Quotes About Nature

Maybe under the bridge at Deception Pass.

Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not; rather find strength in what remains behind. —WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

How could a place be as alive as Alaska, as beautiful and cruel? No. It wasn't Alaska's fault. It was hers. Leni was Matthew's second mistake.

Light, and work; that was summer in Alaska.

gave off an eerie radiance that stained the trees and silvered the road.

She got out of the bus and walked alone through town, past a man sitting Indian-style on the side of the road, with a goose on his lap. She heard him say, No way Matilda, to the bird as she hurried past the dirty tent that housed the fishing-carter service". The Great Alone

When she was little, Elizabeth had often cried when her mama's favorite flowers wilted and died. Now, though, as a woman full grown, she understood the importance of rest. It was the very bleakness of winter that made spring possible.

damage the earth is to damage your children. —WENDELL BERRY, FARMER AND POET

Snow is a poor substitute for soil

The air was electric with sounds—bugs, birds, monkeys—and the sky was the color of fresh blood. A tangerine sun played hide-and-seek through the trees.

the moss and grass had begun to overtake this part of the yard, so her chair sat unsteadily on the uneven surface.

the trees were still dressed in their party colors

My heartbeat turns into wind pounding on the glass.

But the forest knew no difference when it came to race, religion, or gender; it smiled and frowned upon all of them in equal measure,

But the forest knew no difference when it came to race, religion, or gender; it smiled and frowned upon all of them in equal measure, sometimes providing protection, sometimes peril. "By the grace of God, may we all be vanishing stars.

farming takes root in you and crowds out other endeavors, makes them seem paltry. Your acres become a world. And maybe you realize that it is beyond those acres or in your distant past, back in the realm of TiVo and cubicles, of take-out food and central heat and air, in that country where discomfort has nearly disappeared, that you were deprived. Deprived of the pleasure of desire, of effort and difficulty and meaningful accomplishment.

Just a tick past fruition sits decay.

Grow it right, and you feel insanely rich, no matter what you own.

The natural order of things is immutable. Seed, flower, fruit, decline, death, decay. Seed. Each stage has its own drama and its own particular beauty. If you can see it, you can accept it. The parts are graceful, and so is the whole.

When we walked the mowed margins of the field in the evenings, a school of black crickets sprang ahead of us like dolphins in front of a ship.

I wish every woman could have as a lover at some point in her life a man who never smoked or drank too much or became jaded from kissing too many girls or looking at porn, someone with the gracious muscles that come from honest work and not from the gym, someone unashamed of the animal side of human nature.

We drove out of New Paltz heading due north. Squeezed into my tiny hatchback, among our boxes and bags, were my dog, Nico, the hens, and the humming hive of bees, its openings covered over with tape. The dog eyed the hive, the chickens eyed the dog, and if the bees weren't nervous they were the only ones.

Farming, I discovered, is a great and ongoing war. The farmers are continually fighting to keep nature behind the hedgerow, and nature is continually fighting to overtake the field.

Everything ends. The natural order of things is immutable. Seed, flower, fruit, decline, death, decay. Seed. Each stage has its own drama and its own particular beauty. If you can see it, you can accept it. The parts are graceful, and so is the whole.