Escaping into Nature: The Making of a Sportsman-Conservationist and Environmental Historian

Chapter Eight: Back in Academia and Providing Historical Models for Today's Sportsmen (and Sportswomen-Conservationists: Mainly Appalachian Ohio, 1988-2012

227 CHAPTER EIGHT Back in Academia and Providing Historical Models for Today’s Sportsmen (and Sportswomen)-Conservationists: Mainly Appalachian Ohio, 1988-2012 A fter living in affluent places like Spring Lake on the “Jersey Shore,” where Andi grew up, and Coral Gables and Fairfield, moving to Appalachia, where poverty was so evident and widespread, was something of a culture shock for the both of us. We adapted quickly, however, to our new environment. Because the per capita income of people living in the Chillicothe area was well below that of communities in which we had lived before, our modest salaries as an entry-level assistant professor and an R.N. working in a nursing home allowed us to make the down payment on a home we could never have afforded in those other places. The house we chose was on a one-acre lot in town (where the public schools were supposedly better than out in the country) and within a ten-minute walk of O.U.C. Now with our own home, we had a feeling of security and permanence that we had lacked when we lived in the Connecticut Audubon house, with the implicit five-year timetable for vacating the building hanging over our heads. Though Carrie and Chris have grown up and moved out long ago, Andi and I still live there today. Not only did our new home in Chillicothe meet our needs on the inside, it met mine on the outside as well. I now had my own big backyard that I could let grow wild into a lush oasis for wildlife. And after a little searching, I located a nursery that Escaping into Nature 228 supplied my old favorites, the quick-growing London plane tree, and had two planted right outside my bedroom window, where I could see them every morning when I woke up and experience the same sense of stability and connectedness to the natural world I had felt as a boy back in Forest Hills. InadditiontothemoresecurefutureIbelievedwenowhadinChillicothe, I also found the surrounding hill country a fascinating new environment to explore. Particularly appealing were the sycamore-bordered creeks beneath high ridges that contained that great battler, the smallmouth bass, as well as the flathead catfish (Pylodictis olivaris), a species that can reach a weight of more than fifty pounds! There is something really exciting about catching a big fish in a small body of water, particularly if it is done on rod and reel rather than with the heavy trotlines used by most fishers in this area. For years, I was unsuccessful in this quest until I became friends with Ben Eberts, an expert fisherman and hunter, who guided me to some catfish weighing up to thirty-five pounds. And there were, of course, the proverbial “ones that got away” that probably weighed much more. Hunting, too, in my new home of southern Ohio could be exciting, and aesthetically pleasing as well, because of the beauty of the surroundings. Sitting against a big oak on a spring morning, with shafts of sunlight just starting to penetrate down to the forest floor, and watching the hen turkey decoy out in front of us just as the old gobbler Ben has been calling suddenly comes into view and begins to strut, is an unforgettable experience. Whether I shoot well and bag the turkey or miss it entirely, which is surprisingly easy to do, we have outwitted our wary quarry and actively bonded with nature in a way that perhaps only a hunter can fully understand. Though the Scioto River running through Chillicothe is one of the biggest streams, other than the Ohio, in the state, it is not directly on one of the four major flyways for migrating waterfowl. Nevertheless, the river valley and surrounding streams and swamps do attract a fair number of ducks and geese, and I found several special places for waterfowl hunting with decoys that I have returned to year after year. Still, I never lost my love for brant hunting around Jones Inlet on Long Island, and I went back many times from Ohio to this most special of special places. In more recent years, I also hunted for brant and black ducks with my friend Phil Andersen, a professional guide, in the marshes across from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and for eiders with another friend and guide, Chris Whitton, on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Back in...