A ''blossom of some kind''

''The time of pristine places has passed'' says Julian Hoffman (the author of The Small Heart of Things). It is a sad reflection, and everybody knows what he means : the uncontrolled expansion of the UK (Urban Kingdom), pollutions of oceans and mountains, an almost perpetual criss-cross of airliners' white trails in the sky, etc. But here in Brittany countryside, I see everywhere fields, hedgerows and oaks, beeches, larches around my house, with robins, blackbirds, red squirrels, adders (often seen in summer, when I pick blackberries), salamanders, and even marble newts, and for sure, I will fiercely protect them against all possible ''country planning''. When I go outside, I have always a wonderful sensation of freshness, of physical newness, so that I have in mind an English poet (I am French but I have a strong liking for English authors) : Hopkins : ''And for all this, Nature is never spent'', and an English painter : Constable : ''Everything seems full of blossom of some kind and at every step I take, and on whatever object I turn my eyes, that sublime expression of the Scriptures, ''I am the resurrection and the life'', seems as if uttered near me''. He wrote this sentence in May (1819). He was talking about spring blossom, but not only. What did he mean by ''of some kind'' ? By the verb ''seems'' ? And he adds ''on whatever object'', so on stones, on stumps, on soil, on water, on everything. He sees every material thing as in bloom, -in other words : fresh and new.

Nature gives an incessant impression of freshness, of continuous newness. Why ? It seems that there is something in nature, in matter, which is always fresh, i.e. new, full of energy and pure, -pristine, like a flame. Have you ever seen an old flame ? One may think that old, dull and impure are unknown qualities in nature. Our human eye sees an old tree or a dead tree. Yes, these trees are old or dead, biologically. But their physics is always new, like flames. An old tree (like Major Oak) is incessantly a new thing. A continuous material newness shines in all things. There is in nature, everywhere on earth and at every moment a certain fire, a blossom of some kind, which will never pass. Joyful reflection.   

John Constable, Golding Constable's Garden.
Constable, quoted by Leslie :  I returned from Suffolk yesterday...Nothing can exceed the beauty of the country ; it makes pictures appear sad trumpery, even those that have most of nature (chap 12).  No doubt the greatest masters considered their best efforts but as experiments, and perhaps as experiments that had failed when compared whith their hopes, their wishes, and with what they saw in nature (chap 18).  

Winter, season of renewal

Spring : celebrated season of the vegetable flow : flowers, light and life. By contrast, scorned winter evokes numbness -frost, night and death. This vision of winter is too sad for me, and I think it is inexact. It needs to be amended. Frost : for sure, but not every day (in our European latitudes). Night ? Days are only shorter. Sun and blue sky are not a rare thing in December or January. Death ? The vegetable dormancy is secret, warm and concentrated life. In my garden, robins and blackbirds come and go and fly about everyday. Nature knows no off season. One of the most inspirational Emerson's phrases says : ''Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year'' (in Works and Days). So every February's day is also the best day.

There are three differences in winter : colder temperatures, shorter days and vegetable dormancy. No lack of intensity for all the rest : air is air, water is water -drops, rivers and seas, waves and foam -and ice is only solid water, soil is soil, and wood, stones, metals, sky and stars and every material thing.

And the substance of material things is always active. Matter in its innermost parts is so active that it is an illusion to think an atom is inert and physically the same during the shortest moment one can conceive : it doesn't cease to be a different thing, a new thing, at every moment.

Go outside in winter : and look at the blue -or dark and windy sky, at waters, and stones and trees' bark and branches -is there any lack of intensity in all these things ? Is wintry physical reality actually dull and dead ? My perception, my senses tell me : Nature is as fresh and new in December as in May. Winter, like other seasons, is a season of renewal, because Nature is a continuous renewal. At every moment Nature is a new object. Reality is always new.

Low temperatures and long nights : inconveniences for our practical needs. For our soul, Nature's incessant physical newness may be an incessant joy.