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.

In these midwinter days, how muffled is the earth in its immaculate raiment, so disguised in whiteness that familiar places are strange, rough hollows smoothed to mere undulations, deceitful to the eye and feet, and level fields so piled with heaps and ridges that their owners scarcely recognize them. The hovel is as regally roofed as the palace, the rudest fence is a hedge of pearl, finer than a wall of marble, and the meanest wayside weed is a white flower of fairyland.