[00:10.20]June 24 If a man is ever going to admit that he belongs to the earth, not the other way round,
[00:18.29]it probably will be in late June.
[00:21.55]Then it is that life surpasses man’s affairs with incredible urgency and outreaches him in every direction.
[00:29.51]Even the farmer, on whom we all depend for the substance of existence,
[00:34.44]knows then that the best he can do is cooperate with wind and weather, soil and seed.
[00:41.11]The incalculable energy of chlorophyll, the green leaf itself, dominates the earth,
[00:47.76]and the root in the soil is the inescapable fact. Even the roadside weed ignores man’s legislation.
[00:55.72]The urgency is everywhere. Grass blankets the earth, reaching for the sun, spreads its roots,
[01:03.85]flowers and comes to seed. The forest widens its canopy, strengthens its boles, nurtures its seedlings,
[01:13.39]ripens its perpetuating nuts. The birds nest and hatch their fledglings.
[01:20.77]The beetle and the bee are busy at the grassroot and the blossom,
[01:25.08]and the butterfly lays eggs that will hatch and crawl and eat and pupate and take to the air once more.
[01:32.58]Fish spawn and meadow voles harvest the wild meadows, and owls and foxes feed their young.
[01:40.86]Dragonflies and swallows and nighthawks seine the air where the minute winged creatures flit out their minute life spans.
[01:50.64]And man, who glibly calls the earth his own, neither powers the leaf nor energizes the fragile wing.
[02:00.81]Man participates, but his dominance is limited. It is the urgency of life, or growth, that rules.
[02:10.59]Late June and early Summer are the ultimate, unarguable proof.
