This year, Rokeby Museum is putting a spotlight on the work of Rowland E. Robinson (1833–1900), beloved Vermont author and environmentalist. In honor of his deep love for the outdoors, we have selected passages from In New England Field and Woods (1896), a collection of his nature writings inspired by his rambles around Rokeby.

With such unmistakable signs made manifest to the eye and ear the summer signals its fullness and decline, that one awakening now from a sleep that fell upon him months ago might be assured of the season with the first touch of awakening.

This year, Rokeby Museum is putting a spotlight on the work of Rowland E. Robinson (1833–1900), beloved Vermont author and environmentalist. In honor of his deep love for the outdoors, we have selected passages from In New England Field and Woods (1896), a collection of his nature writings inspired by his rambles around Rokeby.

The woods are dense with full-grown leafage. Of all the trees, only the basswood has delayed its blossoming, to crown the height of summer and fill the sun-steeped air with a perfume that calls all the wild bees from hollow tree and scant woodside gleaning to a wealth of honey gathering, and all the hive-dwellers from their board-built homes to a finer and sweeter pillage than is offered by the odorous white sea of buckwheat. Half the flowers of wood and fields are out of bloom. Herdsgrass, clover and daisy are falling before the mower. The early grain fields have already caught the color of the sun, and the tasseling corn rustles its broad leaves above the rich loam that the woodcock delights to bore.

This year, Rokeby Museum is putting a spotlight on the work of Rowland E. Robinson (1833–1900), beloved Vermont author and environmentalist. In honor of his deep love for the outdoors, we have selected passages from In New England Field and Woods (1896), a collection of his nature writings inspired by his rambles around Rokeby.

June brings skies of purest blue, flecked with drifts of silver, fields and woods in the flush of fresh verdure, with the streams winding among them in crystal loops that invite the angler with promise of more than fish, something that tackle cannot lure nor creel hold.

This year, Rokeby Museum is putting a spotlight on the work of Rowland E. Robinson (1833–1900), beloved Vermont author and environmentalist. In honor of his deep love for the outdoors, we have selected passages from In New England Field and Woods (1896), a collection of his nature writings inspired by his rambles around Rokeby.

The lifeless dun of the close-cropped southward slopes and the tawny tangles of the swales are kindling to living green with the blaze of the sun and the moist tinder of the brook’s overflow.

The faithful swallows have returned, though the faithless season delays. The flicker flashes his golden shafts in the sunlight and gladdens the ear with his merry cackle. The upland plover wails his greeting to the tussocked pastures, where day and night rings the shrill chorus of the hylas and the trill of the toads continually trembles in the soft air.

This year, Rokeby Museum is putting a spotlight on the work of Rowland E. Robinson (1833–1900), beloved Vermont author and environmentalist. In honor of his deep love for the outdoors, we have selected passages from In New England Field and Woods (1896), a collection of his nature writings inspired by his rambles around Rokeby.

At last there is full and complete assurance of spring, in spite of the baldness of the woods, the barrenness of the fields, bleak with sodden furrows of last year’s ploughing, or pallidly tawny with bleached grass, and untidy with the jetsam of winter storms and the wide strewn litter of farms in months of foddering and wood-hauling.