CHAPTER
1 – First Impressions
Right
after World War 2 I was left at my grandparents’ home
in New Brunswick, while my parents and older brother went on
to London (Canada) to build a home and a family business. During
my
9-month stay there I learned to read, and devoured everything
I could find to satisfy my curiosity. A memorable exposure
was to
an advertisement from a brewing company which chose Conservation
of Nature as its theme. I recall my amazement to discover that
the whooping crane had almost become extinct due to excessive
hunting
and loss of habitat from drained wetlands. I sent for a free
brochure from the company, and learned more about this endangered
bird. It
was a first impression for a young and tender mind that perhaps
all was not perfect in the natural world.
Shortly after I joined the rest of my family in London, we moved
out of the city to a new home on a 5-acre pasture along the Thames
River. The date is indelibly fixed in my memory: it was February
25, 1947, and I had turned 9 just 3 weeks earlier. Imagine the impact
of this move on a growing boy who had moved every 6- to 18-months
all through the war years. We were finally putting down roots in
a lovely home right on the banks of a charming river, and the rolling
fields, interspersed with white oak trees and sumacs, seemed to
continue without end.
My
brother, Lowell, was 5 years my senior, so there was little
sibling rivalry, but
I was especially attracted to
one of his books
called Indiancraft, by Ben Hunt. I would imagine growing up on
these beautiful riverside hills in a teepee, and wearing Indian
moccasins
as I tracked wildlife. I admired the Indian’s respect for
Nature.
Later
I bought my brother’s canoe, and I kept it locked to
a willow tree beside the river. Fortunately, my parents were fairly
permissive about my using it during the daytime, but I knew better
than to even ask them if I could use it at night. Instead, I just
slipped out of my bedroom window and climbed down an obliging oak
tree, only to creep away like an Indian in the night and explore
the river in its predawn mists. I took pride in my skill as a canoeist,
and I used the silent “Indian stroke” to prevent the
sound of my paddle, dripping water, from giving away my presence.
Sometimes, I would come to within paddle-distance of a great
blue heron, and we would look at each other through the rising
mist, my admiring gaze locked onto his eyes filled with growing
alarm
as I came closer and closer. It became a game of how close I
could
come before their innate fear made them fly off with a loud squawk.
I was privileged to have grown up in such an idyllic setting. While
it provided me with a pantheistic respect for Nature, it did not
prepare me for what came later in my life: glaring evidence of that
destructive side in man
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