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.

Fields as green as when the summer birds caroled above them, woods more gorgeous with innumerable hues and tints of ripening leaves than a blooming parterre, are spread beneath the azure sky, whose deepest color is reflected with intenser blue in lake and stream. In them against this color are set the scarlet and gold of every tree upon their brinks, the painted hills, the clear-cut mountain peaks, all downward pointing to the depths of this nether sky.

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.

September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of what remains of his brief life; the bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath; and their shrill cry and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed.

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.