Passage: For most of his career, the naturalist regarded the marsh behind his cottage as a tedious place, a flat expanse he crossed only to reach the more dramatic woodlands beyond. Years later, confined by illness to a chair near his window, he began to watch the marsh by necessity rather than choice. He noticed how the reeds bent in sequence as wind moved across them, how herons stalked along invisible boundaries, how the water's color shifted with the hour. By the time he could walk again, he had filled three notebooks. He no longer hurried past the marsh; he found he had no wish to reach the woods at all.