Some Quotations in "The Seasons in Estabrook Country"
Selected quotations by Ellery Channing
No track had worn the lone deserted road, save where the Fox had leapt from wall to wall.
Our round of walks is as regular as the seasons.
The rocks for age, gray with time, their soft rounded outlines wear away whole races of men.
Twilight, this is the time of chosen beauty.
Selected quotations by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Delicious summer stroll through the endless pastures.E[llery] was witty.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys.
Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.
I know of a whole district, Estabrook Farm.. where the apple trees strive.
The savage fertile houseless land...& ere we left it, the mists...were rising.
Selected quotations by Ernst Mayr
To preserve... unspoiled remnants of nature... has become a sacred obligation...
to permit the study of living nature. We are in desparate needto know more.Field work is the life blood of ecology.
The Estabrook Woods will form the center of a balanced ecological study area.
We humans...hold the fate of the species in our hands....It will require...massive education.
Selected quotations by Henry Thoreau
A man must attend to Nature closely for many years.
Ah, if I could put into words the music that I hear; that music that can bring tears to the eyes of marble statues!-- to which the very muscles of men are obedient.
All nature rejoices with one joy.
Consider the infinite promise of man.
Each town should have a primitive forest,...a common possession forever.
His uncle tried to dig through to the other side of the world.
How is any scientific discovery made? Why, the discoverer takes it into his head first.
How nakedly men appear to us-for the spiritual assists the natural eye.
I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep.
I saw that besides the axe in one hand, [Brooks Clark] had his shoes in the other,
filled with knurly apples and a dead robin.Live in each season as it passes...and resign yourself to the influences of each, inside cover.
My apple harvest! It is to glean after the husbandmen and the cows.
My hat...is about as good a botany box as I could have.
My steps are symbolical steps, and in all my walking I have not reached the top of the earth yet.
Nature is now a Bacchanal, drunk with the wines of a thousand plants and berries.
[Pines are] great harps on which the wind makes music.
Pray, farmers, keep some old woods to match the old deeds.
Road--that old Carlisle one--that leaves towns behind; where you can put off worldly thoughts.
Rocks which the druids might have raised-if they could.
Shall we hire a man to lecture on botany...while we permit others to cut...these trees.
So men lived and drank & passed away--like vermin. Their long life was mere duration
Some [springs] are known only to myself and friends, and I clean them out annually.
The creature...appeared again, crawling on its belly, fiercely seeking him.
The globe itself, here named pasture.
The heavens and earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.
The slave-ship is on its way, crowded with its dying hundreds.
The stupendous boughy branching elm, like vast thunderbolts.
These wild fruits, whether eaten or not, are a dessert for the imagination.
This is the era of the bobolink, now, when apple trees are ready to burst into bloom.
This old Carlisle road...road for walkers, for berry-pickers, and no more worldly travellers.
Though you may have sauntered near to heaven's gate, 48
We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe.
What shall this great wild tract..be called?...It is a paradise for walkers in the fall.
Selected other quotations,
[Estabrook] is a place not just of soil and rock and trees but also of the mind (E.O.Wilson).
Estabrook was a haunted land (John Hanson Mitchell).
I've chosen...violets for...scrutiny, much as...one might track a pride of lions (R.E.Cook).
Once we entered the gates of Easterbrook the jolting...became...delightful (Ellen Emerson)
Our beloved Estabrook Woods (Lawrence Monk Terry).
Ted, it's a bear!, I yelled (M. Rines).
The Country people retired at a great distance to the Woods (British officer at North Bridge).
The forest had put on an ermine robe (Wm. Brewster).
The woods are our greatest physical treasure. No other school can claim what we already have (N. Kraft).
Then they coasted till dark. Wasn't it a splendid afternoon's work? (Ellen Emerson).
There is no place on earth where the sense of place is better documented (John Hanson Mitchell).
There is something about the fleeting beauty of the morning...the light and the mist.... that I love (A.Bemis).