It is in the nature of things to surprise, after temporary imprisonments. Surprise is what men look for. It is a need. And this puts us somewhat in the position of a dragonfly larva, suspended, until sprung out. Since we are not as rigidly and instinctively stuck as the insects, relief from our often unblessed condition may come simply because we get a chance to look around. Freshness of act, unfailing originality, is here, but it takes time to see. After an age of inattention it comes like a red squirrel, which I meet unexpectedly one raw March morning. Its whole body twitches and shakes. It jumps with an extraordinary series of halts and starts; then, like a boy playing Indian, it leaps behind a rock as I walk by. If there is any spare time in a harried world, perhaps it should be used in cultivating habits of attention, learning how to keep open for possibility, instead of inventing distractions that provide for nothing. What is loosely called “nature study” requires discipline like any other area of knowledge, and acquaintance with its subjects, their names, their habits, their place and performance, may encourage extremes of refinement; but it is one good way to begin. It takes you out. It shows you what else can be done. By example it may spring you into a new mood of action. It provides new acquaintances, showing you life, the surprise, where there used to be a wall. I, as well as my children, am still learning to read. I am still making a collection of terms, in order to attempt a rudimentary analysis of what I find. First in importance, though, comes an admission that what I am considering is not so strangled by human terminology that it does not have an identity, a sacredness even, of its own. Discovery gets its worth from what it pursues. I see a pitch pine with different eyes, not because I have learned that its clusters have three needles, but because I recognize its independent existence. I know that it has needs, and a history, that it is not divorced from an infinity of circumstances just because I can identify it. We do not need to be vain about our name grubbing, our scientific nomenclature; it is only the beginning. When I go to the edge of a pond I have a pleasurable sense of excitement, not only because I have been there before, finding the good old tadpoles and water striders, but because I know that I will find something unexplained, the same life perhaps, but in new relationships. There is a swarm of thin little flies dancing in the warm sunlight on a March afternoon. They not only tell me something about the lengthening days, but the light seems to sit differently on their wings. They are a revelation, materializing out of a distance, hovering near. In the game of identification we have to admit that nature is not an exclusively human province. Then we can be led by it, like this class of children, boys and girls on file through the woods, exploring new land, in expectation.