“I learned . . . to read and interpret the country: the ground underfoot, the coming and going of creatures, the arrival and departure of birds, the seasonal flowering and fading of plant life. These things — the physical evidence of them — constitute a language, a grammar , and a syntax; they represent in some way the original perception we may have acquired of a fundamental order in things, in their relationships and significant connections. Ad by this I mean (among other things) story, narrative, the thread of sequence and consequence [John Haines, "The Creative Spirit in Art and Literature", The Norton Book of Nature Writing, Robert Finch, editor].”