Lake Metroparks Special Exhibit at Penitentiary Glenn Nature Center:
Winter Art Show:
Burroughs Art Show (100th Birthday Celebration)
January 23 through February 28, 2016, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM daily
Burroughs Nature Club is one of the oldest nature clubs in the U.S., founded in Willoughby in 1916 by some of Cleveland’s leading scientists, scholars, naturalists and photographers of the era. These men shared a common love of hiking, wildlife watching, and other investigations of the natural world. Discover the natural and cultural history of the club through this never-before-seen collection of antique hand-colored photographs taken by C.M. Shipman, one of the earliest members of Burroughs. Free to all; all ages welcome.
Opening Reception: January 23 from noon to 4:00 PM.
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Anniversary Highlights
Our club is named for John Burroughs, author of 23 books on nature, criticism and philosophy, but just who was he and why is our club named for him? The following biography was prepared in 1944 by former club president C.M. Shipman.
This In Memory of John Burroughs:
April was the Mother Month for John Burroughs, born in Delaware County, New York, April 3, 1837, and buried on the same farm on April 3, 1921.
So was April a month of major experience during his long life of 84 years: as a boy on an April day noting a hylas piping in his hand, the boy school teacher homesick for the sound of peepers at twilight in April, a young man looking for work in New York in 1860, April days in Washington as a Treasury clerk, friend of Walt Whitman, a nature explorer in Rock Creek Park, then an April with Theodore Roosevelt in the Yellowstone Park and another with John Muir in the West - and these but a few of April days in far travel or in his own Catskill woodlands.
Great men are very human. This is well illustrated by John Burroughs friendship with Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and Thomas Edison, and the interesting trips and summer days they spent together traveling in a caravan of Fords.
Some of the cars were made to house the cookery department and camp equipment - the caravan moving and camping up and down the Eastern countryside incognito, while the company discussed Nature, Mechanics, or Artificial Rubber and Electricity - or maybe none of these things.
His volume called Birds and Poets includes an essay on the month. “April is my natal month and I am born again into new delights and new surprises at each return. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two syllables are like the call of first birds - like that of the phoebe or meadow lark.”
Friend of Emerson, Burroughs wrote these words at the passing of the “Sage of Concord”; “It is fit that he should pass in April...... the month that opens the door of the more genial season. To that extent and for many of us, he has opened the door of a brighter and more genial clime. He was an April man, an awakener, full of light, full of prophecy, full of vernal freshness and curiosity - hardy, tender, simple, joyous, and with the fiber and quality of primal men.”
And So, As He Described Emerson, We Think He Described Himself.
In front of the Art Museum in Toledo there is a bronze figure of Burroughs, life size, not erect but resting easily in his old clothes on a granite boulder, one arm supporting his body, the other shading his eyes as he looks toward the horizon and the rising sun.
So, we here in Willoughby remember him after whom our Club is named and drop flowers of memory to John Burroughs who contributed so much in the field of poetry and nature writing.
This In Memory of John Burroughs:
April was the Mother Month for John Burroughs, born in Delaware County, New York, April 3, 1837, and buried on the same farm on April 3, 1921.
So was April a month of major experience during his long life of 84 years: as a boy on an April day noting a hylas piping in his hand, the boy school teacher homesick for the sound of peepers at twilight in April, a young man looking for work in New York in 1860, April days in Washington as a Treasury clerk, friend of Walt Whitman, a nature explorer in Rock Creek Park, then an April with Theodore Roosevelt in the Yellowstone Park and another with John Muir in the West - and these but a few of April days in far travel or in his own Catskill woodlands.
Great men are very human. This is well illustrated by John Burroughs friendship with Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and Thomas Edison, and the interesting trips and summer days they spent together traveling in a caravan of Fords.
Some of the cars were made to house the cookery department and camp equipment - the caravan moving and camping up and down the Eastern countryside incognito, while the company discussed Nature, Mechanics, or Artificial Rubber and Electricity - or maybe none of these things.
His volume called Birds and Poets includes an essay on the month. “April is my natal month and I am born again into new delights and new surprises at each return. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two syllables are like the call of first birds - like that of the phoebe or meadow lark.”
Friend of Emerson, Burroughs wrote these words at the passing of the “Sage of Concord”; “It is fit that he should pass in April...... the month that opens the door of the more genial season. To that extent and for many of us, he has opened the door of a brighter and more genial clime. He was an April man, an awakener, full of light, full of prophecy, full of vernal freshness and curiosity - hardy, tender, simple, joyous, and with the fiber and quality of primal men.”
And So, As He Described Emerson, We Think He Described Himself.
In front of the Art Museum in Toledo there is a bronze figure of Burroughs, life size, not erect but resting easily in his old clothes on a granite boulder, one arm supporting his body, the other shading his eyes as he looks toward the horizon and the rising sun.
So, we here in Willoughby remember him after whom our Club is named and drop flowers of memory to John Burroughs who contributed so much in the field of poetry and nature writing.