Under the Maples by John Burroughs

Sitting by a flat rock one summer morning, on my home acres in the Catskills, I noticed that the wild strawberry-vines sent out their runners over the rock, the surface of which is on a level with the turf, just as over the ground. Of course they could not take root, but they went through all the motions of taking root; the little clusters of leaves developed at intervals, the rootlets showed their points or stood at "attention," and the runners pushed out two or three feet over the barren surface and then seemed to hesitate like a traveler in the desert whose strength begins to fail. The first knot, or, one might say, the first encampment, was about one foot from the last one upon the turf, the next one about eight inches farther in; then the distance dropped to six inches, then to four. I think the runner finally gave it up and stopped reaching out. Each group of leaves apparently draws its main sustenance from the one next behind it, and when this one fails to reach the soil it loses heart and can give little succor to the next in front. The result is that the stools become smaller and smaller, and the distances between them less and less, down the whole line.

Nature's methods are seen in the little as well as in the big, and these little purple runners of the vine pushing out in all directions show the all-round-the-circle efforts of Nature as clearly as do the revolving orbs in sidereal space. Her living impulses go out in all directions. She scatters her seeds upon the barren as well as upon fertile spots. She sends rains and dews upon the sea as well as upon the land. She knows not our parsimony nor our prudence. We say she is blind, but without eyes she is all-seeing; only her creatures who live to particular ends, and are limited to particular spheres, have need of eyes. Nature has all time and all space and all ends. Delays and failure she knows not. If the runners of her strawberries do not reach their goal, the trouble corrects itself; they finally stop searching for it in that direction, and the impulse of the plant goes out stronger and fuller on other sides.