Hal Borland

Hal Borland – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Hal Borland (1900–1978), American journalist, naturalist, and writer, is remembered for his lyrical nature essays, novels, and editorial work. Discover his life, career, and enduring wisdom through his memorable quotes.

Introduction

Harold “Hal” Glen Borland stands as a vivid example of how one can merge journalism, literature, and deep love for the natural world into a unified voice. Born in 1900 and passing in 1978, Borland wrote with quiet authority about the land, seasons, animals, and the human connection to place. He is best known for his nature essays and “outdoor editorials” for The New York Times, but also wrote fiction, poetry, and memoirs that continue to inspire readers today. His writing invites us to slow down, observe, and reconnect with the rhythms of nature — lessons especially resonant in our fast-paced modern world.

Early Life and Family

Hal Borland was born on May 14, 1900, in Sterling, Nebraska, to William Arthur Borland, a printer and newspaper editor, and Sarah M. Clinaburg Borland.

When Hal was about ten years old, his family moved about 30 miles south of Brush, Colorado, where his father staked a homestead claim on prairie land.

After proving the homestead claim, his father sold it and purchased a weekly newspaper in Flagler, Colorado. The family relocated, and Hal completed his schooling there, helping with the paper.

These early experiences—living close to the land, working with newspapers, facing the extremes of nature—left indelible marks on his sensibility and future writing.

Youth and Education

From 1918 to 1920, Borland attended the University of Colorado, majoring initially in engineering, while working for newspapers like The Denver Post and The Flagler News.

He then moved to New York to study journalism at Columbia University, graduating in 1923 with a Bachelor of Arts in literature. Brooklyn Times, United Press, and King Features Service, honing skills in reporting, observation, and prose.

It was also during his time in New York that Borland suffered a serious bout of appendicitis, a life-threatening illness, which deepened his sense of mortality and connection to the natural cycles of life and death.

After recovery, he and his wife (Barbara Dodge Borland) relocated to Salisbury, Connecticut, and that first year in the country became the subject of his book This Hill, This Valley.

Career and Achievements

Early Journalism

After finishing his studies, Borland worked at a series of newspapers: in Philadelphia he was part of Curtis Newspapers, the Philadelphia Morning Sun, and the Morning Ledger between 1926 and 1937.

In 1937, he began his long association with The New York Times. He joined the staff of the Sunday Magazine (1937–1943), and in 1942 became an editorial writer for The New York Sunday Times — a role he would maintain until his death in 1978.

But his most distinctive contribution came through what he called “outdoor editorials” — short, meditative essays on weather, land, seasons, and natural phenomena, published in the Times and later collected in book form.

He also wrote for The Berkshire Eagle (1958–1978), Pittsburgh Press (1966–1978), and the Torrington Register (1971–1978).

Literary Works

Borland’s bibliography is wide-ranging. His works include fiction, memoir, poetry, and nature essays. Some of the more notable among them:

• High, Wide, and Lonesome (1956) – a memoir of his homesteading childhood in Colorado.

• When the Legends Die (1963) – a powerful novel about a young Ute Indian struggling to preserve cultural identity. (Adapted into a film in 1972.)

• An American Year: Country Life and Landscapes Through the Seasons (1946, reissued) – reflections across a year’s cycle.

• Beyond Your Doorstep: A Handbook to the Country (1962) – guidance for observing nature in one’s own locale.

• Sundial of the Seasons (1964) – collection of his nature editorials from The New York Times.

• Countryman: A Summary of Belief (1965) – philosophical reflections integrating nature with a humanist worldview.

Other works range from The Dog Who Came to Stay (1961), Country or’s Boy (1970), to Hal Borland’s Book of Days (1976), and posthumous collections.

Recognition and Honors

Borland’s consistent excellence in nature writing earned him multiple honors:

• Meeman Award for Conservation Writing, 1966

• John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, 1968

• Interpretive Naturalists Award, 1973

His works remain staples in nature-writing circles and are studied in classrooms for their clarity, subtlety, and moral depth.

Historical Milestones & Context

Borland’s life spanned a period of enormous change in America—westward settlement’s legacy, urbanization, industrialization, the two world wars, environmental awakening. Though he maintained a traditionally rural perspective, he was never backward-looking. He observed how land use, deforestation, pollution, and habitat loss began reshaping the ecological landscapes he loved.

During World War II, he even contributed radio programs and served as a magazine correspondent, combining his love of nature with a sense of civic duty.

In 1945, he and Barbara Dodge embarked on a 12,000-mile research journey across the United States for a postwar America report titled “Sweet Land of Liberty.”

By mid-century, environmentalism was gaining ground, and Borland’s essays often anticipated concerns about habitat loss, water management, and the need for reconnection with the land. His voice bridged the rural and urban, reminding city dwellers that their world does not exist apart from seasons, soil, wind, and wildlife.

Legacy and Influence

Borland occupies a central place in American nature writing. His gentle, observant style influenced later writers such as Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, and others who take the natural world seriously as subject, teacher, and moral ground.

His ability to translate small, daily phenomena (a patch of fog, a first frost, the track of a fox) into symbolic and emotional meaning continues to resonate. Today, in an age of climate change and ecological disconnection, his insistence on “seeing closely” and trusting the land is more relevant than ever.

In educational settings, When the Legends Die remains taught in high schools and used in film and adaptation studies. His essays are anthologized in nature-writing collections. His papers are archived (for instance, the Hal and Barbara Borland Papers at Yale).

He leaves behind a model: that writing need not be flashy, but can be firm, gentle, and sustaining. His legacy is one of a quiet authority—the authority that comes from paying attention.

Personality and Talents

Borland’s writing is characterized by restraint, precision, and clarity. He avoided ornate language, favoring clear, declarative sentences that honored the things he described rather than decorating them.

He was disciplined: daily walks at dawn, keeping attentive to the land, often translating what his senses registered into essays or reflections.

He combined the observational skill of a naturalist with the narrative impulse of a journalist. His deep empathy extended to animals, plants, weather, and people, and he viewed the land not as mere backdrop, but as participant in the human story.

He was also consistent: for over 30 years he maintained his outdoor-editorial voice in major newspapers.

Yet he could also write fiction — with moral clarity — and memoir, weaving memory, place, and identity. He was a teacher in spirit, continually inviting readers to see rather than merely look.

Famous Quotes of Hal Borland

Below are some of his most memorable and evocative quotes. These encapsulate his worldview: seasonal, grounded, thoughtful.

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”

“A snowdrift is a beautiful thing – if it doesn’t lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination.”

“April is a promise that May is bound to keep.”

“Each new season grows from the leftovers from the past. That is the essence of change, and change is the basic law.”

“Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January.”

“If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.”

“October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen.”

These quotes reflect cycles, humility, patience, and a belief that nature has its own internal wisdom that humans must learn to read.

Lessons from Hal Borland

1. Attention is a form of care. Much of Borland’s power derives from his insistence on close watching, small detail, naming what you see. In a distracted world, that remains a vital virtue.

2. Nature is not metaphor alone—but teacher. He used nature as metaphor, but also as a real interlocutor. His essays are part science, part moral reflection, part memory.

3. Write with clarity and humility. His style teaches writers to forgo flair in favor of precision, to let the subject speak. He trusted silence as much as sound.

4. Balance is possible. He bridged urban and rural, journalism and poetry, human concern and ecological awareness — showing that multiple sensibilities can live in one writer.

5. Time matters more than novelty. His writing doesn’t chase trends; it is anchored in cycles, seasons, memory. That gives it an enduring character.

6. Stewardship is daily. For Borland, caring for place wasn’t grand gestures but small ones: walking fields, observing trees, noticing runoff, watching birds. That ethic scales.

Conclusion

Hal Borland’s life and work offer not just words, but an invitation: to slow, to attend, and to renew our connection with the natural world. He showed that a writer need not dominate nature but listen. He offers a path for writers, naturalists, and seekers: measure your life by seasons rather than fashions, let your prose grow from soil, not from noise, and trust that even in the coldest winter, spring will come.

Explore more of his timeless essays and novels, and let his quiet wisdom guide you toward a more rooted way of living.