What do you think?
Rate this book
Hal Borland's: Twelve Moons of the Year
For 37-plus years, celebrated nature writer Hal Borland penned over 1,700 natural history “outdoor editorial” essays for the Sunday edition of The New York Times . The original articles entranced readers with vivid and inspiring depictions of the natural world beyond the big city. Or, as Borland himself wrote with characteristic humility, they were “a weekly report on what’s going on up country.”
Released posthumously in 1979, Twelve Moons of the Year contains a selection of 365 of Borland’s best short pieces, hand-picked by the author and his wife, Barbara Dodge Borland. Organized almost like an almanac following the seasons of the Native American lunar calendar, each dated entry represents one day of the year and conveys an observation or morsel of fundamental wisdom about the natural world and the great outdoors. With his welcome wit and friendly style, Borland conveys the spirit and essence of each changing season and its special moons. The book sparkles with small and large observational gems. Find out why Borland has been beloved by readers for generations.
Released posthumously in 1979, Twelve Moons of the Year contains a selection of 365 of Borland’s best short pieces, hand-picked by the author and his wife, Barbara Dodge Borland. Organized almost like an almanac following the seasons of the Native American lunar calendar, each dated entry represents one day of the year and conveys an observation or morsel of fundamental wisdom about the natural world and the great outdoors. With his welcome wit and friendly style, Borland conveys the spirit and essence of each changing season and its special moons. The book sparkles with small and large observational gems. Find out why Borland has been beloved by readers for generations.
- GenresNatureNonfictionEssays
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
15 people are currently reading
206 people want to read
About the author
Hal Borland
56 books77 followersHarold Glen Borland was a nature journalist. During World War II he wrote radio programs for the government and served as special magazine correspondent. He had written several documentary movies, two volumes of poetry, a volume of essays, has collaborated on a play, and has contributed many non-fiction articles, short stories and novelettes to leading magazines here and abroad.
Mr. Borland was graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism. He also attended the University of Colorado and received a Litt.D. from there in 1944.
Mr. Borland was graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism. He also attended the University of Colorado and received a Litt.D. from there in 1944.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 5, 2021
There is the earth, the sun, the wind - the turning earth, the blazing sun, the restless wind that knows the farthest ocean, the highest hill. You walk, stretch your legs, refresh your lungs. You see and feel and know some of the things a man must know about this deliberately spinning earth where a man came to being, where man still lives.
Hal Borland worked as a writer for The New York Times. This volume collects many of his editorials about the outdoors, and they are reprinted as a series of journal entries stretching over the course of a year. The essays read like daily meditations for nature lovers.
The winter's moon makes magic of the night, but it is a sharp and frosty witchcraft. The fox knows it, and so does the scurrying hare darting from shadow to shadow. Midwinter moonlight is no hearth-glow reflected in the sky. It is the cold beauty of a whole winter wrapped and rimed into one long January night.
Borland perfectly describes the delights of an unexpectedly pleasant March day:
You go outdoors, on such a day, and you feel that mysterious promise. You look up and see the slim terminal twigs of an elm fatbeaded with buds. You see the damp, dark ooze of sap on a maple branch where a woodpecker two weeks ago dug out an insect tidbit. You hear a chickadee singing; not twittering but singing a dozen consecutive notes. You feel a breath of mild air on your cheek. Two months hence such a breeze will feel chilly, but today it is warm because it lacks the bite of February's wind.
And, he revels in the joyous rebirth of spring in full swing:
April is a young world, new as sunrise, in which miracles can happen, and do happen every day before sundown. Nothing is newer than an April morning, nothing seems more full of wonders than a bud or a seed. April is an old world made new again, a tired, disillusioned world of frost and ice and snow made innocent once more.
A true naturalist, Borland even saw the beauty of roadside weeds:
It is their nature, all of them, to grow and multiply when the season favors. They are a part of the green urgency of this earth, one of the strongest forces we know. Long ago they learned to live with passing vicissitudes of time and weather. Thus they survive, unpampered and asking no quarter, some of them beautiful, all of them tough, insistent, and full of untamed hardihood.
And, before we know it - fall arrives:
Essentially, autumn is the quiet completion of spring and summer. Spring was all eagerness and beginnings, summer was growth and flowering. Autumn is the achievement summarized, the harvested grain, the ripened apple, the grape in the wine press.
Borland notices not just the beauty of the earth, but the heavens as well:
There is eternity in these star patterns. They have been substantially the same in each October, and in each April and June as well, since man devised the first calendar. Caesar saw those same stars in the same places as we see them, and so did the earliest Pharaoh. The Stone Age caveman saw and was awed by them. And they will still be there 10,000 years from now. Look at the sky, these October evenings, and see the certainty of forever.
Mark Twain once said, "I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest." And, Borland was indeed sympathetic with nature - even in the winter:
Sleep and hibernation are upon the land. But man is abroad, knowing the year complete. Knowing dawn, knowing the wonder of a new day even in December, seeing the wonder of his own breath, knowing the wonder of wondering itself.
The last entry in the book, Year's End, is one of the most introspective:
Winter begins. and the dormant bud upon the twig is yesterday's preparation for tomorrow. The hidden egg contains the germ of another summer's gnawing, buzzing, bright-winged insect. The wasp queen sleeps, pregnant with another season's brood. The doe, sheltering in the hemlock thicket, carries the fetal fawns that will perpetuate her kind. Earth and sun and time proceed in their rounds, and only man presumes to summarize.
No year is complete in itself. Even the seasons overlap the arbitrary divisions we make, and year's end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a part of the infinite whole.
I spent a year with this book, reading one entry each day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Hal Borland worked as a writer for The New York Times. This volume collects many of his editorials about the outdoors, and they are reprinted as a series of journal entries stretching over the course of a year. The essays read like daily meditations for nature lovers.
The winter's moon makes magic of the night, but it is a sharp and frosty witchcraft. The fox knows it, and so does the scurrying hare darting from shadow to shadow. Midwinter moonlight is no hearth-glow reflected in the sky. It is the cold beauty of a whole winter wrapped and rimed into one long January night.
Borland perfectly describes the delights of an unexpectedly pleasant March day:
You go outdoors, on such a day, and you feel that mysterious promise. You look up and see the slim terminal twigs of an elm fatbeaded with buds. You see the damp, dark ooze of sap on a maple branch where a woodpecker two weeks ago dug out an insect tidbit. You hear a chickadee singing; not twittering but singing a dozen consecutive notes. You feel a breath of mild air on your cheek. Two months hence such a breeze will feel chilly, but today it is warm because it lacks the bite of February's wind.
And, he revels in the joyous rebirth of spring in full swing:
April is a young world, new as sunrise, in which miracles can happen, and do happen every day before sundown. Nothing is newer than an April morning, nothing seems more full of wonders than a bud or a seed. April is an old world made new again, a tired, disillusioned world of frost and ice and snow made innocent once more.
A true naturalist, Borland even saw the beauty of roadside weeds:
It is their nature, all of them, to grow and multiply when the season favors. They are a part of the green urgency of this earth, one of the strongest forces we know. Long ago they learned to live with passing vicissitudes of time and weather. Thus they survive, unpampered and asking no quarter, some of them beautiful, all of them tough, insistent, and full of untamed hardihood.
And, before we know it - fall arrives:
Essentially, autumn is the quiet completion of spring and summer. Spring was all eagerness and beginnings, summer was growth and flowering. Autumn is the achievement summarized, the harvested grain, the ripened apple, the grape in the wine press.
Borland notices not just the beauty of the earth, but the heavens as well:
There is eternity in these star patterns. They have been substantially the same in each October, and in each April and June as well, since man devised the first calendar. Caesar saw those same stars in the same places as we see them, and so did the earliest Pharaoh. The Stone Age caveman saw and was awed by them. And they will still be there 10,000 years from now. Look at the sky, these October evenings, and see the certainty of forever.
Mark Twain once said, "I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest." And, Borland was indeed sympathetic with nature - even in the winter:
Sleep and hibernation are upon the land. But man is abroad, knowing the year complete. Knowing dawn, knowing the wonder of a new day even in December, seeing the wonder of his own breath, knowing the wonder of wondering itself.
The last entry in the book, Year's End, is one of the most introspective:
Winter begins. and the dormant bud upon the twig is yesterday's preparation for tomorrow. The hidden egg contains the germ of another summer's gnawing, buzzing, bright-winged insect. The wasp queen sleeps, pregnant with another season's brood. The doe, sheltering in the hemlock thicket, carries the fetal fawns that will perpetuate her kind. Earth and sun and time proceed in their rounds, and only man presumes to summarize.
No year is complete in itself. Even the seasons overlap the arbitrary divisions we make, and year's end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a part of the infinite whole.
I spent a year with this book, reading one entry each day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
June 18, 2019
One of my favorite books. My dad used to read certain entries at various times throughout the year, and it's a tradition I keep up with my family. On any given Sunday, holiday, or other occasion where the family is within arm's reach of the bookshelf and we have 2 or 3 minutes to spare, we'll gather and read the day's entry from the "Moon Book." Timeless writing on nature, the turning seasons, quiet living. I'd say it gets existential, but it's never quite so pretentious as that. Some of my favorite memories of my dad are wrapped up in this book, and I hope to impart a fraction of that magic to my kids, too.
March 18, 2024
Even though I haven't finished this wonderful book, I'm going to give it the five stars it so richly deserves and continue reading an essay each day through the rest of the year. Hal Borland's beautifully descriptive pieces have helped me take notice of butterflies, goldenrod, the moon, and the turning of the seasons. It has a place of pride on my bedside table and I look forward to reading each day's entry. They give me hope when I read them in the morning and a sense that maybe things are all right in the natural world when I read them in the evening.
December 31, 2024
A gift from my naturalist brother, I read one essay each day this year, following Borland's calendar. This book is a treasure, one that helped me to look differently at the elements of nature, even though I live outside a city, not in the country.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
December 31, 2023
I loved spending the year with this book. Borland's writing is beautiful, and reading each day's selection has sharpened my awareness of the world around me--which is one of the most valuable things I can get from anything I read.
January 1, 2026
Hal Borland's Twelve Moons Of The Year: a collection
Hal Borland was a naturalist writer with a column in The New York Times from 1942 to 1978. He wrote almost two thousand editorials revolving around nature and the seasons. This collection presents 365 of them, an editorial for each day of the year. They're a few paragraphs long, and reveal the best parts about the natural world around us.
I picked this up at a booksale in 2024 and told myself I'd read each entry everyday of 2025.Well, the day has finally come where my journey with this collection comes to an end. I'm glad I stuck with it. Borland's editorials were so thoughtful and at times brilliant.
The main theme in his work was always about looking forward to what the current season was setting up for the next season. So we go from the cold snow-covered land in January, the budding and blooming foliage in spring and summer, the hyperactivity of animals and insects before the fall, and now back to winter again.
The biggest takeaways from this daily reading was discipline (although there were plenty of times where I would have to catch up on a few days), exposing myself to older work, and of course the attempt to bring nature to the forefront of my mind.
The hardest part of reading this was not knowing off the top of my head what some plants and animals were based on the names. I found myself constantly looking them up to put them in context.
I'd reccomed finding this book and keeping it as a casual reference when toy want to be immersed in a love of the seasons, flowers, trees and wildlife.
Hal Borland was a naturalist writer with a column in The New York Times from 1942 to 1978. He wrote almost two thousand editorials revolving around nature and the seasons. This collection presents 365 of them, an editorial for each day of the year. They're a few paragraphs long, and reveal the best parts about the natural world around us.
I picked this up at a booksale in 2024 and told myself I'd read each entry everyday of 2025.Well, the day has finally come where my journey with this collection comes to an end. I'm glad I stuck with it. Borland's editorials were so thoughtful and at times brilliant.
The main theme in his work was always about looking forward to what the current season was setting up for the next season. So we go from the cold snow-covered land in January, the budding and blooming foliage in spring and summer, the hyperactivity of animals and insects before the fall, and now back to winter again.
The biggest takeaways from this daily reading was discipline (although there were plenty of times where I would have to catch up on a few days), exposing myself to older work, and of course the attempt to bring nature to the forefront of my mind.
The hardest part of reading this was not knowing off the top of my head what some plants and animals were based on the names. I found myself constantly looking them up to put them in context.
I'd reccomed finding this book and keeping it as a casual reference when toy want to be immersed in a love of the seasons, flowers, trees and wildlife.
August 24, 2019
One of my most favorite books, love returning to it through the seasons. A great gift for any nature lovers or naturalists in your life.
December 31, 2021
Our bedtime read aloud, first time for me to read this book but the fifth time for Phil!
February 22, 2023
Borland's writing is exceptional; however, this particular book is extremely repetitive. That said, I learned a lot about nature that I hadn't known before.
November 19, 2024
An expert in the Mary Oliver school of radical love for the world around us, reading it is an exercise in mindfulness and gratitude.
Want to read
October 28, 2025suggested by Shane
January 1, 2026
Great way to spend the year by starting each day reading an entry. Will continue again next year.
January 30, 2024
This is one of my favorite books!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews