff writer for The New York Times Sunday Magazine (1937-1943) and then in 1942 as an editorial writer for The New York Sunday Times, a position he held until his death in 1978. While at The Times, Borland began writing about his experience as an outdoorsman in a series of editorials that were later compiled into two books. He wrote similar pieces for the Berkshire Eagle (1958-1978), Pittsburgh Press (1966-1978), and Torrington Register (1971-1978).

Borland also wrote short stories, poetry, novels (including westerns under the pseudonym Ward West), biographical novels, non-fiction, articles for a variety of magazines, and one play.

Awards and honors

• Meeman Award for Conservation Writing (1966)
• John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing (1968)
• Interpretive Naturalists Award (1973)

Borland was married twice, to Helen Alice née Le Bene until her death in 1944, and to Barbara Ross née Dodge until Borland's death in 1978. Both of his wives were also writers. Borland and Helen had three sons, Harold Glen Jr. (1925-1963), Donal William (1929-2017), and Neil Frederick (1929-1944).

In 1952, Borland and wife Barbara moved to a 100-acre farm in Connecticut, where they lived and worked until his death in 1978 at the age of 77 from emphysema.

Here's something about his career he wrote for a brief biography in World Authors, 1950-1970.

"Early engineering training taught me to respect facts and logic. Newspaper years taught me to write straight sentences and build logical paragraphs, and fostered my work habits. A bent toward poetry gave me a sense of words and language that helped shape my style."

Here are a couple of excerpts from his obituary published in the New York Times in February, 1978.

Hal Borland, writer and naturalist, died late Wednesday at Sharon (Conn.) Hospital after a long illness from emphysema. He was 77 years old.

Author of 30 books and hundreds of articles and columns, Mr. Borland was celebrated as the writer of editorials in The New York Times that have chronicled the seasons for 35 years. The final two of 1,750 appeared Tuesday, the day before his death, and on Feb, 13....

The editorials were unsigned, but their authorship was no secret. A typical Borland, as they were called in the trade, would greet the arrival of spring in the still snow‐dappled Berkshires:

“The violets will come, in their own time. That is all that was written in the sky by Friday's equinox. The sun's summons will not be answered overnight, but the answer is inevitable. The first hungry bee at the first crocus hums of June, and the first green leaf forecast cool summer shade. All is in order. Spring is the earth's commitment to the year.”

‘The Voices of Frogs’

On the wall of his study in the farmhouse near Salisbury, Conn., hung a New Yorker cartoon showing a man angrily waving a copy of The Times and telling his wife: “Here's another of those crackpot editorials about the voices of frogs shattering the autumn stillness!”

Actually, Mr. Borland’ was a conservative and a conservationist who decried “sentimental or anthropomorphic drivel” in nature writing, Thus, he said, when wildlife appears to stocking up more than normally in the fall, it does not mean that it knows a lean winter is ahead, but a lush summer is behind...

In his gentle style, Mr. Borland appealed to gardeners and farmers to restrain the use of pesticides and save the birds—not, he said, for their song but for man's safety. “As far as I am concerned,” he said, “I am fighting for life, and a brown thrasher may eat up to 6,000 insects a day.”

Mr. Borland frequently wrote about the West, and recalled his boyhood years in a memoir, “High, Wide and Lonesome. In returning on a visit, he decried the encroachments of superhighways, and throwaway cans. His own refuge in the Berkshires was far from there, but he once described it as “the perfect world—a home at the end of nowhere.”

“This is the only way to live,” he said, “'waiting for the vernal equinox, seeing an apple tree blossom or coming on an old coon and her kits fishing for clams late at night.”

To protect his privacy, his mailbox bore no name. But nature lovers, among them Justice William O. Douglas, found their way there, and were welcomed warmly. Mr. Borland won the John Burroughs Medal, considered the country's highest award for nature writing, in 1968. Two of his books, “Sundial of the Seasons” (1964) and “An American Year” (1973), are collections of his editorials. His latest books were “A Place to Begin: The New England Experience” (1976) and “The

Golden Circle” (1977), writings for children, arranged by months of the year.

To his biography in Who's Who in America, Mr. Borland recently added:

“I am a fortunate man. I grew up on a frontier, escaped early success, had things to say when I matured. I have been able to make a living at work I wanted to do, to write what I believed and find an audience. My purpose has been to write at least a few paragraphs that will be remembered after I am dead. I have enjoyed life. I still do.”

In all my looking, I've seen no evidence of religion playing a huge role in Borland's life. To me, his writings speak of a great love for the natural world and the eternal cycle of the seasons. I first discovered his work among the dim, dusty shelves of a small town library probably twenty years ago. I was wandering around, pulling out old volumes at random and perusing them whenever a title looked interesting, and was immediately charmed with the 366 essays (one for each day of the year) in Hal Borland's Book of Days. They also had a copy of a compilation of his work published by his wife after his death, Twelve Moons of the Year. Both of these books have been recently been published again after being out of print for decades, and as a matter of fact I ordered a copy of Book of Days this morning! The essays I share here are from a Hal Borland fan page on Facebook. 

I'll wrap up this post with some well-known Hal Borland quotes. Enjoy!

* “Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”

* “Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.”

* “In a painful time of my life I went often to a wooded hillside where May apples grew by the hundreds, and I thought the sourness of their fruit had a symbolism for me. Instead, I was to find both love and happiness soon thereafter. So to me [the May apple] is the mandrake, the love symbol, of the old dealers in plant restoratives.”

* Trees are the oldest living things we know. Rooted in the earth and reaching for the stars, they partake of immortality.

* Life persists, and so does its ultimate source, call it what you will. Man is a unique form of that life, but not alien to it. He happens to live in the midst of life on this earth, this particular small unit of a universe about which he actually has only a smattering of knowledge.

* Consider the wheelbarrow. It may lack the grace of an airplane, the speed of an automobile, the initial capacity of a freight car, but its humble wheel marked out the path of what civilization we still have.

* 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.

* Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom but 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 forth faith rather than reason.

* Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January.

Sundial of the Seasons

 July 28th and 29th

Sundial of the Seasons

"Dusk comes somewhat earlier now, the Summer Solstice already a month behind us and the daylight slowly diminishing. Time's are unchanged, but the landmarks shift even as the familiar star patterns shift in the night skies. Summer passes.

You see the change in the way the shadows fall. You see it in the trees, the subtle difference in the color of their leaves, in the ripening seed heads of the wild grasses, in young acorns on the oaks. Pasture roses fade. Black-eyed Susan and bouncing Bet flourish at the roadside. Queen Anne's lace is frothy white where daisies frosted the fence row a few weeks ago. Milkweed blossoms fade.

You hear the change in the bird calls, with fewer songs of ecstasy and more parental scolding. The wood thrush, the dove and the whippoorwill dominate the dusk. You hear it most decisively, when you pause to listen, in the insect sounds, for time has special dimensions for chitin-clad life that is granted only one Summer's duration. Bees are busier, wasps are more truculent, harvest flies more sibilant in the heat of the afternoon. Beetles click in haste, ants scurry, dragonflies dart on rattling wings.

And in the dusk, when the sphinx moths haunt the flower garden, crickets stridulate, mosquitoes hum, late lunas and other light-mad moths bang the window screens. August and katydids are just over the horizon, and Autumn is not far behind them. The shadow of time moves slowly but surely across the sundial of the seasons."

Hal Borland

"Sundial of the Seasons"

July 1962

Happy May Day!

I didn't want to let the first of May go by without wishing you all a happy day (and month!). I also wanted to share an essay from my favorite nature writer, Hal Borland, to commemorate the holiday.

May 1st

May Baskets
"Do youngsters anywhere still hang May baskets, or has May Day become wholly a date of social significance?

There was a time when May Day meant sentiment. It was preceded by a busy week when young fingers were weaving baskets and small cornucopias out of colored paper. Between spells of basket-making, scouting expeditions were made to the woods and fields, to see how the season went with wild flowers. And at least one trip was made to the candy store.

On April's last day, as late as possible, the scouting expeditions were followed up. Purple violets, preferably those big, dark, long-stemmed ones which grow at the edge of the swamp, were picked. Dogtooth violets were gathered. And windflowers, if any were to be found. Spring beauties were sought, and Dutchman's breeches. And the most delicate of young fern fronds were gathered for garnish. All were carried home in the dusk and stowed carefully in cups and glasses of water.

May Day morning called for early rising. In the bottom of the basket or cornucopia were put a few jelly beans left over from Easter, a few gumdrops, and at least one heart-shaped wafer candy printed with coy words of affection. Then the flowers were added till the basket brimmed with beauty. And at last, before breakfast if possible, the trip was made to Her house, where the basket was hung on the doorknob. The bell was rung and the basketeer ran like mad, to hide around the corner until She came and found the tribute.

That was May Day, in the morning, when there was sentiment in the date. The candy might be cheap, the flowers somewhat wilted; but the sentiment was real. What ever happened to it, anyway?"

Hal Borland
"Sundial of the Seasons"
May 1949

I remember having a Maypole and some kind of "May Queen" thing at school when I was a young girl, but I haven't heard any mention of such things in many, many years. I would love to revive the old custom of leaving little posies for the neighbors on their doorsteps, though. Well, maybe not for Crazy Neighbor but the others I've met have been nice. Especially the sweet 80 year old lady who lives next door--I like her a lot. Maybe next year I'll remember and buy her a little bouquet of daisies to leave on her steps.

We're doing okay here. Gregg isn't hurting quite as much and he got the pain medicine he needs just in case. He goes for a stress test (for his heart) on Friday and then he has some more tests later this month. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of things and get it all resolved.

Going back to work after spring break wasn't too painful. It really helps to like your job, not to mention the fact that summer break is only 25 (school) days away. This morning the principal called out from his office, "Mrs. Barlow, can you come in here, please?" and when I went it he looked grim and told me to shut the door and sit down. I felt dread creeping all over me and braced myself for whatever was coming. Then he smiled broadly and told me that classified district employees get an evaluation every two years, and he had just completed my first one. He rated me as "Exemplary" in all categories, which was the highest rating, and wrote some really nice comments at the end. I nearly cried--evaluations were always traumatic at my old job. Not only were they often very unfair, but they were always slightly demeaning. (It was that way for all the employees, the company made a practice of never giving very positive reviews in an effort to keep the yearly raises small). It's so nice to work in a place where you feel valued! I told Mr. Oates that I love my job, and he replied, "We love having you here." Wasn't that nice of him? :)

Anyway, it's been a pretty good first of May. How has yours been? Did you give anyone flowers, dance around a Maypole, or somehow mark the occasion? I hope everyone has had a good one!

Homecoming

This essay resonated with me this morning, as the search for a new home is uppermost in my mind these days. (We were approved for a mortgage loan yesterday, and now we're ready to begin making offers on houses!) Traveling is great, but a real home to come back to is even better.

I hope you enjoy yet another essay by Hal Borland. 

August 30th and 31st

Homecoming

"More than half the pleasure of going is in the return, as any traveler knows. To go, to see the far place, the place beyond the horizon, is exciting; but to return is satisfying as few other things can ever be. To know after absence the familiar street and road and village and house is to know again the satisfaction of home.

Few of us are that kind of traveler who can be at home forever away from home. The new, the strange and the different have their lure, but one needs a place to call his own. One needs to belong somewhere, to feel the roots, however tenuous, of identity with place. Home, we call it, whether it be a room or a house or an apartment, a farm or a plot of grass or a well-known street or park. Home, where one can feel and touch and see and find comfort in familiar things. The place where one belongs, find comfort in familiar things. The place where one belongs.

Man, being man and an ambulatory creature with a degree of restlessness in his blood, must be up and gone from time to time. He must go, if only to assure himself that the horizon has no boundary. He must move from here to yonder, if only to know that he is neither slave nor prisoner. What are hills for, if not to have a farther side? And what is the purpose of that distant rim of sky if not to lure a man beyond his own small orbit? But once one has gone, one must come back.

And that is the final satisfaction of a trip, whether it is a vacation or just a journey - the return itself. The homecoming. The trip back, and the home at the end. To go is good, but to come back is best."

Hal Borland
"Sundial of the Seasons"
August 1955

Down the Long Hill

August 18th and 19th

Down the Long Hill

"Sunrise comes later, now, and dusk creeps over the hills earlier in the evening. Reckoned from late June, when the Solstice marked the year's longest day, we have already lost an hour and a half of sunlight. Another month and the Autumn Equinox will be here and daylight will equal darkness, briefly. The year has turned, noticeably; and Summer is walking down the long hill toward Autumn and the Winter beyond.

On a scorching August day such a change seems to run counter to the season as we now know it. Now, we feel, as the hot humidity lies heavy upon us, is the Summer's peak. If the season is already moving downhill, why do the temperatures remain here on the summit? The reason is that it takes the Earth a time to warm up, and that it does not cool off in a moment. Any housewife knows that if she is going to cook a roast or bake a pie she must give her oven time to get hot; and that even though the oven is turned off before the cooking is done it will retain the heat long enough to crust the roast or scorch the pie. So with the Earth. It took from June to August for it to warm up, and it will take till late September for it to cool off again.

But the trees show the true season, and so do the grass in the meadow and the tall weeds at the roadside. Early apples begin to ripen. Daisies fade and goldenrod shows impatient yellow. New growth is slow; seed pods fatten; the soft growth of May hardens toward maturity. Dog days are virtually over. Another Summer seeps away as dusk settles in the valleys a few minutes earlier one day after another."

Hal Borland
"Sundial of the Seasons"
August 1947

The Foreverness of June

June 16th and 17th

The Foreverness of June

"Mid-June, no matter what the year, is a kind of summary of all the Junes that ever were. It is a remembering, a knowing and a recalling, a time that was and is and always will be, a timeless time. The daisies that whiten the roadside are remembered daisies, and the bird songs are all songs that have sung in the human heart since hearts first sang. Mid-June is hoped-for truth and longed-for beauty and hoped-for happiness, dreams that could come true five minutes from now.

Wild strawberries ripen, remembered perfection with the taste of yesterday's youth. Pasture roses bloom with the simplicity of beauty as new as the night's dew and as old as time itself. The sun approaches the solstice and there are fifteen hours and more of daylight, within a few seconds of the year's longest span. The rains have eased the drought, the remembered sweet rains of June. Shade lies cool and deep beneath the long-known maples. Fireflies wink in the long dusk. Brooks have not yet languished into July's torpor. Venus is the morning star, and Mars is the star of evening.

The bees hum of mid-June bids one look for yesterday, and find it, in the lush meadows. Butterfly wings lead one down the hillside with other Junes. A dragonfly bids one to the water's edge, there to see mirrored the face of yesterday's June vagabond. And all around, overhead, underfoot, in the very air, is the remembering, the knowing, the very being of June and the possession by it, the partaking and the foreverness, the sweet foreverness of mid-June."

Hal Borland
"Sundial of the Seasons"
June 1963

Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice to all my friends here in the blogoverse. In honor of the day, here is an essay I wanted to share with you from my favorite nature writer, Hal Borland. The return of the light is a miracle everyone can appreciate.

December 20th and 21st

Winter Solstice

"The year achieves another Solstice as the great wheel of time turns with the Earth and the seasons. Winter, by the calendar, begins in mid-morning today, though the year's shortest days have been upon us for almost a week. The Solstice is a marker on the charts, but Winter abides by its own schedule of wind and weather.

Since man was first aware of the changing seasons, the Winter Solstice has been occasion for awe and wonder and a challenge of faith. Hope and belief are easy in a warm, green world, but when the cold days come and the sun edges farther and farther South, cutting a constantly smaller arc across the sky, the imminence of utter darkness and oblivion seems at hand. Then the sun stands still. The turn comes. The crisis passes and the sun slowly climbs the sky once more, reaching toward another Spring, another Summer.

It was, and still is, an annual miracle. Hope and belief were, and still are, once more justified.

There is order in the Universe. The seasons still march in their eternal sequence, and Winter is neither pause nor punishment, but a part of the year's whole. Ice and stormy wind are inevitabilities, but they pass even as the leaf and the blossom, equally inevitable in their own season, ripen and are gone.

The year has its own fourfold truth, indelibly marked on the turning Earth. Now we know it whole for another turn of the great wheel. The cold verity of Winter completes the cycle."

Hal Borland
"Twelve Moons of the Year"
December 1963



*Winter solstice 2017 in Northern Hemisphere will be at 11:28 AM on Thursday, December 21st (Eastern Time)

September's arrival

I'm enjoying the arrival of September in my part of the world. It's been a little bit cooler, a little less humid, and the dogwood trees are already beginning to show some very early color. I read an essay this morning about early September that I wanted to share with you. Of course it's by my favorite nature writer, Hal Borland. As always, he captures the mood of the season so beautifully!

September 2nd and 3rd

September

"September is the year at the turn, a young mother sending her children off to school and wondering if she can ever catch up with Summer tasks unfinished. It is Autumn at hand and Summer reluctant to leave; it is days loud with cicadas and nights loud with katydids; it is beets for pickling and pears for canning and apples for pies and sauce and cider. It is hot days and cool nights and hurricane and flood and deep hurt and high triumph.

September is both more than a month and less, for it is almost a season in itself. It is flickers in restless flocks, readying for migration; it is goldfinches in thistledown; it is fledglings on the wing, and half-grown rabbits in the garden, and lambs in the feed lot. It is the gleam of goldenrod and the white of lavender and purple of fence row asters, with the bright spangle of bittersweet berries.

September is fog over the river valleys at dawn and the creep of early scarlet among the maples in the swamp. It is bronze of hillside grass gone to seed. It is walnuts ripening and squirrels busy among the hickories. It is late phlox like a flame in the garden, and zinnias in bold color, and chrysanthemums budding. It is a last gallant flaunt of portulaca and petunias defying time and early frost.

September is the first tang of wood smoke and the smolder of burning leaves. It is bass and perch revitalized in the chilling waters of pond and stream. It is the hunter's dog sniffing the air and quivering to be off to the underbrush. September is time hastening and days shortening, it is the long nights of Autumn closing in with their big stars and glinting moon. September is the wonder and fulfillment and the ever-amazing promise of another Autumn."

Hal Borland

"Sundial of the Seasons"
September 1955

Early August

It's been a while since I shared an essay from my favorite nature writer, Hal Borland. The start of a new month seems like a good time for it. Enjoy.

"August comes with hot days, warm nights, a brassy sun, and something in the air, perhaps the season itself, that begins to rust the high-hung leaves of the elms.The listless leaves of the maples have a dusty look and the sycamores and basswood are hung with seedy fruits. Sumac holds its candle-flame clusters, red as the sumac leaves will be in September.
First goldenrod comes to bloom along the roadsides, and early asters appear, lost in the clouds of Queen Anne's... lace. In damp places the purple vervain leads the parade of darker color that already begins to show in the first flower heads of Joe-Pye weed. Thistles flaunt their thorny tufts of deep lavender, and tick trefoil is in weedy bloom, its small lilac flowers preparing stick-tight pods. Bur marigolds, masquerading as roadside sunflowers, come to blossom, and great Lobelia lifts its blue spikes above the podding milkweed.

Brooks languish in their stony beds. Only the grandfather frogs groan and rumble in the dusk. The Whippoorwills are less insistent, and now a Barred Owl is heard questioning the night. The big, dark moths haunt the flower garden's deep-throated flowers, gleaning nectar the August-lazy bumblebees overlooked. The night still twinkles with fireflies but the day's heat lingers and the air has a dusty August scent, the smell of languid summer. And overhead the warm air touches the treetops, rustles the rustling leaves in the broad-tipped elms."

Hal Borland
"Twelve Moons of the Year"
August 1964

Honey-sweet July

It's been a while since I shared an essay by my favorite American naturalist writer, Hal Borland.
Here's an ode to early July that spoke to me this morning. I hope you enjoy it!

July 2nd and 3rd

Honey-Sweet July

"You can smell the season now, a special sweetness that marks the mists of dawn and the cool of dusk and is even there in the heat of a July afternoon. If it has a reminder of honey, that is no illusion, for it is the fragrance of clover and milkweed in bloom; and the essence of both is being stowed in the waxen comb. You smell it now on the summer air. You will taste it next winter on the breakfast plate.

...

The clovers are both wild and tame and range from the small white clover of suburban lawns to the big red clover of the hayfield and the tall sweet clover, both with and yellow, of the rural roadside. All are sweet of blossom. But clover fragrance makes no demands. It is a presence in the air, a gentle sweetness faintly spiced.
Milkweed, however, cannot be ignored. Its fragrance is like the essence of honeysuckle added to the heavy scent of the tuberose. It is almost too sweet, too insistent. Come on a patch of milkweed in full flower and you first wonder what careless performer had been at work. The warm summer air becomes almost heavy with milkweed aroma. Few other blossoms, wild or tame, are so full of such fragrance, and few flowers bloom more generously in July.
So you walk the roads and fields. The bees hum. The hot air shimmers. Grass heads ripen. Summer possesses the land. And you can smell July, honey-sweet, on every breath of air.


Hal Borland
"Twelve Moons of the Year"
July 1966

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Late November morning

I'm still trying to recover from this nasty flu I caught. I was off yesterday and today and I'm grateful for that--I wouldn't have been able to go in had I been scheduled to work.

 I'll also have Thursday off for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I hope I feel well enough by then to cook a small festive meal for the two of us.

No way will we go to Raleigh to see my mother in law as we had planned--her health is bad enough without exposing her to my germs.

We had our first hard frost last night. The temperature finally dipped below freezing and this morning everything was icy and sparkling when the sun came up. It's going to be a gorgeous day. I wish I felt well enough to take the dogs out for a good long walk to enjoy it.  Maybe a short walk will be manageable once it warms up if I take some ibuprofen and fortify myself with several cups of hot, strong tea. We shall see.

Speaking of walks, I want to share this essay by the great American nature writer Hal Borland. He wrote "outdoor editorials" for The New York Times from 1941 until his death in 1978. His work was compiled into two or three books which are out of print and hard to find nowadays. I first discovered old, old copies of them lying dusty and forgotten in the public library. I fell in love with his work and recently discovered a Facebook page dedicated to him (Readings from Hal Borland). Two or three times each week they share a selection of seasonal nature essays that are nice reading if you love the outdoors.

This essay made me think of my blogging friend Yorkshire Pudding and the beautiful, interesting walks he takes over in England.

I hope you all enjoy it.


                The Answers

"Those who would look for simple answers to the big questions should go for a country walk on a November afternoon, out where leaves scuffle, squirrels scurry, jays cry havoc, and the fundamental shape of the hills is now revealed.

Choose a crisp leaf, not matter whether maple or oak or ash, and try to catch it. And know that leaves are almost as varied as snowflakes. Watch the wind as it turns silvery in a clump of milkweed stalks, a shimmer of floss-borne seeds streaming from each open pod. Watch the glistening streamer from a pasture thistle's heads as the wind passes, airy down full of minute flecks of fertility. See how goldenrod and asters add to the aerial cargo, and know a few of the meanings of infinity, numbers that make counting a meaningless mumble.

Hold in your hand the empty shell of a beetle or the shed husk of a locust. See the intricate parts, the ingenuity of life, now gone elsewhere, to the egg, to the pupa. Chitin, the horny substance much like your own fingernail,but only a few weeks ago a living thing, an entity. Watch a rabbit scurry, a crow fly overhead. Look at your own hand. Know that life is more than protoplasm, more than a fertile egg or ovum, that it is ultimate order in complexity.

Feel the earth underfoot. See the sky overhead. Listen to your own pulse, rhythmic as the tides. There are the answers, for those who will feel, and see, and listen."

Hal Borland
"Twelve Moons of the Year"
November 1970

Summer Solstice

Summer, then, is something earthy, in no sense celestial, and the occasion we call the summer solstice is one of those astronomical incidents that have no effect whatever on the growth of a corn crop or a carrot in the kitchen garden....So a passing wave to the summer solstice while we go about our summer business, as we have been doing almost a month now.
Hal Borland


Happy Summer Solstice to all! We've definitely been about the business of summer for awhile now at my house!  It's been a cool, rainy one this year, although in the past week it's suddenly turned hotter and there has been no rain for over a week now. Still, everything is unusually fresh and green and growing for this point in the year, and I am grateful for the outstanding weather we've had so far. It still hasn't turned unbearably hot or dry.

Several of the young trees in our yard are growing fast and absolutely flourishing this year. Our blueberries are fatter than usual and juicy.The lavender and rosemary plants have turned into small hedges, and I have fat buds forming on my stargazer lilies. The grass in my (barely cared for) backyard is lush and soft from all the rain, perfect for walking around barefoot.  Young fledgling birds crowd the feeders each day, and a big resident squirrel family crowd around underneath, and keep one eye peeled for Ginger. One of her biggest joys in life is charging out of the garage and sending all the squirrels racing up trees and fences in a big frantic burst! Of course, they stay nearby and wait for her to disappear back into her lair. Then they're right back to their constant grazing. We have the fattest squirrels in the neighborhood!

It's a good point in time on the great wheel of the year.  I'm loving every minute of it.