When he was 8, Edward Hoagland discovered Dr. Green’s magical pond by following a shallow stream through the woods. The family had moved 45 miles from New York City to Connecticut during World War II.
I’d lie on my back on a patch of moss watching a swaying poplar’s branches interlace with another’s, and the tremulous leaves vibrate, and the clouds forgather to parade zoologically overhead, and felt linked to the whole matrix, as you either do or you don’t throughout the rest of your life. And childhood — nine or ten, I think — is when this best happens. It’s when you develop a capacity for quiet, a confidence in your solitude, your rapport with a Nature both animate and not so much so: what winged things possibly feel, the blessing of water, the rhythm of weather, and what might bite you and what will not.
Hoagland’s essay “Small Silences” is about our connection with the natural world. I think the loss of that connection is behind our penchant for destroying the Earth. It’s hard to abuse something you have a connection with.
The essay has an interesting point that you might not expect to find in an essay on natural history: how some children have to cultivate their interests in secrecy.
Hoagland’s father boycotted the Metropolitan Opera when it invited Marian Anderson to sing. Hoagland’s father fired the maid, fearing young Edward was developing an attachment to a Black woman.
I learned from the episode not to betray to a third party affection for anybody who might get fired because of it, or to divulge any passion that might thereafter be denied me.
The budding naturalist kept his passion for nature to himself.
• Source: Edward Hoagland’s essay “Small Silences” is in Sex and the River Styx; White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011, pp. 11 and 8-9.
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