Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Interpretation
Naturalists develop their skills through innate talent and extensive observation over time.
This quote emphasizes that the craft of being a naturalist, much like that of a poet, combines both inherent ability and long-term dedication to observation and understanding of nature. It suggests that while some individuals may have a natural inclination towards these disciplines, the true mastery comes only through years of careful and deliberate study.
In practice
A speaker at a nature conservation event might use this quote to highlight the importance of both passion and diligence in studying the environment.
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.
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.
Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.
O frost bitten blossoms, That are unfolding your wings From out the envious black branches. Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine. The twigs conspire against you! Hear hem! They hold you from behind.
I love to smell flowers in the dark," she said. "You get hold of their soul then.
The whole of nature cries out at our mistreatment of her. If the planet were a patient, we would have treated her long ago.
I watched what method Nature might take, with intention of subduing the symptom by treading in her footsteps.
We all moan and groan about the loss of the quality of life through the destruction of our ecology, and yet every one of us, in our own little comfortable ways, contributes daily to that destruction. It's time now to awaken in each one of us the respect and attention our beloved Mother deserves.
It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.
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