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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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. ”

“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.”

“You cn't be suspicious of a tree, accuse a bird or squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet”

“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.”

“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.”

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”

“Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”