11 July: Boreham on Nature at Mid-Winter

Fickle Lovers
Our Summertime passion for nature-study hibernates in Wintertime. It curls itself up and goes to sleep until brighter days return. At midsummer we all develop a sudden zeal for the vastness and the wonder of the out-of-doors. When the days are long, and the sunshine genial, we dream pensive and romantic dreams of a life that is never darkened by the shadows of civilisation.

Oh, to burst all links of habit and to wander far away;
On from island unto
island at the gateways of the day!
There the passions, cramped no longer,
shall have scope and breathing space;
I will take some savage woman, she
shall rear my dusky race!

And so on. Tennyson occupies some pages in making articulate the fevered aspirations of those who, in the sultry dogdays, cast languishing eyes on Nature and all her works. In December and January, we all fall madly in love with the blue sky, the mountain slopes, the pathless woods and the windswept beach. We are naturalists, every one.

Nature herself probably cherishes some very uncomfortable misgivings concerning the depth and sincerity of our devotion. She may reasonably suspect that we have been swept off our feet by a passing fancy for a pretty dress that she was wearing rather than by any profound attachments to her own person. For, after all, Nature is Nature all the world over and all the year round. Nature does not consist of azure skies and sunkissed waves and laughing streams and shady groves. On a dark night in midwinter, the beach on which we love, in the long and lazy days, to loiter, is swept by piercing winds, lashed by driving rain or wrapped in cold grey mists. In July the bush-tracks that fascinate us in January are a quagmire of sticky mud, while the dripping trees and sodden leaves present a picture of abject desolation. But, with Autumn past, our passion for Nature has evaporated. We like to sit by a roaring fire, to draw the blinds and to see as little of Nature as possible. And yet the conditions that prevail at midwinter are as much the handiwork of Nature as those over which we rave when summer skies are glowing.

Nature Can Be Savage As Well As Sweet
To be perfectly honest, many of us would have to confess that in reality, we are not Nature-worshippers at all. We merely like Nature in certain garbs and in certain moods. But Nature, to test the genuineness of our affection, declines to wear, in perpetuity, the dresses of which we are so enamoured, and she likes at times to show that she is capable of moods very different from those that we sometimes think so charming. "Nature," as John Stuart reminded us, "impales men; breaks them as if on the wheel; casts them to be devoured by wild beasts; burns them to death; crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyrs; starves them with hunger; freezes them with cold; poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations; has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Diocletian never surpassed." The fragrance of the violet is a phase of Nature; it is true but so are the fangs of the cobra. The trill of the lark is no more characteristic of Nature than the blooded beak of the vulture.

The true Nature worshipper must bow down, not only before the lissom bound of the hare, the gentle grace of a gazelle and the plumage of a bird of Paradise, but also before the frightful laugh of the hyena, the hungry stare of the lone wolf and the ghastly jaws of the alligator. These things are all the products of Nature and she is ashamed of none of them. No man can call himself a lover of Nature until he can assure her with absolute sincerity that he adores her, not because of a smile he has seen on her face, nor because of a dress she has occasionally worn, but always and everywhere and for her own sake alone.

The Frowns That Teach Us More Than Smiles
But, if such thoughts shock us, there are reflections that bring comfort in their train. For if, in contrast with our midsummer ecstasies, the thought of the sterner, grimmer side of Nature gives us pause, it is at least reassuring to notice that those who have observed her most closely have admired her most devotedly. The naturalist, knowing her best, loves her most. The scientist, having cultivated her most intimate acquaintance, and seen her in all her modes and moods, has, as a consequence become her passionate and devoted slave. Nature's ways are long ways and strange ways; and no man ever yet set himself to follow them without at some time finding his heart failing him for fear. Her dreary midwinters, her gleaming tusks and frightful fangs, cause the heart to stand still in cold dismay. But only for a moment. For no man ever yet pursued her paths to the end, determined to know all that there is to be known, without losing himself at last in admiration and in awe.

In one of his volumes of philosophy, Principal A. M. Fairbairn has a fine essay on "Man in the Hands of Nature." He sets himself to show that the natural forces that seem so ruthless and revolting, and that sometimes appear to operate so disastrously, are among man's most beneficent educators; he is compelled to study them in order that he may master them; and the more exhaustively he probes their secrets, the more complete is the authority that he attains.

Principal Fairbairn argues, along similar lines, that, from the apparently ferocious side of Nature, the farmer, the fisherman, the miner, the mechanic, and, indeed, most tradesmen, have learned the deeper subtleties of their crafts; and he reaches the conclusion that, "Nature must be faithful to herself if she is to do her best for Man. In her severity lies the education which is the last thing that Man can afford to lose." Nature is an infinitely bigger proposition than our superficial observations at midsummer would lead us to suppose. Her tireless industry provides her with a busy programme for midwinter; and it is those who reverently contemplate, not the part only, but the whole, who are most profoundly impressed by the wonder of her ways.

F W Boreham

Image: Nature's storms