"The Greatest Nature Essay ever would begin with an image so startling
and lovely and wondrous that you would stop riffling through the rest of
the mail, take your jacket off, sit down at the table, adjust your
spectacles, tell the dog to lie down, tell the kids to make their own
sandwiches for heavens sake, that's why god gave you hands, and read
straight through the piece, marveling that you had indeed seen or
smelled or heard exactly that, but never quite articulated it that way,
or seen or heard it articulated that way, and you think, man, this is
why I read nature essays, to be startled and moved like that, wow." What
follows is a brief and beautiful piece by the late writer Brian Doyle.
