A frontier is never a place; it is a time and a way of life. Hal Borland More Quotes by Hal Borland More Quotes From Hal Borland You fight dandelions all weekend, and late Monday afternoon there they are, pert as all get out, in full and gorgeous bloom, pretty as can be, thriving as only dandelions can in the face of adversity. Hal Borland weed nature monday Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night. Hal Borland autumn moon summer A snowdrift is a beautiful thing - if it doesn't lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination. Hal Borland block beautiful lying There are some things, but not too many, toward which the countryman knows he must be properly respectful if he would avoid pain, sickness and injury. Nature is neither punitive nor solicitous, but she has thorns and fangs as wells as bowers and grassy banks. Hal Borland thorns pain nature When we talk of flood control, we usually think of dams and deeper river channels, to impound the waters or hurry their run-off. Yet neither is the ultimate solution, simply because floods are caused by the flow of water downhill. If the hills are wooded, that flow is checked. If there is a swamp at the foot of the hills, the swamp sponges up most of the excess water, restores some of it to the underground water supply and feeds the remainder slowly into the streams. Strip the hills, drain the boglands, and you create flood conditions inevitably. Yet that is what we have been doing for years. Hal Borland rivers running thinking There are no idealists in the plant world and no compassion. The rose and the morning glory know no mercy. Bindweed, the morning glory, will quickly choke its competitors to death, and the fencerow rose will just as quietly crowd out any other plant that tried to share its roothold. Idealism and mercy are human terms and human concepts. Hal Borland nature compassion morning He who walks may see and understand. You can study all America from one hilltop, if your eyes are open and your mind is willing to reach. But first you must walk to that hill. Hal Borland eye mind america 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. Hal Borland airplane humble work For the Fall of the year is more than three months bounded by an equinox and a solstice. It is a summing up without the finality of year's end. Hal Borland autumn years fall There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them. I have but to touch the wind to know these things. Hal Borland distance time men If the voice of the brook was not the first song of celebration, it must have been at least an obbligato for that event. Hal Borland voice rivers song Time has its own dimensions, and neither the sun nor the clock can encompass them all. Hal Borland dimensions sun time Listen to it, and you are hearing the mighty currents of the air rushing down the latitudes of the earth, currents from the Mackenzie and the Athabasca and the Saskatchewan, and from the prairies and the white Tundra. It is a homeless wind, forever on the move. Hal Borland air wind moving No Winter lasts forever, no Spring skips its turn. April is a promise that May is bound to keep, and we know it. Hal Borland garden winter spring Of all the everyday plants of the earth, grass is the least pretentious and the most important to mankind. It clothes the earth is an unmistakable way. Directly or indirectly it provides the bulk of man's food, his meat, his bread, every scrap of his cereal diet. Without grass we would all starve, we and all our animals. And what a dismal place this world would be! Hal Borland clothes animal men Here and there one sees the blush of wild rose haws or the warmth of orange fruit on the bittersweet, and back in the woods is the occasional twinkle of partridgeberries. But they are the gem stones, the rare decorations which make the grays, the browns and the greens seem even more quiet, more completely at rest. Hal Borland wild-roses orange here-and-there The owl, that bird of onomatopoetic name, is a repetitious question wrapped in feathery insulation especially for Winter delivery. Hal Borland names winter bird Any river is really the summation of a whole valley. It shapes not only the land but the life and even the culture of that valley. To think of any river as nothing but water is to ignore the greater part of it. Hal Borland rain rivers thinking 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. Hal Borland happiness-and-love apples symbolism He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history. Hal Borland historical west sun
