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Nikon and The Brevard Nature Alliance present the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival Brevard Community College, Titusville Campus 1311 North U.S. Highway 1, Titusville January 24 - 28, 2007 -- Titusville, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife. |
Return to Wild America
By Scott Weidensaul
Ever since the days of Catesby and William Bartram in the 18th century, Florida has been a crossroads of naturalists, but rarely has the Space Coast area seen the kind of star power that it did in May 1953, when two men in a green Ford station wagon rolled into eastern Florida. They were in the middle of a trip that began as a way to repay a debt and became a legendary journey that resulted in one of the most popular nature books of the 20th century.
Behind the wheel was Roger Tory Peterson, already riding the crest of fame generated by the 1934 publication of his groundbreaking Field Guide to the Birds. With him was renowned English ornithologist James Fisher, whom Peterson had met several years earlier while working on his first European field guide. The two men had struck up a fast friendship, and James guided Peterson from Lapland to the Mediterranean and beyond.
"So much had I seen of wild Europe, and especially wild Britain in the company of my colleague, that I had a growing desire to reciprocate, to show him my own continent," Peterson wrote. "If you come to America," I suggested, "I will meet you in Newfoundland and conduct you around the continent. We will go as far as the Yukon Delta and the Pribilofs - by way of Mexico - and you will see a more complete cross section of wild America than any other Englishman, and all but a few North Americans, have ever seen."
And so they did. They began in the spring of 1953 on the seabird cliffs of Cape St. Mary's in Newfoundland and ended three and a half months later in the middle of the Bering Sea. And fortunately for all of us, they set down their experiences in their bestselling book, Wild America, which was published in the fall of 1955 - a snapshot of the continent's wild heart that has been considered a classic of nature writing ever since.
Least Auklets crowd a rock on the Pribilof Islands of Alaska, one of the many stops on Scott Weidensaul's search for the continent's natural soul, Return to Wild America. ©Scott Weidensaul I first read Wild America as a kid, with a kid's understanding and with a kid's jealousy and longing. But now, when I read Wild America, it is with those past layers of excitement and admiration but with something else keener and still more evocative - the realization that Fisher and Peterson saw a continent and a culture at a turning point. In the years following World War II, America's nascent conservation movement began to emerge as a national force, drawing its strength from ordinary people who found enjoyment in amateur nature study and who were increasingly driven to rectify the mistakes of the past.
But how much of the wild America that they celebrated have we preserved, and how much have we lost? I realized that, as the 50th anniversary of their trip approached several years ago, that milestone would provide a perfect opportunity to retrace their footsteps and take the pulse of the continent's wild core.
You might expect this would be a depressing journey, a catalog of all we've lost and are in danger of losing - and there have been setbacks, without a doubt. But wild America is still out there, and like Peterson and Fisher before me, I found much to celebrate as well, including the remarkable strides for conservation that we've made in the past 50 years - and the need for even greater vigilance today.
Keynote Presentation: January 27, 6:15pm-7:45pm: BCC Auditorium; $10.00
2007 Festival Articles
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