The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [17]
“Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs,” Roosevelt said in his book Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, in 1905. “There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon in the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever with their majestic beauty unmarred.”58
Theodore Roosevelt spent his adult life crusading on behalf of the national parks and monuments. Here he is at Yosemite in April 1903.
T.R. at Yosemite National Park. (Courtesy of the National Park Service)
CHAPTER ONE
THE EDUCATION OF A DARWINIAN NATURALIST
I
At a very early age, Theodore Roosevelt started studying the anatomy of more than 600 species of birds in North America. You might say that his natural affinity for ornithology was part of his metabolism. As a child Roosevelt became a skilled field birder, acquiring a fine taxidermy collection while recording firsthand observations in note-books now housed at Harvard University.1 And it wasn’t just birds. When Roosevelt was four or five years old he saw a fox in a book and declared it “the face of God.”2 This wasn’t merely a flight of fancy. The mere sight of a jackrabbit, flying squirrel, or box turtle caused Roosevelt to light up with glee. The multilayered puzzle that was Roosevelt, in fact, was titillated by the very sound of species names in both English and Latin—wolverines (Gulo gulo), red-bellied salamanders (Taricha rivularis), snapping mackerel (Pomatomus saltatrix), and so on. At times revealing a Saint Francis complex regarding animals, Roosevelt wanted to understand all living matter. “Roosevelt began his life as a naturalist, and he ended his life as a naturalist,” wrote the historian Paul Russell Cutright. “Throughout a half century of strenuous activity his interest in wildlife, though subject to ebb and flow, was never abandoned at any time.”3
Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in the noisy hubbub of gaslit New York City. He struggled with ill health well into adulthood. “I was,” Roosevelt later wrote, “a wretched mite suffering acutely with asthma.”4 Often wheezing, the young Roosevelt found physical relief by simply observing creatures’ habits and breathing fresh air. Nature served as a curative agent for Roosevelt, as it’s been known to do for millions afflicted with respiratory illness. “There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness,” he wrote, “that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm.”5 Literally from childhood until his death in January 1919—following his arduous journey down the River of Doubt through Brazil’s uncharted Amazon jungle—he epitomized Ralph Waldo Emerson’s criterion for being an incurable naturalist. “The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other,” Emerson explained, “who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.”6
As a precocious child Theodore Roosevelt became an amateur ornithologist. Trained by one of John James Audubon’s student taxidermists, Roosevelt started his own natural history museum in New York City to show off his specimens. Later in life Roosevelt argued that parents had a moral obligation to make sure their children didn’t suffer