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The Hush Comes With The Deepening Of Autumn; But It Comes Gradually. Our Ears Are Attuned To It, Day By Quieter Day. But Even Now, If One Awakens In The Deep Darkness Of The Small Hours, One Can Hear It, A Foretaste Of Winter Silence. It’s A Little Painful Now, And A Little Lonely Because It Is So Strange.

-Hal Borland

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The Hush Comes With

Hal Borland

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The Hush Comes With The Deepening Of Autumn; But It Comes Gradually. Our Ears Are Attuned To It, Day By Quieter Day. But Even Now, If One Awakens In The Deep Darkness Of The Small Hours, One Can Hear It, A Foretaste Of Winter Silence. It’s A Little Painful Now, And A Little Lonely Because It Is So Strange.

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March Is A Tomboy With Tousled Hair, A Mischievous Smile, Mud On Her Shoes And A Laugh In Her Voice.

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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!

Nothing In Nature Is As Simple As It Sometimes Seems When Reduced To Words.

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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.

No Winter Lasts Forever, No Spring Skips Its Turn. April Is A Promise That May Is Bound To Keep, And We Know It.

The Most Unhappy Thing About Conservation Is That It Is Never Permanent. Save A Priceless Woodland Or An Irreplaceable Mountain Today, And Tomorrow It Is Threatened From Another Quarter.

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.

Weekend Planning Is A Prime Time To Apply The Deathbed Priority Test: On Your Deathbed, Will You Wish You'd Spent More Prime Weekend Hours Grocery Shopping Or Walking In The Woods With Your Kids?

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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.

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Each New Season Grows From The Leftovers From The Past. That Is The Essence Of Change, And Change Is The Basic Law.

The Earth's Distances Invite The Eye. And As The Eye Reaches, So Must The Mind Stretch To Meet These New Horizons. I Challenge Anyone To Stand With Autumn On A Hilltop And Fail To See A New Expanse Not Only Around Him, But In Him, Too.

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Of All The Seasons, Autumn Offers The Most To Man And Requires The Least Of Him.

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