June 24 If a man is ever going to admit that he belongs to the earth, not the other way round,it probably will be in late June.Then it is that life surpasses man’s affairs with incredible urgency and outreaches him in every direction.Even the farmer, on whom we all depend for the substance of existence,knows then that the best he can do is cooperate with wind and weather, soil and seed.The incalculable energy of chlorophyll, the green leaf itself, dominates the earth,and the root in the soil is the inescapable fact. Even the roadside weed ignores man’s legislation.

 

The urgency is everywhere. Grass blankets the earth, reaching for the sun, spreads its roots,flowers and comes to seed. The forest widens its canopy, strengthens its boles, nurtures its seedlings, ripens its perpetuating nuts. The birds nest and hatch their fledglings. The beetle and the bee are busy at the grassrootand the blossom, and the butterfly lays eggs that will hatch and crawl and eat and pupate and take to the air once more. Fish spawn and meadow voles harvest the wild meadows, and owls and foxes feed their young. Dragonflies and swallows and nighthawks seine the air where the minute winged creatures flit out their minute life spans.

 

And man, who glibly calls the earth his own, neither powers the leaf nor energizes the fragile wing.Man participates, but his dominance is limited. It is the urgency of life, or growth, that rules.Late June and early Summer are the ultimate, unarguable proof.