The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [61]
In a sense, Roosevelt was determined to evolve from prey to predator. He started pumping weights and doing push-ups regularly, and he also improved his skills as an equestrian and marksman. Meanwhile, his bird collecting in the woodlands of New York continued unabated. Whenever time permitted, Roosevelt had a birder friend accompany him on these tramps. His usual companion was Frederick Osborn, an irresolute ornithologist who, like himself, was in awe of God’s wild creatures; no nest, egg, or bird sighting failed to enthrall Osborn. Memories of their bird-watching times together remained with Roosevelt for the remainder of his life, one more vivid than another.
One winter afternoon in the 1870s near Bear Mountain—a breathtaking rise on the west bank of the Hudson River—Roosevelt and Osborn went on a hunt. Full of anticipation, Roosevelt had journeyed upriver from Manhattan to see Osborn, who lived in nearby Garrison, a ferry and railroad depot directly across the river from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Much of the forest around Bear Mountain was still pristine, but quarrymen had of late been mining toprock (basalt) to provide building material for eastern metropolises. Clomping down a snowy path, they suddenly stopped dead in their tracks. It was a moment of unprecedented excitement. In front of them was a flock of gorgeous red crossbills. Both Theodore and Frederick had long coveted this species to add to their collections. They were determined to be the very best of the new breed of post-Darwinic ornithologists.
In unison Roosevelt and Osborn rapidly fired their shotguns in a succession of blasts, three or four times each. When the dust settled, finch carcasses lay on the stump-filled field. Red crossbills—with different bills from their brethren in the West—could now be added to the bounty bags of pine siskins, common redpolls, and pine grosbeaks. Working without hunting dogs, Roosevelt and Osborn anxiously sprinted to retrieve their prized birds from the ground. But Roosevelt tripped on a concealed rock or tree root, stumbled forward, and barely recovered his balance. He was smacked in the face by a low-hanging branch or twig and his spectacles went flying. Half-blind, squinting, and shaking off disorientation, he quickly recollected himself and scanned the ground. “But dim though my vision was, I could still make out the red birds lying on the snow; and to me they were treasures of such importance,” he wrote years later, “that I abandoned all thought of my glasses and began a nearsighted hunt for my quarry.” 4
Once Roosevelt secured the red crossbills he went searching for his glasses, but in vain. From that moment onward he made a pact with himself always to carry a reserve pair of spectacles—with rims made out of steel—in his breast pocket. (When Roosevelt ran for president as the candidate of the Bull Moose Party in 1912, he was shot in the chest by an anarchist in Milwaukee. The extra bird-watching spectacles absorbed the impact of the bullet and probably saved his life.5)
Just four months after the day of the red crossbills, Osborn—whose father, William, was president of the Illinois Central—died in a river accident. Roosevelt was emotionally crushed by his friend’s death. His mind held a montage of all the wilderness tramps they had gone on together. Osborn, he loyally believed, was a rising prince, as kindhearted as the day was long, the companion of belle jeunesse. His death jarred Roosevelt’s outlook on life. With a contracted brow and grimace on his face it became the day the fun stopped. “He was drowned, in his gallant youth,” Roosevelt mourned decades later. “But he comes as vividly before my eyes now as if he were still alive.”6
Losing his favorite birding side-kick was emotionally tough on Roosevelt, but his naturalist