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To Know After Absence The Familiar Street And Road And Village And House Is To Know Again The Satisfaction Of Home.

-Hal Borland

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To Know After Absence

Hal Borland

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To Know After Absence The Familiar Street And Road And Village And House Is To Know Again The Satisfaction Of Home.

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Two Sounds Of Autumn Are Unmistakable...the Hurrying Rustle Of Crisp Leaves Blown Along The Street...by A Gusty Wind, And The Gabble Of A Flock Of Migrating Geese.

Summer Is A Promissory Note Signed In June, Its Long Days Spent And Gone Before You Know It, And Due To Be Repaid Next January.

I Grew Up In Those Years When The Old West Was Passing And The New West Was Emerging. It Was A Time When We Still Heard Echoes And Already Saw Shadows, On Moonlit Nights When The Coyotes Yapped On The Hilltops, And On Hot Summer Afternoons When Mirages Shimmered, Dust Devils Spun Across The Flats, And Towering Cumulus Clouds Sailed Like Galleons Across The Vast Blueness Of The Sky. Echoes Of Remembrance Of What Men Once Did There, And Visions Of What They Would Do Together.

There Is A Leisure About Walking, No Matter What Pace You Set, That Lets Down The Tension.

Man Is Not An Aquatic Animal, But From The Time We Stand In Youthful Wonder Beside A Spring Brook Till We Sit In Old Age And Watch The Endless Roll Of The Sea, We Feel A Strong Kinship With The Waters Of This World.

Strip The Hills, Drain The Boglands, And You Create Flood Conditions Inevitably. Yet That Is What We Have Been Doing For Years.

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.

The Owl, That Bird Of Onomatopoetic Name, Is A Repetitious Question Wrapped In Feathery Insulation Especially For Winter Delivery.

Man Is Wise And Constantly In Quest Of More Wisdom; But The Ultimate Wisdom, Which Deals With Beginnings, Remains Locked In A Seed.

All Man Has To Do Is Cooperate With The Big Forces, The Sun, The Rain, The Growing Urge. Seeds Sprout, Stems Grow, Leaves Spread In The Sunlight. Man Plants, Weeds, Cultivates And Harvests. It Sounds Simple, And It Is Simple, With The Simplicity Of Great Truths.

Some People Are Like Ants. Give Them A Warm Day And A Piece Of Ground And They Start Digging. There The Similarity Ends. Ants Keepon Digging. Most People Don't. They Establish Contact With The Soil, Absorb So Much Vernal Vigor That They Can't Stay In One Place, And Desert The Fork Or Spade To See How The Rhubarb Is Coming And Whether The Asparagus Is Yet In Sight.

Autumn Is The Eternal Corrective. It Is Ripeness And Color And A Time Of Maturity; But It Is Also Breadth, And Depth, And Distance. What Man Can Stand With Autumn On A Hilltop And Fail To See The Span Of His World And The Meaning Of The Rolling Hills That Reach To The Far Horizon?

For Anyone Who Lives In The Oak-and-maple Area Of New England, There Is A Perennial Temptation To Plunge Into A Purple Sea Of Adjectives About October.

To Know After Absence The Familiar Street And Road And Village And House Is To Know Again The Satisfaction Of Home.

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?

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

If The Voice Of The Brook Was Not The First Song Of Celebration, It Must Have Been At Least An Obbligato For That Event.

As I Stood And Watched The Mists Slowly Rising This Morning I Wondered What View Was More Beautiful Than This.

If You Ever Wondered Why Fishing Is Probably The Most Popular Sport In This Country, Watch That Boy Beside On The Water And You Will Learn. If You Are Really Perceptive You Will. For He Already Knows That Fishing Is Only One Part Fish.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Happiness And Love

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.

Green, The Color Of Growth, Or Surgent Life, Enwraps The Land. New Green, Still As Individual As The Plants Themselves. Cool Green, Which Will Merge As The Weeks Pass, The Summer Comes, Into A Canopy Of Shade Of Busy Chlorophyll.

Time After Time ... Today's Crisis Shrinks To Next Week's Footnote To A Newly Headline Disaster.

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.

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

There Are Two Seasonal Diversions That Can Ease The Bite Of Any Winter. One Is The January Thaw. The Other Is The Seed Catalogues.

For All His Learning Or Sophistication, Man Still Instinctively Reaches Towards That Force Beyond. Only Arrogance Can Deny Its Existence, And The Denial Falters In The Face Of Evidence On Every Hand. In Every Tuft Of Grass, In Every Bird, In Every Opening Bud, There It Is.

Summer Ends, And Autumn Comes, And He Who Would Have It Otherwise Would Have High Tide Always And A Full Moon Every Night.

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!

The Longer I Live And The More I Read, The More Certain I Become That The Real Poems About Spring Aren't Written On Paper. They Are Written In The Back Pasture And The Near Meadow, And They Are Issued In A New Revised Edition Every April.

A Frontier Is Never A Place; It Is A Time And A Way Of Life.

If You Would Know Strength And Patience, Welcome The Company Of Trees.

Catch A Vista Of Maples In That Long Light And You See Autumn Glowing Through The Leaves.... The Promise Of Gold And Crimson Is There Among The Branches, Though As Yet It Is Achieved On Only A Stray Branch, An Impatient Limb Or An Occasional Small Tree Which Has Not Yet Learned To Time Its Changes.

There It Is, Fog, Atmospheric Moisture Still Uncertain In Destination, Not Quite Weather And Not Altogether Mood, Yet Partaking Of Both.

A Root, A Stem, A Leaf, Some Means Of Capturing Sunlight And Air And Making Food - In Sum, A Plant. The Green Substance Of This Earth, The Chlorophyll, Is All Summed Up In The Plants. Without Them We Perish, All Of Us Who Are Flesh And Blood.

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

A Woodland In Full Color Is Awesome As A Forest Fire, In Magnitude At Least, But A Single Tree Is Like A Dancing Tongue Of Flame To Warm The Heart.

Time Has Its Own Dimensions, And Neither The Sun Nor The Clock Can Encompass Them All.

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

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.

Year's End Is Neither An End Nor A Beginning But A Going On, With All The Wisdom That Experience Can Instill In Us.

[the Christmas Story] Is As Simple As Was The Man Himself And His Teaching. Sa Simple As The Sermon On The Mount Which Still Remains As The Ultimate Basis ... Of The Belief Of Free Men Of Good Will Everywhere.

All Walking Is Discovery. On Foot We Take The Time To See Things Whole.

The Earth Turns, And The Seasons, And For All His Pride And Power Man Cannot Temper The Winds Or Change Their Course. They Are The Unseen Tides That Shape Our Days And Our Years.

April Is A Promise That May Is Bound To Keep.

Keeping Promises

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.

He Who Travels West Travels Not Only With The Sun But With History.

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

Nature Seems To Look After Her Own Only Up To A Certain Point; Beyond That They Are Supposed To Fend For Themselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Knowing Trees, I Understand The Meaning Of Patience. Knowing Grass, I Can Appreciate Persistence.

All Our Yesterdays Are Summarized In Our Now, And All The Tomorrows Are Ours To Shape.

The Ultimate Wisdom Which Deals With Beginnings, Remains Locked In A Seed. There It Lies, The Simplest Fact Of The Universe And At The Same Time The One Which Calls Faith Rather Than Reason.

October Is The Fallen Leaf, But It Is Also A Wider Horizon More Clearly Seen. It Is The Distant Hills Once More In Sight, And The Enduring Constellations Above Them Once Again.

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.

October Is The Fallen Leaf, But It Is Also A Wider Horizon More Clearly Seen.

You Can't Be Suspicious Of A Tree, Or Accuse A Bird Or A Squirrel Of Subversion Or Challenge The Ideology Of A Violet.

No Winter Lasts Forever; No Spring Skips Its Turn.

To See A Hillside White With Dogwood Bloom Is To Know A Particular Ecstasy Of Beauty, But To Walk The Gray Winter Woods And Find The Buds Which Will Resurrect That Beauty In Another May Is To Partake Of Continuity.

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