Now I Remember: Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist , livre ebook

Now I Remember: Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist
by Thornton W. Burgess

First published in 1960
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
Trava2909@gmail.com
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Thornton W. Burgess
Now I Remember


AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
AN AMATEUR NATURALIST
Thornton W. Burgess

To the memory of
ALFRED R. McINTYRE
For whose helpful advice
and guidance as my publisher
through many years I am
deeply indebted

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CHAPTER 1
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Striped Whales
A biography is a life history as seen by others. An autobiographyis a life history seen through the subject’s own eyes. Theone is written objectively. The other is introspective, lackingin true perspective. This I am writing is neither one nor theother, simply a record and review of things and events thatmemory brings to the surface now and again, and such part asI feel they have had in molding my life through more thanfourscore years. It is simply a record by me, of me, for me,and perhaps of no real interest to anyone but me.
I was born on old Cape Cod on January 14, 1874. To a certainextent man is a reflection of his environment. It exerts aninfluence on his character and development that he cannot escape.He may not be aware of it. He may scoff at the idea ofit. But it is there, working through his subconsciousness allthrough life. Especially is this true of the environment of hisyouth. If this has been spent in a fixed locality, say the land ofhis birth, he is for better or worse as much a product of hisnative soil as other living things that spring from it. The atmosphereof his surroundings is an intangible but powerfulfactor in his growth and development.
I am a Cape Codder by birth and by inheritance through along unbroken line of ancestors back to Thomas Burgess, oneof the founders of the oldest town on the Cape, Sandwich.Considerably more than half a century ago I left the Cape, yetin a sense I have never left it. It has been said that Cape Coddersby birth rather than by adoption have salt in their hair,sand between their toes, and herring blood in their veins. Ofthese they never wholly rid themselves, nor do they want to.
Be this as it may, it is true that those who have spent thegreater part of their lives far from the Cape return to it at intervals.They must. It is the homing urge of the herring thatbrooks no denial. They are subject to fits of nostalgia forwhich there is no known cure. It may be brought on by thehigh whine of wind around a corner of buildings; by the fiercespate of rain against a window; by the honking of wild geesein the airways above the city. Others may boast of their ancestrybut the pride of the born Cape Codder is the land of hisbirth.
In this there is something elementary, something of poundingsurf, of shifting sands, the taste of salt on the lips, the flashof sun on distant dunes, the mingled smells of marsh muck,salt hay, and stranded fish, the mewing of gulls, the whistlingof shore birds, the restless rise and fall of the tides, the silverygleam of fresh waters in emerald settings, the resinous odor ofscrub pines. I am sure that no man who was born and grew upon the Cape ever doubts that having created the rest of theworld, God made Cape Cod and called it blessed.
It is a land where the wind-whipped sand of the shore bitesand stings, the beach grass cuts, and the facts of life are hard;but where the sky is blue, the air is soft, and the harshness oflife is tempered by faith—it is where the real and the unrealmeet, and the impossible becomes probable. One can believeanything on the Cape, a blessed relief from the doubts anduncertainties of the present-day turmoil of the outer world. Ifin truth there is a sea serpent, sooner or later it will be cast upon the shores of Cape Cod. If there are mermaids—when Iam on the Cape I believe in them devotedly—it is there theywill be found. I myself have seen there a red-and-white whale,striped like a barber’s pole. And if a striped whale, why not asea serpent and mermaids? Why not indeed?
In this atmosphere I was born and spent my boyhood. Fromit I have never wholly escaped. I can still close my eyes andsee sea serpents and mermaids and striped whales. Though inmy writing I strive not to deviate from the prosaic facts asMother Nature presents them, I cannot avoid seeing them myselfin the enchanted atmosphere in which I made my firstfield observation and whales became red-and-white for alltime. Looking back through the years, I wonder if it was notthen that the pattern of my life was set.
It was a Sunday morning in March, 1879. The church bells—Congregational,Methodist and Unitarian—were callingthe faithful to worship. But this morning the faithful werefew, for the sea also was calling and the voice of the sea wasmore persuasive than the sweetly solemn tones of the bells. Awhale had come ashore on the beach directly opposite thevillage. Sunday worship was a weekly privilege, but a strandedwhale the size of this one was an epochal event.
A day or two before, two whales had been harpooned offProvincetown, which lies many miles straight across the bayfrom Sandwich. Both had broken away, but were thought tobe fatally wounded. They had headed inside the bay. All thefishing hamlets on the inside of the Cape had been alerted towatch for the stricken monsters. One had been sighted offSandwich. It had grounded on a bar off the beach and thewhalers at Provincetown had been notified. I was five yearsold at the time. With a cousin a year or two older and hisgrandfather, I went to see the whale, along with most of thevillage folk.
The way led past the famous old Boston and Sandwich glassworks, then across extensive salt marshes cut midway by awide creek, and rimmed on the outer side by sand dunes. Becausethese marshes were flooded twice daily by high tidesthey were—and still are—crossed by a boardwalk raisedsome four or five feet above the marsh, with no guard railsexcept over the creek. A stiff wind gathered force as it sweptunchecked over a long stretch of lowland and marshes. Wesmall boys clung tightly to the old man’s hands lest we beblown off the walk. The latter ended in loose sand behind thebarrier dunes. With faces and hands stung by flying sand,breath whipped away in half-fearful gasps by the relentlesswinds, ears assailed by a meaningless babble of sound fromshouting men and clamoring gulls on the other side of thedunes, we struggled up through the yielding sand and coarserazor-edged beach grass to the top of the nearest dune. Withstartling abruptness a never-to-be-forgotten scene burst uponus.
In the immediate foreground, in the shallows of low tide,was the ocean monster we had come to see. Some distance offshore,sharply etched against the flattened gray-green sea—forthe wind was offshore—rode the whaling ship. Boats wereplying back and forth between shore and ship, those going outdeeply laden while those returning were empty save for theircrews.
But it was the huge, bulky mass of the monster in the foregroundthat challenged and held the wide-eyed gaze of thesmall boy clinging with one hand to his hat and with the othergrasping tightly the elder’s hand, catching his breath partlyin awe at the strange scene and in part lest it be sucked awayby the relentless wind. He was filled with awe and a bitfrightened by the unexpected, unfamiliar, overwhelming sightof his first whale—a striped whale, a red-and-white whale.There it lay before his very eyes. I still can see it.
Since that long-ago day of my first field observation I haveseen many whales, but in their black or gray drabness none hasever looked as a whale should look. None has ever appeared inwhat I knew to be the true colors, red-and-white stripes like abarber’s pole. Even when I read Moby Dick , the whale wasthe wrong color.
The explanation? It is quite simple as are most explanationsof the unfamiliar and the mysterious. The flensing knives ofthe whalemen already had been at work, exposing the whiteblubber. Much of this had been cut out in long strips down tothe red flesh. It was all as simple as that. Yet, knowing this,whenever I am on the sea and hear the cry “Thar she blows!”I look with a feeling of half-expectation of seeing a living barber’spole. I almost still believe in striped whales. It would notshock my credulity in the least to see one. Not on Cape Codanyway, for I am still a Cape Codder and vision beyond thosenot so blessed is my inheritance.
I am convinced that failure on the part of parents, teachersand others having to do with the guidance of the young to appreciatehow extremely plastic is the child mind, how deepand lasting are the impressions for good or ill made therein byevents and surroundings of daily life, is often at the root ofmany of the youth problems of today. There are countlessstriped whales among children everywhere. They are not tobe ignored, denied or laughed away.
My first observation in the realm of Nature was completelyin error. I found it out long, long ago. Nevertheless, whalesnever have looked right since. Always there is some gain inerror if it leads to finding of truth in the end. It is sometimespleasant, even helpful, to ignore the hard facts of science andexact knowledge and instead, gazing into the crystal globe ofimagination, to see red-and-white whales. Who shall say thatwe are not the better for so doing?
The records show that that whale was no figment of theimagination. It was a seventy-four