Winter Sunshine

by John Burroughs

John Burroughs (1837-1921) was an American naturalist and essayist. He played an important role in the evolution of the U. S. conservation movement. According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. By the turn of the century he had become a virtual cultural institution in his own right: the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own. His extraordinary popularity and popular visibility were sustained by a prolific stream of essay collections, beginning with Wake-Robin in 1871. In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs's special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." His most famous works include: Winter Sunshine (1875), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), The Writings of John Burroughs (1895) and Far and Near (1904).

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction

132 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1876

About the author

In 1837, naturalist John Burroughs was born on a farm in the Catskills. After teaching, and clerking in government, Burroughs returned to the Catskills, and devoted his life to writing and gardening. He knew Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir and Walt Whitman, writing the first biography of Whitman. Most of his 22 books are collected essays on nature and philosophy. In In The Light of Day (1900) he wrote about his views on religion: "If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go." "When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what is it that I really see there, I am constrained to say, 'There is no God' . . . " In his journal dated Feb. 18, 1910, he wrote: "Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all—that has been my religion." He died on his 83rd birthday. The John Burroughs Sanctuary can be found near West Park, N.Y., and his rustic cabin, Slabsides, has been preserved. D. 1921.

According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Henry David Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. By the turn of the 20th century he had become a virtual cultural institution[peacock term] in his own right: the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own. His extraordinary popularity and popular visibility were sustained by a prolific stream of essay collections, beginning with Wake-Robin in 1871.

In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs' special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." The result was a body of work whose perfect resonance with the tone of its cultural moment perhaps explains both its enormous popularity at that time, and its relative obscurity since.

Since his death in 1921, John Burroughs has been commemorated by the John Burroughs Association. The association maintains the John Burroughs Sanctuary in Esopus, New York, a 170 acre plot of land surrounding Slabsides, and awards a medal each year to "the author of a distinguished book of natural history".

Twelve U.S. schools have been named after Burroughs, including public elementary schools in Washington, DC and Minneapolis, Minnesota, public middle schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Los Angeles, California, a public high school in Burbank, California, and a private secondary school, John Burroughs School, in St. Louis, Missouri. Burroughs Mountain in Mount Rainier National Park is named in his honor.There was a medal named after John Burroughs and the John Burroughs Association publicly recognizes well-written and illustrated natural history publications. Each year the Burroughs medal is awarded to the author of a distinguished book of natural history, with the presentation made during the Association's annual meeting on the first Monday of April.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bur...

http://research.amnh.org/burroughs/

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect companion for a winter's day. People don't read this great native philosopher and naturalist nearly enough. He was a contemporary of John Muir, friend to Walt Whitman and rambler of American byways. Where we might walk along, see something and have a thought about it--if we're a 'deep thinker' we might have two-- Burroughs continues until he's captured a full skein-net of thoughts and impressions and ideas, wriggling and flashing in the sun.

I'm in awe of the freshness and suppleness of his writing, his ability to observe not only nature but people as well, to contain thoughts about the song of the wood-thrush and the weather of Washington D.C., that negro people favor Yankees not because they were their liberators but because of a preference for thrift and canniness. Whether it's better to walk with a cur-dog or a neighbor. (A dog. Dogs are natural pedestrians, while your neighbor is likely to be a little politician). You see the world differently after reading him.

This is not the edition I"m reading. I actually bought a third edition (1904) of the complete works at a sale in a second hand bookstore--I"d coveted them for years, an aqua bound, gilt-topped matched set... then the store, threatened with closure, offered a progressive sale, the more you bought the bigger the discount. I was THERE, buying my Burroughs. This is Volume 2. There's a complete volume about Whitman that I haven't even dipped into yet... but if you like Whitman, or Muir, or Thoreau, or Emerson, or the poems of Gary Snyder, you'll get Burroughs.

Just started. More later...
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Just the most wonderful book for an insomniac. Gentle, intelligent, deep, perfect reading in a quiet house. I've loved all the essays so far but 'The Fox,' and 'March Chronicles'--where his level of detail and ability to linger proved too much for my taste. But there's enough here to delight anyone who loves nature, or thinks they might if only they had a wise and comfortable sort to lead them on rambles and point out the mysteries and little details. The rest of the essays are sublime. The joys of walking enumerated in the 'Exhilarations of the Road' inspired me for weeks, and the description of English footpaths makes me want to go on a walking tour of England NOW. And his depictions of the experience of winter--'the Snow Walkers'--is probably the most quoted of all of Burroughs's work.

Now I'm in 'The Apple', a celebration of that ubiquitous fruit, which has completely changed my mind about that homely produce. Burroughs presents us with whole world of thought about who eats apples best and how and why, and an introduction to a time and practices before the supermarket and the heavy hybridization of fruit left us with three or four sanctioned varieties. If you're in luck. So many apples we don't even know about anymore. Love his opinions about apple-eating, the sensual phenomenon in the round.

I'm itching just to list the names. These are only the ones that occurred in New England near where Burroughs lived in 1875. So far we have: the pinnock, the wine apple, the lady apple, the "bonny-cheeked Newton pippin,: "the gentle, sharp-nosed gillyflower," the tallow apple, the swaar, the rambo, the seek-no-further. The northern spy, the greening, the black apple, the russet. the Talman sweet, the Vandevere, the King.

"The apple is indeed the fruit of youth. As we grow old we crave apples less. It is an ominous sign. When you are ashamed to be seeing eating them on the street; when you can carry them in your pocket and your hand not constantly find its way to them; when your neighbor has apples and you have none and you make no nocturnal visits to his orchard; when your lunch-basket is without them, and you can pass a winter's night by the fireside with no thought of the fruit at your elbow--then be assured you are no longer a boy, either in heart or in years."

I loved description of the 'apple hole'--in which they buried the apples they didn't have any more room for in their cellars, certain hardy varieties. How you dug it, how you lined it with straw, how you opened it again when the cellar ran out, and discovered that the earth had mellowed the taste to perfection. Reading this book has made me long for the profusion and variety in the sensual, incarnate world of a century ago.

more to come!
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Such a terrific companion. His keen eye misses nothing, and he's no fool, and yet his amiable character shines through again and again. His eye naturally goes to what's good in front of him, unless it is struck by something notably tragic or unpleasant. The last long chapter, nearly half the book, 'An October Abroad,' takes him to Europe in the 1870--and in his foreword, he lays out the argument that one should write immediately of one's experiences in a foreign country, as the longer one is there, the less sure of one's impressions one is. Until one can't write about it at all. "before he in any way becomes a part of that which he would observe and describe." Pico Iyer said something very similar about his book of Japan, "The Lady and The Monk." The longer he lived in that country, the less he understood it or felt he had any right to write about it. A new way of thinking about the travel book.

I loved the way he described the landscape in England and in France, his eye to the shape of the land, and the way it was cultivated, and his take on national character and habits is as keen as that of his observation of birds and trees. He adores the English, but also can see their peculiar specificity: "The American is certainly not the grumbler the Englishman is: he is more cosmopolitan and more conciliatory. The Englishman will not adapt himself to his surroundings; he is not the least bit an imitative animal; he will be nothing but an Englishman, and is out of place--an anomaly--in any country but his own. To understand hi, you must see him at home in the British island where he grew, where he belongs, where he has expressed himself and justified himself, and where his interior, unconscious characteristics are revealed. There he is quite a different creature from what he is abroad. There he is 'sweet,' but he sours the moment he steps off the island. In this country he is too generally arrogant, fault-finding and supercilious... "

On the other hand, when he gets to France, among many terrific observations (loved the stuff on public urination, which he handles with great amused delicacy), he describes the Parisian parks as opposed to the English ones, and draws a fascinating conclusion. "English royal parks and pleasure grounds... prevailing characer is pastoral--immense stretches of lawn, dotted with royal oak and alive with deer. But the Frenchman loves forests evidently, and nearly all his pleasure grounds about Paris are immense woods. The Bois de Boulogne, the forests of Vincennes, of St. Germain, of Bondy... What the animus of this love may not be so clear. It cannot be a love of solitude, for the French are characteristically a social and gregarious people. It cannot be the English poetical or Wordsworthian feeling for Nature, because French literature does not show this sense or this kind of perception. I am inclined to think thae forest is congenial to their love of form and their sharp perceptions, but more especially to tht kind of fear and wildness which they at times exhibit; for civilization has not quenched the primitive ardor and fierceness of the Frenchman yet, and it is to be hoped it never will. He is still more than half a wild man... Have not his descendants in this country-- the Canadian French--turned and lived with the Indians, and taken to wild, savage customs with more relish and genius than have any other people? " A far different take on the French than the stereotype!

And how sad he is to see the mournful devastation of the Irish landscape, which he understands as a manifestation of the oppression and tragedy of the Irish nation. Even his sea journeys are remarkably well observed--he was not a good sailor. Here's just his passage across the Irish sea: "Through wind and the darkness I threaded my way to the wharf, and in less than two hours afterwards was a most penitent voyager, and fitfully joining in that doleful gastriloquial chorus that so often goes up from the cabins of those Channel steamers." I've heard that myself on various ferries in my life, but what a way to describe the generalized barfing!

It is with a gentle regret that i finished this volume, but look forward to the next one, "Birds and Poets."

[Dennis Schvejda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading of John Burroughs' works continues with his second volume of collected essays, Winter Sunshine (1875). With our warming winters, note that according to Burroughs, Catskills maple sugaring would last into April, whereas this year it was done by the beginning of March. For birders and walkers, Burroughs is indeed a kindred spirit. He extols the virtues of walking, and laments the failure of most Americans to do so. I can't imagine his feelings today! Looking forward to the next volume, Birds and Poets.

FACT: Twelve U.S. schools have been named after Burroughs.

QUOTE: "If I say to my neighbor, 'Come with me, I have great wonders to show you,' he pricks up his ears and comes forthwith; but when I take him on the hills under the full blaze of the sun, or along the country road, our footsteps lighted by the moon and stars, and say to him, 'Behold, these are the wonders, these are the circuits of the gods, this we now tread is a morning star,' he feels defrauded, and as if I had played him a trick. And yet nothing less than dilatation and enthusiasm like this is the badge of the master walker."

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 3/4 stars

[Katja Labonté · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars. Contrary to the usual, there were few parts that I slogged through in this book—and that was simply because they were pieces from other volumes of his works that I had already read (some pretty recently). However, he had also added some extra information/stories to those extra peices. I didn’t agree with all his ideas, but I did enjoy most of his peices, and his writings on his journey through England and France was very interesting. There are many mentions of ale/wine, a scene where a man asks a girl for a kiss and she almost gives him one, and mention of public urinoirs. There were fewer nature descriptions than usual, but I very much enjoyed this book.

A Favourite Quote: “...the only person in the second-class compartment of the car with me, for a long distance, was an English youth eighteen or twenty years old, returning home to London after an absence of nearly a year[.] He was born in London and had spent nearly his whole life there, where his mother, a widow, then lived. He talked very freely with me, and told me his troubles, and plans, and hopes, as if we had long known each other. What especially struck me in the youth was a kind of sweetness and innocence—perhaps what some would call ‘greenness’—that at home I had associated only with country boys, and not even with them latterly. The smartness and knowingness and a certain hardness or keenness of our city youths,—there was no trace of it at all in this young Cockney.”
A Favourite Beautiful Quote: “...Westminster Abbey, which is a mellow, picturesque old place, the interior arrangement and architecture of which affects one like some ancient, dilapidated forest. Even the sunlight streaming through the dim windows, and falling athwart the misty air, was like the sunlight of a long-gone age. The very atmosphere was pensive, and filled the tall spaces like a memory and a dream.”
A Favourite Humorous Quote: “...I had at times a stupid satisfaction in seeing my two new London trunks belabor each other about my stateroom floor. Nearly every day they would break from their fastenings under my berth and start on a wild race for the opposite side of the room. Naturally enough, the little trunk would always get the start of the big one, but the big one followed close, and sometimes caught the little one in a very, uncomfortable manner. Once a knife and fork and a breakfast plate slipped off the sofa and joined in, the race; but, if not distanced, they got sadly the worst of it, especially the plate. But the carpet had the most reason to complain. Two or three turns sufficed to loosen it from the floor, when, shoved to one side, the two trunks took turns in butting it. ... The condition of certain picture-frames and vases and other frail articles among my effects, when I reached home, called to mind not very pleasantly this trunken frolic.”

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading several John Muir books I must admit I find Borroughs a bit "meh" and not as interesting - there's more of a country gentleman's diary over his writing (musings about the weather, little anecdotes about traps, shooting and hunting dogs play a large part in his interactions with nature) - and he's quite prejudiced, which at times is a bit funny read with modern eyes.