Today something happened that made me think about this passage:

Wilkie Collins, in ‘The woman in white’ wrote:

At any time, and under
any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how
little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live
can gain our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble,
and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the
inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently
describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original
instincts of our nature. As children, we none of us possess it. No
uninstructed man or woman possesses it. Those whose lives are most
exclusively passed amid the ever-changing wonders of sea and land are
also those who are most universally insensible to every aspect of
Nature not directly associated with the human interest of their
calling. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live
on is, in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments which we all
learn as an Art; and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised by
any of us except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied.
How much share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the
pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little
narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of mouth
from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass, all that
our harts can learn, can be accomplished with ewual certainty, equal
profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in the poorest as in the
richest prospectg that the face of the earth can show. There is surely
a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the creature and the
creation around it, a reason which may perhaps be found in the widely
differing destinies of man and his earthly sphere. The grandest
mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to
annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel
is appointed to immortality.

It reminds me of something I’ve observed time and time again: whenever
I comment on how wonderful it is that it’s snowing outside (be it early
November, early January, or Easter), the first thing anyone who
has a driving licence says is something along the lines of "It’s
bloody dangerous weather, it is!"; or, less frequently, "All that caked
salt is killing my car."

I’m not so sure if Wilkie Collins wasn’t right in his claim that the
appreciation of Nature is something you have to learn. I mean, sure,
toddlers can be transfixed by reflections in water, or by a fly’s
multicoloured body. Elderly people smack their lips approvingly when
shown a picture of a snowy mountain range or a sheep-and-daisy-filled
pasture. But the coherent expression of what effect a landscape, a
particular weather condition or the sound of dripping water has on
one’s reflections might be something different altogether. Perhaps
Nature is, like wine, an acquired taste.

__________________________

I had a childish dream of walking past apple trees in bloom, to a small mountain cemetery. We walked along with angels
— Prolapse, Essence of Cessna

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