Magdalena Mountain. Robert Michael Pyle
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called him over. “Could be,” he said, “or the missing Carson!” He explained.
“Yes, surely that is the Magdalena Carson referred to in his journal,” Winchester confirmed. “Not only was it one of the man’s most lucrative catches, when it could be had, but I believe he was also quite fond of the species.”
Peering into the tray, Mead could see why that might be.
“If you’ll look closely, you’ll see that some of those specimens were collected by him.” Indeed, the pin label on several read LEG. O. CARSON.
Mead beheld a series of large alpines. Unlike most members of the genus Erebia, these were devoid of eyespots or any other decoration. Magdalena spanned more than two inches across its spread wings, which were utterly unmarked. The long, rounded panes shone wholly black or darkest chocolate, or a weathered brown plush on older specimens. Aside from its immaculate ebony surfaces, it seemed an unremarkable insect, but then Mead knew nothing of its biology.
Winchester came alongside Mead again and set a case atop a low cabinet for viewing. “Look here, James,” he said, pointing. “As you know, we have several specialty collections in the museum, such as species that have become extinct—I purchased several of these from the great insect bourses in London, Paris, and Hamburg after the war—as well as sexual gynanders and mosaics, mimicry pairs and rings, and so on.” He indicated the “so on” with an all-inclusive sweep of his massive hands, which were capable of lofting Cornell insect drawers in a single grasp. Mead nodded; he had done some curating in several of these specialized groups.
“For example, look at these gynandromorphs,” he said, pulling out a drawer of the oddest-looking butterflies Mead had ever seen. Most were bilateral—all male on one side, all female on the other—making for a particularly striking contrast in sexually dimorphic species. “Charlie Covell donated that superb bilateral of Speyeria diana from Kentucky,” Winchester said, indicating an amazing half-and-half fritillary of jack-o’-lantern orange and black on one side, black and blue on the other. “The genetics of that are fairly straightforward,” he said. “But this one is much more rare, and complex.” He pointed at a Queen Alexandra’s sulphur that looked ordinary, until Mead noticed that it had one female wing to three male ones. “A young fellow named Michael Heap sent me that,” Winchester said. “His mother collected it in Colorado.”
“And Magdalena?” asked Mead, fascinated, but eager to get to the point.
“Well, this tray,” said the prof, replacing the sexual oddities and returning to the drawer he’d pulled out earlier, “contains butterflies with bird-bill impressions on their wings. You see the sharply defined V or Vs on each specimen? What happens is that the bird strikes at the butterfly but changes its mind at the last moment and releases its grip before the wing tears. Whether the change of heart comes from being startled or from recognition that the captured prey is unpalatable, the act often leaves a crisp mark where the pressure of the bill removes the scales from the wing. The value of such specimens lies in what they can tell us of bird-butterfly interactions, distastefulness, and the evolution of predator-prey patterns. Yale Peabody probably has the best collection of such beak-marked butterflies anywhere.”
Mead just listened. He’d found that he learned as much from GW’s impromptu yet fully formed lecturettes as from his formal classes. After all, this was practically a tutorial with his own private don. He failed to catch the reason for the change of subject, but he did notice an obvious gap in the collection drawer. “That’s my point,” Winchester went on. “October Carson once saw a beak-marked Erebia magdalena in Colorado, but failed to capture it. He swore he would find another. I took him at his word and have kept that slot open ever since. I think some of his fascination with this species lies there, and in its alluring habitat, up among the arctic-alpine screes and scarps. Maybe also in its pure black wings, and its name. He alluded to all of these in his notes, often scribbled on packing slips, sadly not all saved. It seemed that for October Carson, Erebia magdalena represented something larger than itself—but I have no idea what.
“Anyway, almost time for that committee meeting; we’d better prepare for Professor G’s onslaught. Whatever you do, don’t tell him you’re camping out in the tower and tracking down phantom nature tramps.”
“Roger,” said Mead.
“And since phantom is probably the operative word by now, perhaps you’d better just close up that gap in the bill-mark collection.”
Mead hesitated, then said, “Um, Professor?”
“Mmmm?”
“Maybe, if you don’t mind, we shouldn’t be too hasty about that.”
“As you please,” said Winchester. “You’re the curator.”
11
Huddled by a kerosene lantern in his chilly battlement, Mead gained respect for his Anglo-Saxon ancestors who gutted out winters in northern European castles. And much as the learned among those cold-castle dwellers might have read ancient manuscripts by February firelight, Mead continued to pore over the journals of October Carson by the light of his high-intensity lamp. Night after solitary night, he tucked his roaches to bed and returned to the scribblings of the bearded itinerant. As he did so, James Mead followed Carson into spring.
The first volume saw the man working a construction job in California (brief, perfunctory jottings) and weekending in the near Sierra, trying to emulate John Muir in life and language (longer, lusher entries). Not until he left the job and the weekend frontcountry did he find his own voice, as he wandered from blank to blanker spot on the western map. Each volume told a year, and each roughly rhymed in route with the one that went before, as Carson circled back to favorite places and added new ones depending on transport and whim. Sometimes an intriguing name on a map would be enough to take him hundreds of miles out of his way. But then, as Mead learned, Carson really had no “way.” The style became leaner, no longer mimicking Muir, as he passed through later seasons and lower places. His sense of destination, however, remained fuzzy, and he never betrayed a plan or a purpose.
So Mead found himself back where he’d first looked over Carson’s shifting shoulder. He had dropped from Bear Lake down along the Great Salt Lake, taken a winter construction job in the city. It didn’t sit well. He seemed to require an element of insecurity—searching, finding, losing, and searching again—and it was colder than hell on that job. So he collected his pay, took a Trailways bus to Jackson, and with the snow off early, began hunting for old bottles, insulators, and other bygones. He seemed to have eaten for a month or more off purple, green, and blue bottles he’d ferreted out of the sagebrush and aspen of old homesteads and cattle camps around Jackson Hole, while he went to ground in an abandoned cabin. He watched for sage thrashers, the big, sickle-billed brown birds erect on the blue-gray tips of the big basin sage. In such places more often than not he could find mauve medicine flasks, their manganese turned purple by long exposure to the sun, or old-time Coke bottles, and these he could flog to curio and bottle shops stocking up for the tourist season in Jackson. But soon he’d saturated the local market, and he needed something to get him through the rest of spring into summer. So he signed on as a boatman for one of the smaller Snake River rafting outfitters.
June 6. Nine p.m., exhausted. I love the river, but ye gods! These people work! Twelve to sixteen hours a day, six or seven days. They pay me well, but there is no time to walk the banks or ramble among the delectable spring-green salad bar of a countryside we pass through six or eight times a day. And I’m getting awfully tired of my voice, delivering the interpretive spiel. I find myself envying the passengers, who will be moving on down the highway after the float. Their families, station wagons, and most of their dogs, however, I do not covet.
June 12. Nor did I envy some people I took down the river yesterday. Our chat went something like this: “Where do you folks hail from?” I asked as we entered an eddy. A conversation always staggers to its feet at that calm point, as the boaters begin to sense my presence as something more than a pair of oars,