Burroughs: Nature Near Home
The essays of American naturalist John Burroughs have greatly encouraged me in my observations of nature in the backyard. These passages from the “bard of the bird-feeder” reminded me that I can find nature right where I am. There is so much to observe once I really look!
After long experience I am convinced that the best place to study nature is at one’s own home,—on the farm, in the mountains, on the plains, by the sea,—no matter where that may be. One has it all about him then. The seasons bring to his door the great revolving cycle of wild life, floral and fauna, and he need miss no part of the show.
At home one should see and hear with more fondness and sympathy. Nature should touch him a little more closely there than anywhere else. He is better attuned to it than to strange scenes . . . The wild creatures about you become known to you as they cannot be known to a passerby. The traveler sees little of Nature that is revealed to the home-stayer. You will find she has made her home where you have made yours, and intimacy with her there becomes easy. Familiarity with things about one should not dull the edge of curiosity or interest. The walk you take today through the fields and woods, or along the riverbank, is the walk you should take tomorrow, and next day, and next. What you miss once, you will hit upon next time.
—John Burroughs, “Nature Near Home”
One has only to sit down in the woods or the fields, or by the shore of the river or the lake, and nearly everything of interest will come round to him,—the birds, the animals, the insects; and presently, after his eye has got accustomed to the place, and to the light and shade, he will probably see some plant or flower that he has sought in vain, and that is a pleasant surprise to him. So, on a large scale, the student and lover of nature has this advantage over people who gad up and down the world, seeking some novelty or excitement; he has only to stay at home and see the procession pass. The great globe swings around to him like a revolving showcase; the change of the seasons is like the passage of strange and new countries; the zones of the earth, with all their beauties and marvels, pass one’s door, and linger long in the passing. What a voyage is this we make without leaving for a night our own fireside!
. . . .
[T]he typical spring and summer and autumn days, of all shades and complexions—one cannot afford to miss any of them; and when looked out upon from one’s own spot of earth, how much more beautiful and significant they are! Nature comes home to one most when he is at home; the stranger and traveller finds her a stranger and traveller also. One’s own landscape comes in time to be a sort of outlying part of himself; he has sowed himself broadcast upon it, and it reflects his own moods and feelings; he is sensitive to the verge of the horizon: cut those trees, and he bleeds; mar those hills, and he suffers. How has the farmer planted himself in his fields; builded himself into his stone walls, and evoked the sympathy of the hills by his struggle! This home feeling, this domestication of nature, is important to the observer. This is the bird-lime with which he catches the bird; this is the private door that admits him behind the scenes.
—John Burroughs, “A Sharp Lookout”
Painting: Rest in the Cool and Shady Woods. Edmund George Warren.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011