John Burroughs on the book of nature

Crop circle (Milk Hill, Wiltshire, England: August 13, 2001).
Image credit: ¤ c i r c l e m a k e r s ¤

The book of nature is like a page written over or printed upon with different-sized characters and in many different languages, interlined and cross-lined, and with a great variety of marginal notes and references. There is coarse print and fine print; there are obscure signs and hieroglyphics. We all read the large type more or less appreciatively, but only the students and lovers of nature read the fine lines and the footnotes. It is a book which he reads best who goes most slowly or even tarries long by the way. He who runs may read some things. We may take in the general features of the sky, plain, and river from the express train, but only the pedestrian, the saunterer, with eyes in his head and love in his heart, turns every leaf and peruses every line. One man sees only the migrating water-fowls and the larger birds of the air; another sees the passing kinglets and hurrying warblers as well. For my part, my delight is to linger long over each page of this marvelous record, and to dwell fondly upon its most obscure text.
— John Burroughs in his essay “The Art of Seeing Things” available in The Art of Seeing Things: Essays by John Burroughs edited by Charlotte Zoë Walker, (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001), p. 9.