The Race to Save the Lord God Bird Read Online Free Page A
Author: Phillip Hoose
itself.
John James Audubon, engraving by John Sartain, based on a painting by F. Cruikshanks
France was settled, but America seemed new, vast, and barely explored. After Audubon married Lucy Bakewell, in 1808, the couple opened a store with a third partner in the Ohio River town of Louisville, Kentucky, selling goods to settlers and frontier families. But life behind a counter didnât suit Audubon. He loved to roam the woods, sleeping on the ground in Indian camps. He scrapped his frilly white shirts and black satin breeches for shirts and leggings fashioned of deerskin. His leather belt held a sheath knife and a tomahawk. He sometimes slicked his long hair with bear grease. He played his fiddle and danced, and charmed nearly everyone he met. But despite his optimistic nature, he couldnât seem to figure out a way to earn a living that would make him happy.
Audubonâs life changed one day in March 1810 when Alexander Wilson, the renowned bird artist, turned up at the store. Wilson proudly untied a folio of his bird paintings, laying them out for Audubon to see. To Wilsonâs astonishment, Audubon pulled out bird paintings of his own, and as they compared the two sets of images, both men may have instantly recognized that Audubonâs were better. Wilsonâs birds looked stiff, because they had been painted mainly from stuffed specimens. Already
Audubon was developing an entirely different style. He had signed even his first sketches âDrawn from nature by J. J. Audubon.â The encounter with Wilson planted the seed that would form Audubonâs own future: he, too, would paint the birds of the new country, but he would paint his in natural poses, using all the extravagant colors of their feathering, showing them doing the things birds actually did, like fashioning nests and tearing at prey. He would paint them in natural settings so that he could reveal not only how the birds behaved but what America looked like.
So it was that ten years later, in the fall of 1820, after a disastrous few years in which he lost his business, had to declare bankruptcy, and even spent a few weeks in prison, Audubon decided he could wait no longer. Like Wilson, he would paint the birds of America and publish the art in a collection of volumes. Lucy supported this plan and agreed to raise their sons alone during his absence. Together with his young apprentice, Mason, Audubon spent sixteen months searching the wilderness for birds and traveling the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Audubon and Mason often jumped off the boat and went out to shoot birds in the swamps and forests and marshes along the slow-moving Ohio, collecting the specimens that Audubon would later paint. Often they slept wrapped in buffalo robes and went long periods without eating.
As they floated down the Ohio, they heard a few Ivory-billed Woodpeckers calling from the adjacent trees, but once the Ohio joined the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois, forming a mighty current that swept them south toward the Gulf of Mexico at four miles an hour, the Ivory-billâs pait pait pait, as Audubon described it, was almost constantly audible from the distant forests on either side.
âWOULD THAT I COULDâ
Few who read Audubonâs forbidding description of Ivory-bill country made quick plans to visit. He wrote:
I wish, kind reader, it were in my power to present to your mindâs eye the favorite resort of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. Would that I could describe the extent of those deep morasses, spreading their sturdy moss-covered branches, as if to admonish intruding man to pause and reflect on the many difficulties which he must encounter â¦
Here and there, as [the adventurer] approaches an opening that proves merely a lake of black muddy water, his ear is assailed by the dismal croaking of innumerable frogs, the hissing of serpents, or the bellowing of alligators!
Would that I could give you an idea of the sultry pestiferous
John James Audubon, engraving by John Sartain, based on a painting by F. Cruikshanks
France was settled, but America seemed new, vast, and barely explored. After Audubon married Lucy Bakewell, in 1808, the couple opened a store with a third partner in the Ohio River town of Louisville, Kentucky, selling goods to settlers and frontier families. But life behind a counter didnât suit Audubon. He loved to roam the woods, sleeping on the ground in Indian camps. He scrapped his frilly white shirts and black satin breeches for shirts and leggings fashioned of deerskin. His leather belt held a sheath knife and a tomahawk. He sometimes slicked his long hair with bear grease. He played his fiddle and danced, and charmed nearly everyone he met. But despite his optimistic nature, he couldnât seem to figure out a way to earn a living that would make him happy.
Audubonâs life changed one day in March 1810 when Alexander Wilson, the renowned bird artist, turned up at the store. Wilson proudly untied a folio of his bird paintings, laying them out for Audubon to see. To Wilsonâs astonishment, Audubon pulled out bird paintings of his own, and as they compared the two sets of images, both men may have instantly recognized that Audubonâs were better. Wilsonâs birds looked stiff, because they had been painted mainly from stuffed specimens. Already
Audubon was developing an entirely different style. He had signed even his first sketches âDrawn from nature by J. J. Audubon.â The encounter with Wilson planted the seed that would form Audubonâs own future: he, too, would paint the birds of the new country, but he would paint his in natural poses, using all the extravagant colors of their feathering, showing them doing the things birds actually did, like fashioning nests and tearing at prey. He would paint them in natural settings so that he could reveal not only how the birds behaved but what America looked like.
So it was that ten years later, in the fall of 1820, after a disastrous few years in which he lost his business, had to declare bankruptcy, and even spent a few weeks in prison, Audubon decided he could wait no longer. Like Wilson, he would paint the birds of America and publish the art in a collection of volumes. Lucy supported this plan and agreed to raise their sons alone during his absence. Together with his young apprentice, Mason, Audubon spent sixteen months searching the wilderness for birds and traveling the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Audubon and Mason often jumped off the boat and went out to shoot birds in the swamps and forests and marshes along the slow-moving Ohio, collecting the specimens that Audubon would later paint. Often they slept wrapped in buffalo robes and went long periods without eating.
As they floated down the Ohio, they heard a few Ivory-billed Woodpeckers calling from the adjacent trees, but once the Ohio joined the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois, forming a mighty current that swept them south toward the Gulf of Mexico at four miles an hour, the Ivory-billâs pait pait pait, as Audubon described it, was almost constantly audible from the distant forests on either side.
âWOULD THAT I COULDâ
Few who read Audubonâs forbidding description of Ivory-bill country made quick plans to visit. He wrote:
I wish, kind reader, it were in my power to present to your mindâs eye the favorite resort of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. Would that I could describe the extent of those deep morasses, spreading their sturdy moss-covered branches, as if to admonish intruding man to pause and reflect on the many difficulties which he must encounter â¦
Here and there, as [the adventurer] approaches an opening that proves merely a lake of black muddy water, his ear is assailed by the dismal croaking of innumerable frogs, the hissing of serpents, or the bellowing of alligators!
Would that I could give you an idea of the sultry pestiferous
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