After the Monsoon

Towards the end of the year, those few monsoon clouds that still linger over the Himalayas are no longer burdened with rain and are able to assume unusual shapes and patterns, chasing each other across the sky and disappearing the spectacular sunset formations.
I have always found this to be the best time of the year in the hills. The sun-drenched hillsides are still an emerald green; the air is crisp, but winter’s bite is still a month or two away; and for those who still take to the open road on foot, there are springs, streams, and waterfalls fumbling over rocks that remain dry for most of the year. The lizard that basked in a sun-baked slab of granite last May is missing, but in his place the spotted forktail trips daintily among boulders in a stream; and the strident sound of the cicadas is gradually replaced by the gentler trilling of crickets and grasshoppers.
Now, more than any other time of the year, the wild flowers come into their own.
The hillside is covered with flowers and ferns. Sprays of wild ginger, tangles of clematis, flat clusters of yarrow and lady’s mantle. The datura grows everywhere with its graceful white balls and prickly fruits. And then, of course, there is the delicate commelina, a breathtaking sight. It always stops me in my tracks. I forget the world.
But only for a moment. The blare of a truck’s horn reminds me that I am still lingering on the main road leading out of the hill station. A cloud of dust and a blast of diesel fumes are further indications that reality takes many different forms, assailing all my senses at once! Even my commelina seems to shrink from the onslaught. But as long as it is till there, I take heart and leave the highway for a lesser road.
- Ruskin Bond in Book of Nature

Silent Birth

"When the earth gave birth to this tree,
There came no sound:
A green shoot thrust
In silence from the ground.
Our births don't come so quiet--
Most lives run riot--
But the bud opens silently,
And flower gives way to fruit.
So must we search
For the stillness within the tree,
The silence within the root."
- Ruskin Bond in Book of Nature

Indian monsoon

"India is all about waiting for the rain to come, and then waiting for it to go. Hence the proverb:
When the floods come up the fish eat ants;
When the floods go down the ants eat fish."
- Ruskin Bond in Book of Nature

Learn to listen

"If I burst into song, all the birds fly away. So I have learnt to remain silent. To live in harmony with nature we must become good listeners... "
- Ruskin Bond in Book of Nature

Lessons from landscapes

"Landscapes have the power to teach, if you query them carefully. And remote landscapes teach the rarest, quietest lessons."

David Quammen in Monster of God

The same river twice

"You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in."
- Heraclitus
Greek philosopher

End of the sixties

"What ended in 1972 was the sixties" - David Quammen

Frost on Education

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper."
- Robert Frost

Wait a bit...