Rambles with John Burroughs

by R. J. H. De Loach

All of this I think John Burroughs has realized if ever any man has realized it. Sitting in an old barn about a hundred yards from Woodchuck Lodge, his summer home, in his home-made chair, and for his writing desk an old chicken coop with one board-covered side, and a large piece of heavy manila paper covering this, is the way I found him at work. In front of the opening or barn door was The Old Clump, the mountain of his boyhood days to inspire, to uplift him. Even the summer home in which he lives savors too much of the conventional. To be absolutely free is a consummation devoutly to be sought for—and this he finds, experiences, cherishes. Writing at seventy-five? Yes, thinking and writing,—but writing, thinking and living best when living simplest. With his dark brown wash-suit and cap on, he is not afraid to sit or roll on mother earth nor to climb a tree if necessary. Before breakfast we go to gather some apples for the table, and nothing would do but I should hold the basket while he mounted the tree and picked the apples. Then over the brow of the hill after breakfast to get potatoes for dinner—but to stop long enough at the old barn for a snap-shot of him and to learn of the junco's nest built in the hay only six feet from his chicken-coop desk. The bird as busy in her work rearing her young as Burroughs writing his essays, and the two blend beautifully in the picturesque barn. This is the only record, he tells me, of a junco nesting under human habitation, so I get two very good pictures of the bird entering the nest.

Only a few weeks before, he had remodeled Woodchuck Lodge and put a rustic porch on it. His niece, referring to Mr. Burroughs during the time, says: "I never saw a happier person than Uncle John was then. He would work all day and rest well at night, and was in a happy mood all the time. If there ever was such a thing as a happy person on earth, I think he was then." And nothing delights him more now than to point out the different pieces of furniture he made with his own hands. Every piece of it is up to the standard of the Craftsman, and the buffet and dining table quite tasty, while the rustic reading table and cot showed considerable ingenuity in the adaptation of odd-shaped pieces of bark covered wood to man's needs. All in all, it was an excellent piece of work, and far more picturesque than any factory work I ever saw.

This man of whom we write is in many respects a wonderful man. His first dash into literature was purely and simply Transcendentalism, a kind of a mixture of Emersonian philosophy and metaphysics, and is by no means poor literature, but perhaps far too complicated or vague for the mental fibre of its author. So he starts from the first again and writes about the common things of the farm and forest. "It was mainly to break the spell of Emerson's influence," he says, "and get upon ground of my own that I took to writing upon out-door themes." The selection has been a happy one and has probably done much to recast, as it were, the author of Expression—to reduce his denominator, if not increase the numerator. Thinking and writing on every-day themes has induced him to almost get out and live with the animals and plants. It has very largely been responsible for the growth of his sane, wholesome mind housed in such a healthy body. Under no other conditions it seems to me could he have given to the world "so much of sane thinking, cool judgment, dispassionate reasoning, so many evidences of a calm outlook upon life and the world." In fact, could he have experienced these things in conventional life? His philosophy is well ripened and at the same time wonderfully human and appreciative. Each new book from his pen shows in every way the intense enthusiasm of the author for the great study that he has made his life work.

BURROUGHS IN THE OLD BARN IN WHICH HE DOES HIS WRITING

We may ask, how does he spend his time in this country home when not actually engaged in writing? Going about from farm to farm talking to the common people about the seasons, the crops, and perhaps now and then advising with them on some phase of farm work, such as curing hay or mowing grain. Sometimes he goes to the mountains and under some ledge of rocks he will be found studying the nature of the geological formation of the earth. A small angled stone in his hand, he picks into the side of the stone wall and makes some interesting discovery. While thus engaged, he hears in the hemlock forest behind him lively bird notes, and suddenly turning gets a glimpse of the author when for the first time in that particular woods he sees the warbling or white-eyed vireo. On his return he follows up a stone fence for several hundred feet to get a little study of the chipmunk, or to locate a new flower that he happens not to have seen this season. He knows where it ought to be, but has not located it yet. With the growth, color, and size of a particular species he associates its environment and perhaps learns something new about this too before he reaches home again. Wherever his fancy leads him, whether it be to the trout stream or the mountain side, he shows a wonderful vigor, keen vision, and alert attention to the life about him that is apparent in all his writings. I find no other writer on Natural History themes quite up to Burroughs in honesty and keenness of observation, delicacy of sentiment, and eloquent simplicity of style.

For the past few years, Burroughs' mind has turned to philosophy rather than Nature study—the causes of things rather than things. This is to be expected of one who has given the mind opportunity for consecutive development for the past half century. He has always been a philosopher, but only his two last volumes of essays—Ways of Nature, and Leaf and Tendril show the deeper currents in his life. It is in these that we see him much concerned about the constitution of nature and the history of creation. His mind has ripened to this, and it is surprising to know how versatile he is on the structure of organic beings, and the geological formation of the earth's crust, and the evolution of life. Perhaps no nature writer, ancient or modern, is so largely responsible for the universal interest in the nature study movement at the present time, as John Burroughs. How many he leads to an appreciation of nature! and how many personal friends he has among all classes of people! Then too his writings have recently found their way to the schools—thanks to Miss Burt. With all his love for the freedom of the woods and mountains, he is a sociable being, and is thereby subject to many interruptions from friends. But despite this he has accomplished far more in the way of substantial writing than the average author, and recently said that if he keeps up his present rate he will soon have his shelves filled with his own writings. One thing is quite conspicuous about his relation to other people—His friends are the warmest of friends, and whenever I have been with him, he has had a good deal to say about them. In his Indoor Studies, he confesses that he is too conscious of persons. "I feel them too much, defer to them too much, and try too hard to adapt myself to them." But there is a certain influence he has felt from friends that has, in all probability, given him a calmer and more beautiful outlook upon the world. Often he is invited to dine with the rich, but always reluctantly accepts, and I think the best part of it to him is his return to the simple life. He says: "I am bound to praise the simple life, because I have lived it and found it good. When I depart from it, evil results follow. I love a small house, plain clothes, simple living. How free one feels, how good the elements taste, how close one gets to them, how they fit one's body and one's soul!"

II

Not many years after I had known Mr. Burroughs personally, it occurred to me to look up his literary record and see just how his years have been spent and associate with this the fruit of his labors. The long jump from Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person (1867), his first book to Leaf and Tendril (1908), his last volume, marks a wonderful change in interest and study. But the record is made, the books stand for themselves, and we would not have it otherwise. This is the way of nature and of her best interpreter, John Burroughs, whose nature books almost have the fresh and sweet flavor of wild strawberries, and tell in unmistakable language the author's love for and knowledge of the out-door world in which he has spent so much of his life. Reared in the country, he knows country life and country people and loves them. In his early years, his mind must have been very susceptible to impressions of truthful observations, which formed a setting for his after work. Of this I think he is still conscious, judging from the advice he gives teachers in a copy of the Pennsylvania School Journal I happen to have before me. "I confess, I am a little skeptical about the good of any direct attempt to teach children to 'see nature.' The question with me would be rather how to treat them or lead them so that they would not lose the love of nature which as children, they already have. Every girl and every boy up to a certain age loves nature and has a quick eye for the curious and interesting things in the fields and woods. But as they grow older and the worldly habit of mind grows upon them, they lose this love; this interest in nature becomes only so much inert matter to them. The boy may keep up his love of fishing and of sport, and thus keep in touch with certain phases of nature, but the girl gradually loses all interest in out-door things.

"If I were a teacher I would make excursions into the country with my children; we would picnic together under the trees, and I would contrive to give them a little live botany. They should see how much a flower meant to me. What we find out ourselves tastes so good! I would as far as possible let the child be his own teacher. The spirit of inquiry—awaken that in him if you can—if you cannot, the case is about hopeless.