To Know After Absence The

When We Talk Of Flood Control, We Usually Think Of Dams And Deeper River Channels, To Impound The Waters Or Hurry Their Run-off. Yet Neither Is The Ultimate Solution, Simply Because Floods Are Caused By The Flow Of Water Downhill. If The Hills Are Wooded, That Flow Is Checked. If There Is A Swamp At The Foot Of The Hills, The Swamp Sponges Up Most Of The Excess Water, Restores Some Of It To The Underground Water Supply And Feeds The Remainder Slowly Into The Streams. Strip The Hills, Drain The Boglands, And You Create Flood Conditions Inevitably. Yet That Is What We Have Been Doing For Years.

Here And There One Sees The Blush Of Wild Rose Haws Or The Warmth Of Orange Fruit On The Bittersweet, And Back In The Woods Is The Occasional Twinkle Of Partridgeberries. But They Are The Gem Stones, The Rare Decorations Which Make The Grays, The Browns And The Greens Seem Even More Quiet, More Completely At Rest.

Consider The Wheelbarrow. It May Lack The Grace Of An Airplane, The Speed Of An Automobile, The Initial Capacity Of A Freight Car, But Its Humble Wheel Marked Out The Path Of What Civilization We Still Have.

Catch A Vista Of Maples In That Long Light And You See Autumn Glowing Through The Leaves.... The Promise Of Gold And Crimson Is There Among The Branches, Though As Yet It Is Achieved On Only A Stray Branch, An Impatient Limb Or An Occasional Small Tree Which Has Not Yet Learned To Time Its Changes.

In A Painful Time Of My Life I Went Often To A Wooded Hillside Where May Apples Grew By The Hundreds, And I Thought The Sourness Of Their Fruit Had A Symbolism For Me. Instead, I Was To Find Both Love And Happiness Soon Thereafter. So To Me [the May Apple] Is The Mandrake, The Love Symbol, Of The Old Dealers In Plant Restoratives.