He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history.

As I stood and watched the mists slowly rising this morning I wondered what view was more beautiful than this.

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.

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.

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.

If the voice of the brook was not the first song of celebration, it must have been at least an obbligato for that event.

There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues.