“Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies!” says the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins. “O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the quivering citadels there! The dim woods quick with diamond wells; the elf-eyes!”
Articles from July 2019
Infrared all-sky survey by IRAS (Public Domain)
Excerpt from the "Book of the Images of the Fixed Stars," 15th C., Persia (Public Domain)
Our reflection in the stars
Thoreau tells us that when he learned the Indian names for things he began to see them in a new way. When he asked his Indian guide why a certain lake in Maine was called Sebamook, the guide replied: “Like as here is a place, and there is a place, and you take water from there and fill this, and it stays here: that is Sebamook.” Thoreau compiled a glossary of Indian names and their meanings. It was like a map of the Maine woods. It was a natural history. The Indian names of things reminded Thoreau that intelligence flowed in channels other than his own.
Canada mayflower • Photo by Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Public Domain)
The earth’s greening
There comes a moment in New England woodlands in the spring when up through last season’s brown leaves and matted pine needles comes the first green. Like a carpet unrolled overnight, suddenly the greedy leaves of the Canada mayflower are everywhere.