The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh by Kathryn Aalto

Author:Kathryn Aalto
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2015-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

A stream in the forest

In other ways, water is a source for quiet reflection and a metaphor for the passing of time. In The House at Pooh Corner, Milne opens chapter six, “In Which Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In,” with a lovely description of water flowing from a sprite rivulet to a mature river:

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.

The stepping stones where Pooh sits are in a stream near heather, in a place reminiscent of Wrens Warren Valley. In the summer when water runs shallow, stones are exposed and beckon children to leap upon them. Milne saw the spirit and mind of a child in the way water moved. We see this tenderness in chapter ten of Winnie-the-Pooh, “In Which Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party, and We Say Good-bye.”

One day when the sun had come back over the Forest, bringing with it the scent of May, and all the streams of the Forest were tinkling happily to find themselves their own pretty shape again, and the little pools lay dreaming of the life they had seen and the big things they had done, and in the warmth and quiet of the Forest the cuckoo was trying over his voice carefully and listening to see if he liked it, and wood-pigeons were complaining gently to themselves in their lazy comfortable way that it was the other fellow’s fault, but it didn’t matter much.

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