250
avant-garde of solitude, searching for his ephemeral botanical idylls while the rest
of the world was distracted by wars, a Great Depression, DDT, and other follies.
“And let me never, never stray from thee!” wrote James Thomson in his The
Seasons, at the culmination of the Fall, with the disquieting onset of Winter, as foliage fell fast and seemingly forever upon the face of the earth.
36
It was the same cry
of ultimate destruction described in memorable conversation between the leaves of
a great oak tree in Bambi, by Felix Salten, as those out at the very tip of a branch, in
the midst of a howling, late Autumn wind, bid farewell to one another.
37
That life
and death form the most lasting of all unions remains our most telling and inexplicable of paradoxes: We simply cannot plumb its meaning though we feel everything
(Fig. 26.4).
36 James Thomson, The Seasons, To Which Is Prefixed the Life of the Author, by P. Murdoch, Wilkie
and Robinson, London, 1811, p. 184.
37 See Bambi: A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten, translated by Whittaker Chambers, Illustrated
by Kurt Weise, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1931, Chapter VIII, pp. 86–89.
Fig. 26.4 Papilio multicaudatus feeding in the Southern Rockies on Lilium lancifolium. (Photo ©
M.C. Tobias)
26 Botanical Equations for Paradox
avant-garde of solitude, searching for his ephemeral botanical idylls while the rest
of the world was distracted by wars, a Great Depression, DDT, and other follies.
“And let me never, never stray from thee!” wrote James Thomson in his The
Seasons, at the culmination of the Fall, with the disquieting onset of Winter, as foliage fell fast and seemingly forever upon the face of the earth.
36
It was the same cry
of ultimate destruction described in memorable conversation between the leaves of
a great oak tree in Bambi, by Felix Salten, as those out at the very tip of a branch, in
the midst of a howling, late Autumn wind, bid farewell to one another.
37
That life
and death form the most lasting of all unions remains our most telling and inexplicable of paradoxes: We simply cannot plumb its meaning though we feel everything
(Fig. 26.4).
36 James Thomson, The Seasons, To Which Is Prefixed the Life of the Author, by P. Murdoch, Wilkie
and Robinson, London, 1811, p. 184.
37 See Bambi: A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten, translated by Whittaker Chambers, Illustrated
by Kurt Weise, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1931, Chapter VIII, pp. 86–89.
Fig. 26.4 Papilio multicaudatus feeding in the Southern Rockies on Lilium lancifolium. (Photo ©
M.C. Tobias)
26 Botanical Equations for Paradox