Reflections of Nature #4

Apologies to the Writer of "Clouds"’
I’ve looked at squirrels
from both sides now
From ears to tail
and still somehow,
It’s their bad habits I don’t like,
I do wish they would take a hike!

Reciprocity
I pressed my ear upon the Earth and heard,
The murmur of its softly throbbing heart,
When by and by I knew it for my own,
And by and by my own the Earth’s in turn.
—George Wons

The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world. . . I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the treetops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men. I am in love with this world. . . I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting if its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
—John Burroughs

The woods hold not such another gem as the nest of the hummingbird.
—John Burroughs

Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested.
—Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac

Reflections of Nature #3

Because of the beauty, power of flight, and complete metamorphosis found in butterflies and moths, these insects frequently are found in Native American myths. We can call attention to the belief held by the Blackfeet that dreams are brought to us in sleep by a butterfly. Their sign for a butterfly was a design roughly in the shape of a maltese cross with one arm horizontal and the other vertical. This sign was painted on a lodge to indicate that the style and method of painting the lodge were taught to the lodge owner in a dream. It was also the custom for a Blackfoot woman to embroider the sign of a butterfly on a small piece of buckskin and tie this in her baby’s hair when she wishes it to go to sleep. At the same time, she sings to the child a lullaby in which the butterfly is asked to come flying about and put the child to sleep. The Blackfeet stated that the butterfly is soft and pretty and moves gently and that if you look at it for a long time you will go to sleep.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
—Joseph Addison, The Spectator, 1712

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
—Henry David Thoreau

Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them.
—Martin H. Fischer

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
—Author Unknown

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
—Jacques Deval

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? —Rose F. Kennedy

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
—Chinese Proverb

Beware those who promise to build a bridge where there is no river....—Egan Billings

Reflections of Nature #2

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

—Blaise Pascal

The Eclipse I stood out in the open cold To see the essence of the eclipse Which was its perfect darkness. I stood in the cold on the porch And could not think of anything so perfect As mans hope of light in the face of darkness.

—Richard Eberhart

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church, I keep it staying at Home— With a bobolink for a Chorister, And an Orchard, for a Dome.

—Emily Dickinson

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

—Wendell Berry

I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me—I am happy.

—Hamlin Garland, McClure’s, February 1899

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. —Anne Frank

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.—Anne Frank

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

—Henry David Thoreau

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. —Rabindranath

TagoreThe goal of life is living in agreement with nature.—Zeno

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. —Frank Lloyd Wright

Reflections of Nature #1

“A human being is part of a whole— called by us the “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion, to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” —Albert Einstein

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains. —Diane Ackerman
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
—Ansel Adams

Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool. —Mary Catherine Bateson

“The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” —Henry Beston

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. —Chief Seattle
To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower,Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, An eternity in an hour. —William Blake