He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.
Interpretation
Appreciating nature's beauty in all seasons enriches life.
John Burroughs suggests that those who find beauty in the summer should also seek and appreciate the wonder of winter. This quote emphasizes that each season has its unique charm and significance, encouraging us to embrace the changing aspects of nature and to develop a deeper appreciation for the world around us throughout the year.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a nature appreciation workshop to inspire participants.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Sometimes I feel like Iβm actually on the wrong planet. Itβs great when Iβm in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think, βWhat the hell am I doing here?
Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
The garden is a living, pulsing, singing, scratching, warring, erotic, and generally rowdy thing. I may find peace in its midst, but I regard it as a whole with many parts, a plural organism.
ALL things in Nature work silently. They come into being and possess nothing. They fulfil their functions and make no claim.
If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.
A giraffe is so much a lady that one refrains from thinking of her legs, but remembers her as floating over the plains in long garb, draperies of morning mist her mirage.
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