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.

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

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.

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

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.

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.

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.