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# 2019-08-30 - Discovery by John. K. Terres
Someone bought this book for me from a thrift store in Roseburg for
$0.75. The editor, John K. Terres, invited living naturalists to
share stories of formative experiences and peak moments in their
lives as naturalists. 36 out of 40 naturalists responded. I wish
John Muir had been alive at that time. Reading the stories, i
noticed several patterns. Most of the stories revealed an awareness
of rampant habitat destruction, species extinction, and general
misuse of the planet Earth by humanity.
"Each person's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently
uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the
deepest joys they are susceptible of. Though they converse only with
moles and fungi, and disgrace their relatives, it is no matter if
that person knows that is steel to their flint." --Henry David
Thoreau
# Chapter 1, Wildlife wonders of Texas by Clarence Cottam
Each fact and facet of nature discovered and understood becomes a
window through which man may discover the infinite. An ancient
Persian poet said that if he had only two loaves of bread he should
sell one and buy hyacinths for his soul. Humanity needs more
hyacinths and understanding of life and its purpose. In this
troubled world mankind needs the peace and serenity that can be found
in nature.
I have sensed the joy that comes from exploration, discovery, and the
feeling of being myself a part of nature.
# Chapter 5, A great naturalist and the long-tailed tree mouse by
# Walter P. Taylor
> Something hidden, go and find it
> Go and look behind the ranges.
> Something lost behind the ranges
> Lost and waiting for you. Go!
To one obsessed with a desire to look behind the ranges, and see what
is really there, the life of a field naturalist, zoologist, and
ecologist is pleasant, satisfying, and in short, fun. In traveling
about in most of the United States, Canada, the Pacific, parts of
Asia, and the Near East, i have had an unusual opportunity to read as
best as i could at first hand, a good many pages in the book of
nature. Through the kindly indulgence and encouragement of my
understanding parents, and the boundless vitality and unbelievable
industry of my first science teacher, a great naturalist, the late
Joseph Grinnell, i became inspired with a keen desire to become a
biologist.
After these early experiences with Grinnell, there was never any
serious question in my mind what my vocation would be. My own life
history has exemplified a sort of progression in enthusiasms. I have
been, at various times, passionately interested in birds, mammals,
forest, grasslands, camping, travel, books, biological field work,
religion, the humanities, civics, conservation, and even politics--i
have been broadly concerned with the interrelationships between man
and other living things, both plants and animals. More than that, i
have been attracted by the manifestations of the great stream of
matter and energy which flows restlessly through man, his living
associates, and, in fact, through all of nature and the universe.
In 1890 a new species of Phenacomys called longicaudus, because of
its unusually long tail, was described by Dr. W. P. True in the
Proceedings of the United States National Museum. This was on the
basis of a specimen taken at Marshfield, Coos County, Oregon. And so
we learned about the long-tailed tree mouse, unmistakably a
Phenacomys, but one whose habits notably differed from all of the
others. For, of all the members of this great subfamily, Phenacomys
longicaudus was unique in its choice of trees in which to live.
# Chapter 19, Escape at three arch rocks by Olaus J. Murie
Olaus J. Murie, Director of the Wilderness Society, lives at Moose,
Wyoming. He was born at Moorhead, Minnesota, March 1, 1889, and
attended Pacific University at Forest Grove, Oregon, where he majored
in zoology. He traveled on expeditions for the Carnegie Museum,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Labrador and Hudson Bay and later served
in World War I as a balloon observer. In 1920 he was sent to Alaska
by the U.S. Biological Survey to study Alaska-Yukon caribou. He
retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1949 to accept the
directorship of the Wilderness Society, and in that year, Pacific
University conferred on him an honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
Dr. Murie is an author and artist who has illustrated his own
books--The Elk of North America; A Field Guide to Animal Tracks; The
Alaska-Yukon Caribou, and others. Among his honors are the Aldo
Leopold Medal of the Wildlife Society and the Audubon Medal of the
National Audubon Society, awarded him for "distinguished service to
conservation."
Escape At Three Arch Rocks
"Don't you want to go with me to inspect Three Arch Rocks?"
Since I was young, and eager for anything that promised adventure, my
response was automatic. "Of course!"
L. Alva Lewis was in 1913 in charge of the federal refuges in Oregon,
and I was working for William L. Finley, then State Game Warden and
also one of the foremost lecturers on birds and a great
conservationist. Lewis and I speedily made our arrangements, and on
July 1, a motor launch took us out from the nearby coast town and
helped us get ashore on Three Arch Rocks with our equipment and a
small skiff. They would call for us again in a matter of five days.
Three Arch Rocks, comprising a group of three small rocks islets off
the Oregon coast, rising several hundreds of feet into the air, all
made up of cliffs and ledges where sea birds nested, is a federal
bird refuge. Our camp was on a broad shelf well above high-tide mark
on the outer of these three islets. We had sleeping bags, food and
water, and all necessary equipment for photographing and banding the
sea birds, which were there in thousands.
We didn't try to go anywhere that first day but fixed up our camp and
explored around the camp island. Next morning early, with our light
skiff, we eagerly set off for the second rock, with all our
photographic and bird banding gear. There, on a low rocky shore was
a colony of sea lions also. We hauled our boat well up and proceeded
to photograph sea lions, murres, cormorants, and the clownish little
puffins which had their burrows in the sod on the flat places.
Time has a way of flying when you are engrossed in interesting
subjects. We had placed aluminum bands on the legs of many nestling
birds, we had taken numerous photographs, and had climbed over most
of the fascinating island, until it was way past noon. Then I
noticed the weather. A west wind had sprung up, and there was
already a heavy sea running.
"Hey, Lewis, we've got to get out of here right now; look at that
water!"
My friend Lewis had some kind of hip ailment and used crutches. He
got around very gamely but very slowly. We managed to get down to
our boat and take off. This was in the lee of the island so was not
very difficult. We pulled around and approached our campsite on the
outer rock. I was dismayed to see that there, on the windward side,
the water was already rough. Something had to be done right away if
we were to do anything at all!
"I'll back you up to the rock on one of the incoming swells," I said;
"then you get out on the rock as fast as you can and I will pull away
as the swell comes down. Then I'll come in on a later swell and hop
out with the painter [1] in my hand."
[1] A rope, or "tether," usually at the bow, for tying a boat fast to
a shore-point; also often used as a towline. --The Editor.
It was a tense moment, choosing the swell to ride in on, but I
finally took a chance and came in to the rock. Lewis started to
climb out, but because of his infirmity he was a little slow. He was
halfway out, partly on the rock, partly in the boat, when to my
consternation I realized that I was lingering too long. The ocean
swell was about to fall away in the steep drop down the cliff, but I
couldn't pull away, and as I waited for him to get out I knew it was
too late.
The water dropped suddenly, the stern hung up on a rock, and the boat
with all its contents was catapulted into the sea. The last I heard
as I went down was a loud, earnest curse from the direction of the
rock.
There must have been a strong undertow, for when I came to the
surface I found myself, fortunately, far out from the dangerous cliff
line. In the meantime the next wave had shoved Lewis safely up on
the camp ledge.
All around me our equipment bobbled, still afloat. I fastened one of
the life preservers to the boat, swam around and gathered cameras and
tripods, and tied them to the straps of the life preserver. All the
bird banding records for the day, written on cards, were floating
about me, and I gathered these all into a pack and shoved them inside
my shirt. Lewis's crutches and one oar I stored under a seat so they
wouldn't float away. Then I climbed into the submerged boat, which
let me down to about my waist in water, but saved me from continuous
swimming. With one oar used as a paddle, I worked the boar still
farther out from the dangerous landing place. I knew I couldn't make
a landing with a boat full of water.
Up to this time my only feeling was one of chagrin at having let this
thing happen, and I was very busy taking care of the equipment as
well as I could, getting away from the dangerous waters. I shouted
something apologetic to Lewis, crouched there on the ledge, and then
paddled out to sea, where the waves were now large, but at least were
not breaking. I remember a silly grin on my face as I looked up at
my partner, and felt a deep gratitude that he had landed safely on
the rock.
But a change came over me now. I had done all the things I could
think of, and now I sat there, out in the growing storm, looking
about me at a hostile sea and longingly surveying the rocks about
which the waves were already lashing in white foam. For the first
time a great fear swept over me. What could I do, out here with a
half-sunken boat?
I decided to have a look at the lee side of the island, in the hope
that there would be a little cove or a comparatively smooth shore
line; any way to get my feet on solid rock somewhere. I laboriously
paddled around, well out from the island, but found that the boat,
under water, would not automatically stay upright. As each big wave
came, I leaned against it and then leaned the other way as it passed
by. Thus I managed to keep things right side up and came in sight of
the lee side of the island. But considerable time must have elapsed.
The storm had increased in vigor, and there was now "white water"
all along the rocks on the lee side too. Now I really was scared,
nearly panicky. I looked at the rough water all about me. I looked
at the mainland, about a mile away, where huge breakers were pounding
on the shore. There was not much choice, even if I could last long
enough to get in where the breakers were. I began to shiver, not
such much from the ice water I believe as from the emotions that were
now welling up inside. I didn't know what to do.
Then suddenly a thought came to me. This bird reservation is known
as Three Arch Rocks. That means that each rock has a tunnel through
it, formed by the pounding of the waves over the centuries. Inside
these arches or tunnels, the water would be going up and down as on
the outside, but surely the interior of the island would not be
receiving the full brunt of the storm and probably there would be no
white water. At any rate it was something to do.
I required several acres of water surface on which to turn about, and
it was hard to keep the boat going on any steady course because it
was a foot or more below the surface, but I headed for the opening of
the cavern in the middle rock. By some miracle I hit the opening
squarely.
Here I came into a different world. A great avalanche of murres came
flying out from the cavern at my approach, startled from their
nesting ledges. Many of them hit the water before they gained the
entrance, and I could see them swimming by me. How I envied them
their abilities!
How I would have liked to take to the air at that moment, but I
continued on into the archway, and sure enough, the water rose and
fell along the cliffs, but in a serene and reasonable fashion. I
looked around me and picked a ledge that the swells neared each time,
and each time that I went up in the boat on one, I placed a piece of
equipment up on the ledge, until all was safe. I planned to leap
then, onto the ledge, holding the painter in my hand. However, I had
become very stiff, and found myself ignobly crawling out onto the
rocky shelf on my hands and knees!
But, I had the boat painter in my hand, and after watching the action
of the water for a while, when the boat came up on one of the waves,
I took a tight turn of the rope around a projecting rock and held on.
As the water went down, the boat was tipped, and all the water
poured out. When the next wave came in, it left the boat high and
dry on the level with me. Once more I had a buoyant empty craft with
which to try to overcome our disaster.
On one of the trips of the boat on an upswell, I jumped in, gathered
in all the equipment, and started out of the cave. "Now stop me!" I
thought exultingly. I felt a confidence which was probably not
entirely warranted by the situation, but getting into a dry boat
encouraged me so that I felt I could tackle anything. I knew very
well I could no longer land at our camp, but I got out both oars and
headed for the most likely place on the lee side of our camp island.
It was a furious scene, a turmoil of immense waves, dark clouds
scudding before the wind, and night coming on. But, I had a
manageable boat now and bent every ounce of strength to the oars,
studied the shore line to get the behavior of the water lashing upon
it, then pulled along on an incoming wave. With the painter in my
hand I leaped out upon the store. I was standing on solid rock, and
on our camp island too! I drew the boat up as high as I could, with
a little premonition that it would not escape high tide, but it was
the best I could do single-handed.
A high rocky ridge separated me from the camp side of the island, and
I started climbing. By relating in short trips I finally arrived on
top with all the gear. Now I remembered that the cliff leading down
to the campsite was one which had been scaled before only once, by a
famous ornithologist-mountaineer. But such was my enthusiasm and
exultation at this time that in the dusky light, I brought down over
that cliff crutches, cameras, and tripods, by relays!
But first of all I looked down toward our camp. I saw Lewis there,
stopping over, working at something. I found out later that he was
preparing match heads for setting off flashlights that night, to try
to attract the attention of people on the mainland, even though the
nearest settlement was around a bend of the coast, miles away. He
had also been firing his pistol in a desperate effort to get
attention, and I had not even heard the shots. I also learned that
without his crutches he had managed to get to the top of the island
to see where I had gone. At that particular time I must have been in
the tunnel, for he saw no sign of me and assumed I had drowned.
Now suddenly there I was, yelling at him in a very hilarious voice
and waving his crutches at him from the top of the ridge!
The smile on his face when he looked up and saw me was something I
shall always remember!
# Chapter 22, Search for the rare ivorybill by Don Eckleberry
The woods, she said, were full of "hants." But the only spirit i
could hear was the voice of doom for this entire natural community,
epitomized by that poor lone ivorybill (which should have been
feeding well-grown young these days, had she a mate) and vocalized by
the shrill squeals of the donkey engine which worked all night
bringing out the logs.
# Chapter 26, On becoming a naturalist by F. Fraser Darling
This period of life was a dangerous one, in that "shades of the
prison house gather round the growing child." There was the constant
pressure from elders: "Yes, but what are you going to do seriously in
life?" And the growing child had lengthened their legs to the extent
that they could get father afield. Northern moors and mounting
weather disturbed the spirit again and drew one on. A cliff of sea
birds on a northern island was almost a shattering experience in its
utter reality of light, smell, and a composite sound as of praise.
("But what are you going to do seriously in life?" had so little to
do with reality.)
# Chapter 33, The marsh that came back by Ira N. Gabrielson
Dr. Ira N. Gabrielson, President of the Wildlife Management
Institute, Washington, D.C., was born in Sioux Rapids, Iowa,
September 27, 1889. He was graduated from Morningside College in
1912, and after teaching high school biology for three years, he
entered the federal service with the U.S. Biological Survey, now
called the Fish and Wildlife Service. In his work as a government
field biologist he became recognized as an authority on birds,
mammals, and plants, particularly of the western United States. In
1935 he was named Director of the newly created Fish and Wildlife
Service, from which he retired in 1946 to accept his present post.
He has traveled extensively in North America and is noted as a keen
field naturalist and capable administrator of wildlife resources. In
1936 Oregon State College conferred on him an honorary degree of
Doctor of Science; in 1941, Morningside College honored him with an
LL.D. He is the author or coauthor of six books of which one of his
latest is The Birds of Alaska.
The Marsh That Came Back
It is a terrible thing to see a great marsh die. It is one of the
most heartening experiences to see such a marsh, once dead, restored
to life. Two of the unforgettable experiences of my life were
watching both happen to one of the great natural marshes of North
America--Malheur Lake in eastern Oregon.
It was late summer in 1919 when I first saw Malheur in all its glory.
The marsh was not completely full of water, but there was enough so
that I could see great expanses of open water from Cole Island, a
point which I reached almost dry-shod by carefully picking my way
around the wettest spots in the shallow channels between the island
and the shore. It is impossible to forget the impression when,
looking through my binoculars, I swept the great expanse of water
ahead of me.
It was dotted, and in many places almost covered with birds. Great
fleets of white pelicans outnumbered all other birds, including
scattered family flocks of Canada geese and the snaky black
cormorants sliding along through the water, sometimes with only their
heads and necks showing above the surface. Herons of many kinds
stood in the shallows, some fishing, others just enjoying a siesta.
Ducks were there in myriads--mallards, pintails, gadwalls, and
cinnamon teal, red-heads, and ruddy ducks. These seemed to be the
dominant species at the time, although scattered among them I saw
canvasbacks, widgeons, and green-winged teal. Coots and Florida
gallinules were visible in any direction I turned my glasses. Shore
birds were more difficult to see, although the taller, long-legged
avocets, stilts, and curlews were conspicuous even among the more
numerous ducks. It took real searching to find the smaller fry among
the shore birds, but they were there too. One had only to turn his
binocular on the nearer mud flats or shallow bars to see western and
pectoral sandpipers, Wilson's phalaropes, and many others. This was
truly a great bird concentration, the first of such magnitude that I
had ever seen. I stood on the island drinking in the great living
spectacle before me until it was too dark to see clearly. This was
Malheur, the Malheur about which Bill Finley, Oregon's great bird
conservationist, had written so vividly years before. But it was a
Malheur that was doomed.
It was doomed partly by drought and partly by the increasing
diversion of its life-giving water. Malheur Lake is the sump formed
from the runoff from two rivers, the Blitzen from the south and the
Silvies from the north. The Silvies had long been cut off during the
summer, but the spring flood waters from both rivers together with
the flow of the Blitzen were enough to maintain the marsh water at
some level, except in periods of the driest years.
With the increasing diversion of water from the Blitzen to establish
irregular water rights, Malheur began to shrink. It was not a sudden
and merciful death; it was slow and agonizing, with occasional years
in which the patient showed some improvement. But in the early
1930's when the great drought struck, Malheur became mostly a memory.
By midsummer each ear, it was little more than an alkali flat; in
the wetter years, when a little more water reached the lake, there
might be a stinking mudhole, but this was only a remnant of a once
great natural resource. The birds were gone, together with all the
other life. As the lake shrank, the crowded fishes and frogs
provided a feast for the birds that lived on them, for the birds had
a concentrated food supply until the final catastrophe. Then the
oxygen content of the lake became so low that the fishes died by
thousands and tens of thousands. Now there was no more food, and the
birds were forced to go elsewhere. It was a tragedy to watch, the
dwindling of the birds as one area of marsh habitat after another
died from lack of water. Many of the aquatic plants were tenacious,
and only a little would start them growing again, but the water never
lasted long enough to really revive most of them. Gradually the area
in which plants disappeared widened and became more and more desolate
until those of us who had known and loved Malheur avoided the place
almost as one of pestilence.
In those years, every conservationist who lived in Oregon had the
restoration of Malheur Lake high on their priority list, although
hopes were almost at the vanishing point. When the opportunity came
to make recommendations to the President's Committee on Wildlife
Restoration, everyone, including Bill Finley and Stanley Jewett,
another Oregon conservationist who had long fought to save Malheur
Lake, made it the first consideration of any restoration program
attempted in Oregon. To do that required buying the "P" Ranch that
controlled the flow of the Blitzen River. The great "P" Ranch,
however, had also fallen on evil days in the drought years and was
not a money-making proposition.
In some almost miraculous way, the U.S. Biological Survey got enough
money to buy the entire ranch. I vividly remember the excitement in
the Portland office of that agency when the telegram arrived from Jay
N. "Ding" Darling, then Chief of the Survey, saying that the ranch
had been acquired, and that we were authorized to start the water
flowing back into the lake. There were rumors that there would be
opposition to it from some of the lake-bed squatters, but Stan Jewett
and I started for the "P" Ranch, got the keys, and opened the gate on
the main diversion dam above the lake. For both of us it was a
moment of tremendous satisfaction to see the water flowing into the
channel that led to the thirsty lake bed.
Then came the anticlimax. The water did not take too long to
traverse the few miles of channel that lay between this last dam and
the lake, but when it got to the lake bed it disappeared. It ran for
days, and the days stretched into weeks, before the great mass of
thoroughly dried-out peat of the lake bed had soaked up enough so
that we could see water in the deepest of its great weathered cracks.
Long before spring the water commenced to show in places, and it had
spread over a considerable area of the marsh that first summer.
If it had been a heartbreaking thing to see Malheur die, it was an
exhilarating experience to see how quickly it could come back. There
must have been, in spite of the long years of drought, some plant
roots there with life in them. It is difficult otherwise to account
for the big bunches of cattails, tules, and other emergent plants
that suddenly sprang up. The ground must also have been full of
viable seeds of the submerged water plants because by the end of the
first summer the lake had become almost as full of sago pondweed and
other choice duck foods as it had been in the days before the lake
disappeared. The water life which still existed in the Blitzen
Valley reappeared in the lake, and soon frogs and fishes became
numerous again. Within two or three years all birds that formerly
nested at Malheur had returned. The great squadrons of snow and
Canada geese and myriads of ducks that had stopped there before it
dried up returned, and Malheur again became a great marsh, teeming
and throbbing with life as it had been before its destruction. It
was a never-to-be-forgotten lesson of the power of man to destroy, an
also of the power of man--with the help of nature--to restore.
author: Terres, John K.
LOC: QL50 .T4
tags: book,non-fiction,outdoor
title: Discovery
# Tags
book
non-fiction
outdoor
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