The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Beauty of the Changing Seasons More and more of my friends are fleeing to Florida or California in winter. And these friends continually write invitations....
...There are floods of golden beauty pushing up from below the rough stones and falling down from over them...
...Long before the steam engine and the airplane made rapid and easy travel possible, the English, the Germans and the Scandinavians dreamed of Italy...
...Why am I so stubborn...
...As for me, in very simple prose I hail our Northern life of change and chance, and all of the varied experiences of heat and cold and the liveliness which they inspire...
...The birds, too, entered into the spirit of the thing...
...One of our lawns is partly surrounded by a rough stone wall which maintains at an upper level my diminishing attempts to raise vegetables...
...What poetry they wrote about the lure of the sun and South...
...The trees have kept their deep-green color right through the summer...
...Goethe, Shelley, Ibsen...
...We have made closer observations, have been nearer to all of the growing, living, shining things...
...Am I wedded forever to my snow-shovel...
...The seasons have been late and cool and better watered than usual...
...And there is one sort of beauty which has been important to me all my life which has been especially fine this year...
...What I set out to say is that it is the changing of the seasons which makes life lively and good...
...The fact that I love winter is only a minor point...
...What fun we could have rolling on the wide winter beaches...
...Even now, in October, the great blossoms are bursting out as if it were spring...
...This thing is deep in our mores...
...The roses have bloomed on and on as if June were lasting forever...
...Spring has been richer, summer longer and autumn somehow deeper and lovelier...
...Here and there these billows of gold are broken by cliffs of pyrocantha with their masses of deep red berries, I lounge in a comfortable chair, reading books sent to me by the office...
...A good editor could probably find just as much poetry-and as good-about the changing beauties of the North as has been poured into the lap of the South by Goethe and Shelley and their fellow seekers-of-the-sun...
...Now we are having autumn, and what an autumn...
...Someone should publish an anthology of the poetry of our changing seasons...
...Winter is fun...
...Persons who have never savored our Northern season of snow and ice really don't know much about outdoor fun...
...As the day grows mellow and evening comes on, they produce a green-gold color which is the liveliest experience reported to the human eye...
...Kennst du das Land...
...At dusk, the sharp blue or purple shadows of tree-forms on pink snow are really something to rave about...
...It seems to me that this year the effect has been especially rich and rare...
...Florida and California are wonderful summer lands in wintertime...
...I only aim to explain myself, to give my friends a chance to understand why I do not join the procession...
...What I am in love with is the rhythm of the seasons which has furnished the framework of my life for all these long years...
...In the first place, when the trees are stripped of leaves and the earth is covered with snow, the world has a compelling beauty that is like nothing else in human experience...
...I am thinking of the effect produced by the low-slanted rays of the afternoon sun striking across the lawn...
...Anyone who has the opportunity to look on as the late afternoon sun adds golden liveliness to the deep green of the grass has enjoyed one of nature's most precious privileges...
...Winter is beauty...
...Everyone else escapes from the snow and rain and deep-diving thermometer...
...I recall that long ago I wrote about traveling that mile to the little red schoolhouse snugly tucked under a buffalo robe in a sleigh, with the horses prancing high...
...It seems to me that this is the most beautiful autumn which I have experienced...
...In mid-summer we planted, along this wall and above it, generous quantities of zinnias and marigolds-and now we are enjoying our reward...
...This year has been wonderful and I have been closer to the moods of nature than ever before...
...All of the flowering trees and shrubs have come later than usual and have remained bright and colorful for longer periods...
...In fine weather, we have been reading and writing and taking our afternoon drinks under the trees or out on the sunny lawn...
...And when birds fly over, creating a moving-picture of their lovely motion on a gleaming carpet of snow, they give me a thrill which I would not exchange for anything which Italy or Florida or California has to offer...
...Even in slow and clumsy coaches the 18th-century Northern European lumbered over the mountains in search of Italian peace and rest...
...What I started out to say is that the changing seasons of this temperate zone are what keep life lively and good...
...If we were to have eternal spring, they would go along with the gag and stay with us longer than usual and sing their mating songs when they usually have gone silent...
...I don't expect to change the habits of our race...
...But this is not really what I want to write about...
Vol. 41 • November 1958 • No. 40
