Naturalist Me

How I Became A Naturalist: I returned home to Freeport, Illinois from the US Army in May 1969. A friend from my boy scout troop, Jeff, served two tours in Vietnam as a medic, after which he also returned to Freeport, arriving a couple of months after me. About once a week he would call and say, "I can't take it anymore; you wanna go?" After spending a year in the boonies, crowds, busy intersections, honking horns, and other signs of civilization that differed from the jungles of southeast Asia seemed foreign to us. We felt more at home in the woods. So we'd head out. Often we built a fire and roasted hot dogs. Sometimes we camped. Jeff had a canoe, and on several occasions we paddled down Yellow Creek, which flows through Stephenson County, to find a spot we had not previously explored.

It was during these jaunts with Jeff that what I term my scientific curiosity kicked in. I remember the exact moment it happened. We had found a patch of woods we wanted to explore, and we tied Jeff's canoe to a tree, and scampered up a wooded hill. I was the first to reach the top--Jeff was still tying up the canoe--and came face to face with a mysterious bird in the lower branches of a pine tree. It looked at me calmly for a few seconds then flitted away. I was intrigued, wondering what this bird could be. The next day I bought a bird book, and carried it with me when we went to the woods. Soon I added tree and flower field guides, and carried all three books in a backpack.

I identified everything that stood still, and while doing so developed an appreciation for nature which hasn't faded after all these years; rather, it has snowballed. The things I learned led to further appreciation for the natural world, which in turn prompted the desire to learn more.

For the previous few years I had been making my living as a musician, but I was married with a child on the way, so it was time for more financial stability. I decided I wanted to work in wildlife management or ecology--something to do with the natural world I had come to love. My uncle, my mom's brother, was a forester in Virginia, and was offered an honorary PHD and became the Director of the Applied Forestry Research Institute, Syracuse University. I wrote to him for advice. He said I could study Ecology, Biology, or Wildlife Management, but from his experience most of the people doing work in those fields had Forestry degrees. So he recommended that I study Forestry, and at the worst I'd get a job related to what I wanted to do.

That made sense to me, so our small family moved to Carbondale, Illinois and set up housekeeping in a rented mobile home. I attended Southern Illinois University and earned a degree in Forestry (with Specialization in Natural Resources Management). That led to a career as a Park Ranger for the US Army Corps of Engineers, a great job from which after twenty-eight years I am retired.

The mystery bird? It was a Black-capped Chickadee.