Autumn I. Hawkweed

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer XXVII. The Tempest

This has been a year of long sunshine. Month has followed upon month with little unkindness of the sky; I scarcely marked when July passed into August, August into September. I should think it summer still, but that I see the lanes yellow-purfled with flowers of autumn.

I am busy with the hawkweeds; that is to say, I am learning to distinguish and to name as many as I can. For scientific classification I have little mind; it does not happen to fall in with my habits of thought; but I like to be able to give its name (the “trivial” by choice) to every flower I meet in my walks. Why should I be content to say, “Oh. it’s a hawkweed”? That is but one degree less ungracious than if I dismissed all the yellow-rayed as “dandelions.” I feel as if the flower were pleased by my recognition of its personality. Seeing how much I owe them, one and all, the least I can do is to greet them severally. For the same reason I had rather say “hawkweed” than “hieracium”; the homelier word has more of kindly friendship.

Alpha.

Henry and Hans Castorp (in The Magic Mountain) could start a little flower appreciation club, though I believe Hans, being a good German, was more fascinated by the scientific classifications of the Alpine flowers he collected and studied.

So far, the urge to learn the proper name of plants has not hit me. I do, however, appreciate an ability to recognize certain wild plants like Poison Oak and Thistle. I had a nasty run-in with a thistle plant the only time I walked in Essex, from which I learned both to identify it and to give it a wide berth.

This passage reminded me of something else Bill Bryson wrote, in Notes from a Small Island, about another group keen to know the names of things... train spotters:

“You like trains, then?” I said and immediately wished I hadn’t.

The next thing I knew... I was being regaled by the world’s most boring man. I didn’t actually much listen to what he said...

“Now this train,” he was saying, “is a Metro-Cammel self-sealed unit built at the Swindon works, at a guess I’d say between July 1986 and August, or at the very latest September, of ‘88. At first I thought it couldn't be a Swindon ‘86-’88 because of the cross-stitching on the seatbacks, but then I noticed the dimpled rivets on the side panels, and I thought to myself, I thought, What we have here, Cyril my old son, is a hybrid. There aren’t many certainties in this world but Metro-Cammel dimpled rivets never lie. So where’s your home?”

It took me a moment to realize that I had been asked a question. “Uh, Skipton,” I said, only half lying.

“You’ll have Fibber McGee cross-cambers up there.” he said or something similarly meaningless to me. “Now me, I live in Upton-upon-Severn --”

“The Severn bore,” I said reflexively, employing the local name for a tidal wave on the River Severn, but meaning something quite other.

“That’s right. Runs right past the house.” ...

I ended up feeling sorry for him. His wife had died two years before -- suicide, I would guess -- and he had devoted himself since then to traveling the rail lines of Britain, counting rivets, noting breastplate numbers, and doing whatever else it is these poor people do to pass the time until God takes them away to a merciful repose...

To be honest, I know rather more about tanks, warships, and warplanes than is altogether healthy. When the odd duck at a party shamelessly admits that he's building a large scale model of an Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier, that sank in 1942, and you can quiz him on port-side islands and whether or not his version will have flying-off decks, you know that you are both in trouble. Luckily, Bill Bryson wasn't around.

Next: Autumn II. Tristram Shandy.