In his travelogue, Following the Equator, Mark Twain has this funny passage about all the benefits nature provides to animals, in comparison to what it provides to humans. For those that fly, he writes, nature gives a home forty miles deep, spanning the globe, without any obstruction. For those that swim, nature provides a home that covers 4/5ths of the earth. But to man, he says, nature has gifted thin skin and miles upon miles of barren snow, desert, ice, and rock, to scrape out a living.
“Yet, man, in his simplicity and complacency and inability to cipher,” Twain writes, “thinks Nature regards him as the important member of the family -- in fact, her favorite. Surely, it must occur to even his dull head, sometimes, that she has a curious way of showing it.”
It’s the fifth and final week of July and we’re hearing writing along the theme of nature this month. Today, Monroe Williams shares one of his own poems, titled “You Can and You Will." Williams is an artist and actor, in addition to Idaho's 2026 Poetry Out Loud State Champion. He went on to represent the Gem State at the national semifinals in Washington D.C. in April.
Something I Heard is supported by Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
