Speaking for Nature by Paul Brooks

Author:Paul Brooks [Paul Brooks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

For Brewster, the pleasure of a river trip was enhanced by the presence of a companion — of the right sort. For years he and his old friend Dan French never missed their “annual day” on the river, rain or shine. And then there was that extraordinarily attractive and gifted young man, the Secretary of Harvard University, Frank Bolles. Bolles had studied law to gratify his father, but he preferred journalism, and put in some years on a Boston paper before going to work for President Eliot, in an office that could have been deadly dull. Not so for Bolles. The “tall, rugged man with bearded face and friendly eyes” became one of the most popular men in Harvard Yard, a personal friend and adviser to the students, a link with the graduates; the spark plug of every new enterprise. All of which left him little time — in contrast to his friend Will Brewster — to enjoy his passion for the outdoors. But summer vacations he spent roaming the wilderness near New Hampshire’s Mt. Chocorua; weekends and holidays he made a dash for the country around Cambridge. After each of these short excursions he would record his impressions while they were still vivid. Soon he was writing them up for the Boston Post, where they caught the eye of James Russell Lowell. As a result of Lowell’s encouragement, La nd of the Lingering Snow: Chronicles of a Stroller in New England from January to June, was published in 1891, and its companion volume, At the North of Bearcamp Water, two years later. Both as a naturalist and as a writer, Bolles was wholly self-taught, which may explain in part the freshness and almost naive enthusiasm with which he records even the smallest outdoor adventure. No more than Brewster does he moralize, or concern himself principally with his own response. “Instead of suggesting the sentiments which a given scene called up in him,” wrote a friend, “he paints the scene and leaves the reader to put in the sentiments.” True, yet some of his best passages give a sense of excitement, of personal involvement in the life about him, which enable the reader to share his experiences as no merely factual description ever could. When he and Brewster were on the river together, they would occasionally record the same event in their journals. Take for example an encounter with a great horned owl, on an early spring camping trip. Brewster sets the scene:

It was very dark when we reached Fairhaven Cliff and Bolles began hooting like a Barred Owl. I followed with a feeble imitation of the Great-horned Owl which, after a few moments and to my infinite surprise, was answered by Bubo himself from the tall pines on the west bank of the river. We stopped paddling, of course, and I continued the conversation in the best Owl language that I could command. Bubo was prompt in his responses and presently appeared directly over our heads — a great

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