“For fifteen years I have been a naturalist. They have been years full of work, of hopes, of ambitions. Happiest those days when I have been alone in woods and fields, when I was learning for the first time lessons from nature — lessons purer, nobler and better than I ever expect to learn from the books of man — lessons showing me the close relationship existing among all animate and inanimate things, teaching me that this world, this universe of ours, is not made up of single, isolated objects and forces, but that each object, each force is but a necessary part of one grand and perfect whole. At the end of fifteen years I am still a tyro — still learning daily new facts from the book of nature, still, and ever expect to be, a tramp naturalist. I still delight to chase the winged butterfly o’er field and pasture; draw the seine through ripple and shallow for silvery minnow and rainbow darter — climb hill and wade pond for partridge berry or water lily, or wander all day through thicket and forest in search of hermit thrush and hooded warbler.
I am not a specialist in any branch of natural history, nor do I ever expect to be one. I do not desire to spend my life in pondering over the synonymy, and studying the minute structure of the organs of some particular group of animal or plant life. The world at large will never know me as an eminent ichthyologist or botanist, ornithologist or entomologist, geologist or conchologist, but I wish to know myself as being, in a small way, an ichtho-bota-ornigeo-concho-entom-etc.-gist, and so be able to see more and more clearly as time goes on the mutual relations and interdependence of the various classes of nature’s objects. Such a course will never bring me the renown that I might have achieved had I become a specialist; but what is renown as compared with present happiness and pleasure? And then, as Emerson, in his Essay on Nature, says: “In the woods a man caste off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth.” I do not desire to grow old too soon, and so will seek in the way that I have chosen that fountain of youth which Ponce de Leon sought for in vain on the coast where I am now sitting.”
On March 17, 1899, Willis Blatchley penned these words from the coast of north Florida, in between excavating part of the Ormond Mound (a shell midden) the day before, and encountering a red-headed lizard later the same day. The book in which he shares these reflections, A Nature Wooing at Ormond by the Sea, is ostensibly an account of a naturalist’s exploits on vacation in Florida. But there is another story here, as well, one that I find intriguing and a bit mysterious as well. The book, I highly suspect, also chronicles Blatchley’s struggles with what nowadays would be termed a midlife crisis. And here, in this passage, he confronts the possibility that he will achieve no lasting fame, but has traded that for present happiness. His comments (and Emersonian quote) on growing old speak to someone midway on their life journey, confronting the reality of diminishing days. Even more telling is the reason Blatchley went to Florida in the first place: on the advice of his doctor, following “a severe attack of nervous prostration.” What precipitated the crisis is a mystery at the moment (though one I am keen to research further if I can). It could have resulted from stress, overwork, depression, or some combination of these. Born in October of 1859, Blatchley would have been 39 1/2 when he visited Florida. Given that life expectancy in America in 1900 was only 47, Blatchley was already facing the possibility of being in his last decade (fortunately, he lived until 1940, passing away at the age of 80). Is a mid-life crisis an underlying diagnosis here?
A week later, Blatchley returns to his theme of the interconnectedness of all things, in an enraptured moment of Emersonian pantheism:
“I would not give much for a man who can look upon the first wild flowers of spring and not feel a love, a boundless love, of Nature in his soul. For to know God, the true God, the one universal and all, one must know Nature in the true sense. But few, if any, men have ever known her thus, for to do so is to know the relation existing between matter and force, between atom and molecule, between element and compound, between cell and tissue, between organ and system, between plant and animal, between each one of nature’s objects and all the rest. It is to grasp, as it were, the universe in one grand comprehension— to stand on an eminence a thousand times higher than any on earth and see all objects in one grand vista before you; and at the same time feel and understand the workings of the great natural forces about you. Then, and then only, can one see and know his relation to all — feel that he is a part of the universal whole — a parcel of the universe — bound to it and kin to all which it comprises. For the Universe is God, and God is the Universe.”
Where does that leave human beings, then? What is the human condition, but to return — both body and consciousness — to the universe upon death? Two days later, Blatchley grapples with the prospect of ceasing to exist in a “revery on death” (as he labels the page). It closes with the inevitable realization that all we have is the moment in which we live, and happy is the one that can find joy in it.
“I note the body of a butterfly lying beside me and its presence begets a revery on death — that death which cometh to one and all in some form — which is as inevitable as the rising of tomorrow’s sun. Whether it comes to the mansion of the rich, where every desire of the invalid is granted, or to the hovel of the hermit, where solitude is its only companion ; whether it comes in the cool shade on the mountain’s side, or in the burning glare of the noonday sun on a desert waste, it matters little; it can come but once. Peace and forgetfulness are its accompaniments. All hopes, all fears, all hatreds, all loves, all desires, all passions, become forever things of the past. The step is taken into the great unknown. Millions, aye, hundreds of billions of human forms, of plant and animal forms, have gone — not one has e’er returned to tell us of the way. All concerning it is guess work. The wisdom of years’ experience stored in the gray matter of cerebral cells availeth nothing. The clay — the matter — is left behind. The living part — the energy — passeth beyond. Like that heat which, transmitted into electric power, propels a car, and then, by friction, passes into space, so the energy of all living forms joins that sum total of all energies, which pervadeth the universe. The thoughts which man has inscribed, the good which he has done to his fellowman; the ambitions, the loves, the hopes which he has inspired, are left and become a part of the world’s wealth, for the future use of mankind.
He who can get his pleasures during life from simple, common things, is the happiest, the richest. If the song of bird, the habits of insects, the colors of flowers and the graceful forms of leaves afford me material for thought and reason, and lead to my contentment, I am most fortunate. Then, O Nature, let me be a devotee to thee while life remains!”
Granted this conviction, Blatchley is able, by the end of his stay, to arrive at newfound hope (or, short of that, appears to talk himself into finding it), as he reports under the heading of April 10th:
“This morn a new life begins to stir within me. I know not how long it will last. I feel that new ambitions should be cherished in my soul, that the old should be forsaken; that new hopes should reign in my heart, that the old should be forgotten; that a new love of nature should be forever with me, that the old should belong to the eternity of the past.”
To this reader, at least, it seems that Blatchley’s time in nature along the Florida coast granted him the healing he yearned for. He returned to Indiana in mid-April and lived another 40 years — time spent pursuing his myriad passions in natural history, traveling to Alaska, South America, and yes, back to Florida as well.
Having considered the book as a work of mental, emotional, and spiritual transformation, there remains the question of how the book fares as a work of nature literature. That will be the topic of my next post — along with a bit more biographical matter on this fascinating naturalist.