By Anne Kilgannon
I’ve been on a journey of sorts all over the countryside, reading books about earlier-day nature writers and the places they loved, while sitting on my own porch. The link between descriptive writers of place with the work of conserving the lands, waters and plant life with the creatures that so enthralled these writers, was sometimes direct and meant to be a call to preservation. But just as often the writing was (I won’t say “merely”) an inducement to marvel, treasure and simply learn about a special place, with an indirect—conscious or unconscious—plea to save it. We could talk all day about which is most effective as a spur to action; I would argue that both are necessary. People save what they love, but first they have to discover what they might love. And then they need strategy and plans for a crusade.
Happily, the literature is rich with both kinds of stories, heroes and examples for our inspiration and appreciation.
Briefly, I’ve read about Margery Stoneman Douglas who was renowned for her writing and activism in the effort to recognize and then save the Florida Everglades from development. (Like many, I first heard her name as the school location of a horrific shooting. She deserves to be remembered for so much more.) Her recollections were gathered and edited by John Rothchild in Voice of the River, a delightful look back to an eventful life. What a character! What a force! Douglas has a long list of books to look for, the most noted being The Everglades: River of Grass.
Another book that has occupied me through my stay-at-home is a biography of John Burroughs, An American Naturalist, by Edward Renehan, Jr. Burroughs is not as well remembered as his contemporary John Muir but famous and beloved in his day for his charming descriptions of woods, fields, trout streams, and birds in upstate New York and in the Washington D.C. area, as well as images gathered from a famous expedition to Alaska and from other travels. He knew Emerson and Walt Whitman, John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and surprisingly, Henry Ford, and the famous writers of his day. His life was an extraordinary journey of personal discovery through outward immersion in Nature. While his style of writing may seem outdated, understanding his life and influence has value. His prolific outpouring of Nature essays published widely and collected into books did have an immeasurable impact on the movement to create reserves, parks, and other areas set aside for wildlife in his time. He gave generously of his time and attention to students who went on to work for conservation buoyed by his vision and passion.
A third, rather slim book, Eastern Naturalist in the West: Dallas Lore Sharp, 1912, by Worth Mathewson, combines both these approaches: lyrical descriptions that arouse an urgent desire to know these places and an account of how they were saved or noted in their time. Mathewson, himself a nature writer of distinction, has here built on Sharp’s 1914 book, Where Rolls The Oregon, wherein Sharp recounts a remarkable journey he made to Oregon in the company of William Lovell Finley, at that time the State Game Warden, to explore this wild land. Sharp fashioned his adventures into articles first published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine where they reached thousands of readers, and later collected them into a book. Mathewson reprints the articles as a foundation for his own commentary on both Sharp and Finley, but also supplements his discussion by including the extant letters Sharp wrote to his wife and sons about what he was seeing and learning. So we get layers of examination: Sharp’s private travelogue remarks, his published account, and then a present-day reflection and contextual analysis of the trip and the work of both men. It’s an impressive multidimensional approach that creates a window into what Oregon was like at the turn of the century and who we have to thank for whatever is still thriving today due to their efforts, as well as what we ourselves might see and experience should we have the luck to travel there.
Sharp was born in New Jersey and lived his adult life in the environs of Boston where he was in turns a minister and professor of English, but foremost an author of numerous magazine articles and books on Nature appreciation. (Interestingly, he wrote a study of John Burroughs, The Seer of Slabsides. William Finley also knew Burroughs. Small world!) Finley was a renowned wildlife photographer, writer, and activist. I first came across his name reading early Audubon journals; Finley was president of the Oregon Audubon Society and included Washington State in his regional reports to headquarters about his work to police plume hunters who were devastating bird populations at Malheur and Klamath lakes. These are heart-rendering and hair-raising descriptions of the few brave wildlife agents against the relentless and unscrupulous marauders of the white egrets and other birds of the west whose feathers were prized as adornments of fashion. This book rounds out more of Finley’s long career of working to save the natural treasures of Oregon through the creation of bird reserves and restrictions on hunting and other means.
Finley does take Sharp to Malheur to look for surviving egrets but first he takes him to Three Arches Rocks, which they reached by a small boat making a precarious landing on the rocks through a rough sea. Then they climbed the vertical rocks made slippery by ages of guano deposits from the congregation of seabirds who make their home there. Sharp does not spare us the sensations of his experience, a quick reprise of which will give you the power of his pen:
“Here, in the rocky caverns, was conceived and brought forth a life as crude and raw and elemental as the rock itself. It covered every crag. I clutched it in my hands. I crushed it under my feet; it was thick in the air about me. My narrow path up the face of the rock was a succession of sea-bird rookeries, of crowded eggs, and huddled young, hairy or naked or wet from the shell. Every time my fingers felt for a crack overhead, they touched something warm that rolled or squirmed; every time my feet moved under me for a hold, they pushed in among top-shaped eggs…”
Sharp is in agony over the destruction he is clumsily causing, but up they climb, nevertheless. His chagrin and fear are heightened by the fact that one of his young sons climbs alongside him; he is deeply aware that his parental anguish is akin to the screaming of the birds whose chicks are endangered by these large-footed beings thrusting through the rookeries. Sharp’s emotional response is evidenced again and again throughout his writing. He does not put himself outside of the natural world he is describing but locates himself squarely within what he is observing, hoping not to harm but knowing his presence is not without impact. It is a powerful accounting. This very personal reckoning is one of the great lights of his writing. And we see these western lands through his special lens of experience and conscience, of an Eastern sensibility examining this rougher but no less beautiful land. Finley challenges him and Sharp rises to the occasion. It is a fascinating meeting of East and West, of a shared vision and passion.
All three books offer different experiences and perspectives; all three encourage more exploration and model ways to engage in nature study and engage with others in saving as much of the world as we can. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before; as we pause and wait for safer times, we have time now to encounter some of these giants and ordinary people who made a difference in their day out of love and immersion in our wild world.
