Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. Hal Borland More Quotes by Hal Borland More Quotes From Hal Borland 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 autumnmoonsummer 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 blockbeautifullying 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 thornspainnature 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 riversrunningthinking 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 naturecompassionmorning 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 eyemindamerica 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 airplanehumblework 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 autumnyearsfall 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 distancetimemen 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 voiceriverssong Time has its own dimensions, and neither the sun nor the clock can encompass them all. Hal Borland dimensionssuntime 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 airwindmoving 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 gardenwinterspring 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 clothesanimalmen 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-rosesorangehere-and-there A frontier is never a place; it is a time and a way of life. Hal Borland frontiersway The owl, that bird of onomatopoetic name, is a repetitious question wrapped in feathery insulation especially for Winter delivery. Hal Borland nameswinterbird 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 rainriversthinking 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-loveapplessymbolism He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history. Hal Borland historicalwestsun
