Guest Posthumous

A little something that my Dad, who passed away in 2007, sent me several years before that about his life-forming experience at age 10. He became an educator but remained a non-professional botanist and naturalist, knowledgeable enough to give speeches to clubs in his community.

*****

When I was about ten years old in about 1951 and 1952 I was determined to
become a nuclear engineer, and design a flying vehicle powered by nuclear
reactions.  I had developed several prototype designs that appeared to
contain all that was needed for the concept to become a reality.  Since I
grew up in Chicago it was an easy task to obtain a copy of Enrico Fermi's
design for his prototype nuclear reactor, which was housed at the University
of Chicago.  I incorporated his design into my concept model, and was ready
for the detailing that I was prepared to complete during the summer of 1952.

My neighbor and buddy, Dickie Nielsen, and his family were set to enjoy a
camping trip in late June - just after school was out for the summer - on
the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, at a spot called Michigan Dunes State
Park.  Dickie asked me if I would like to tag along to see what camping was
like.  I had never really been outside the Chicago city limits; and I felt
that this was a challenge I couldn't pass by.  My knowledge of birds
consisted in being able to distinguish between pigeons and "blackbirds"
(which included starlings, grackles and several species of real blackbirds),
and recognizing a gull if I saw it.  (It had to be a gull if it wasn't a
pigeon or a blackbird.)  So I went along to the Michigan Dunes.

When I arrived I was astonished by all the trees, and the modestly sized
lake that was separated from Lake Michigan by a narrow sand bar.  The small
lake was surrounded on three sides by the fully leafed-out trees - all of
which looked the same to me, but which was in fact a marvelous mix of
maples, elms, sycamores, and a wealth of other broadleaved deciduous giants,
which I came to distinguish before Dickie, his family and I left the
campground several days later.  The trees were filled with the ringing songs
of an infinity of birds, all of which were unknown to me, and none of which
could I tell from all the others - even after the several-days' stay was
over.  But I believe the chorus consisted of wrens, warblers, robins,
vireos, chickadees, and the other small members of the standard Eastern
woodland collection.

I can still feel the air today, a half-century later.  It was warm, full of
moisture, friendly.  It was unlike anything I experienced n Chicago, only
one hundred miles to the southwest.  It was like a mother's embrace that
made everything alright, even when there was nothing that was not alright.

And then, on the first evening, the sun set over the small lake.  It became
redder and redder, and more compressed and dilated at the same time, as it
sank toward the water.  And then - it disappeared over the sandbar into Lake
Michigan, which consumed the sun as surely and endlessly as if it were the
Pacific Ocean which now has replaced that prototype sunset in my life.  But
the afterglow lasted in the trees and along the small lake margin, and the
songbirds provided the scene with their final choral crescendos.  The air
now contained its very first hint of a new coolness; and I knew I had just
been blessed with the first of an entirely new kind of experience that I
could not even have imagined until that first sunsetted evening.

Several days later I was back in my bedroom in Chicago, looking at my
design for a nuclear flying machine.  It was instantly clear to me that this
was of an inferior order of things in the universe; and I threw both my
design and Fermi's nuclear reactor design into the trash, affirming to
myself that never again would I let such mechanical things interfere with my
new and now-growing understanding of the natural world.  Over the course of
that summer of 1952, instead of detailing an engineering drawing I came to
distinguish between blackbirds and grackles, and started taking long bicycle
rides to all the natural areas that were attainable in a day's round trip
from my home.

From that brief stay in Michigan I have never lost the sense of the
ineffable in the natural world, and to this day have not given up the search
for greater and greater understanding.  It is no coincidence that I live
today in a redwood forest and continue the search.  I still frequently thank
Dickie Nielsen and his family for giving me the gift of seeing the natural
world for the first time.

Dad