Magdalena Mountain. Robert Michael Pyle
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department should look, he thought, recalling the real thing at Cambridge. Osborn was the scene of a half century’s progress in ecology. But in the past twenty years, actual animals and plants had become passé, and the cell was the thing—or the gene, or the molecules. Kline Tower was the citadel of the cell. It brimmed with privilege and grant-borne pretension: stories upon stories of slag-brown bricks that shone in the September sun and positively repelled ivy, between black windows that never opened—all the looks and personality of a giant Tootsie Roll.
Happily for him, Mead seemed destined for Osborn. Some said ecology was already dead at Yale, but the recent environmental cyclone had blown fresh breath into that field in New Haven. That there was anything left to resuscitate was the result of the labors of certain torchbearers in Osborn who had never lost track of natural history in the swirl of change. One of these was Evelyn Hutchinson, who developed the now-universal concept of the ecological niche here in the 1920s. Another was George Winchester, whom Mead was about to meet—his first Yale professor, his likely adviser, a famous man of science. Mead shook a little in his mountain-states boots as he entered Winchester’s outer office.
The friendly smell of thousands of scientific papers in file drawers overrode an unfamiliar scent coming from down the hall. Mead wondered what was in there, a door away, but his thoughts were interrupted by a lilting “Good afternoon.” A handsome, relaxed woman of fifty or so occupied the anteroom. She removed her chained glasses and looked up from her typewriter. “May I help you?”
“Hello, I’m here to see Professor Winchester?”
She took on a guarding-the-ramparts air. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Uh, yes—I’m sorry. I’m James Mead. I believe Dr. Winchester has been assigned as my adviser, and I wrote that I would be arriving today.”
The secretary’s expression slid into a relaxed smile. “Of course—Mr. Mead. We’re expecting you. Dr. Winchester is with another student, but I’ll let him know you’re here. I’m Mrs. Pauling,” she said, offering her hand. Then she disappeared into an inner sanctum, and Mead heard muffled voices, one high, one deep. He felt just as he did in any doctor’s waiting room. Mrs. Pauling said, “The professor will be with you in a few minutes,” and handed him a copy of Discovery, the magazine of the university’s natural history museum. Well, he thought, it beats Highlights.
Under “Staff Notes” in the back of the magazine, Mead noticed that Winchester had recently returned from a summer in Colorado, where he journeyed annually for research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Mrs. Pauling was typing copy for what he took for specimen labels, all headed “Colo.: Gunnison Co.” He relaxed a degree; at least they would have the Rockies in common. Mead asked himself, but not out loud, why he was already blaming Yale (and everyone in it) for being superior, and himself for his background.
After a few minutes the big varnished door of the inner office opened, and a young female student emerged. She was glowing. “All right, Professor, I’ll read that paper and let you know what I think of it Monday,” she said over her tawny shoulder.
A syllable of concurrence came from within, then a spirited, “See you then, Noni. Enjoy your weekend, but do try to get another modest number of pages of your draft ready for me to read.”
The woman passed Mead, smiled, and left with a word for Mrs. Pauling and a back-glance at him. Mead noticed that her dark eyes possessed epicanthal folds. Yet she did not look entirely Asian: her long, straight hair was brown. He also noted her accent. No midwesterner she, probably straight out of the Seven Sisters, likely bound next for Harvard. His relapsing sense of inadequacy was suddenly swamped by a reddish dust devil as a large presence flew out of the inner office, halted before him, and thrust out an enormous paw. Tilting his head, grinning through his ginger beard, the professor blurted, “Welcome, Mr. Mead! Please come inside.”
Never had Mead been so rapidly rid of doubts. Dr. Winchester seemed genuinely glad to see him here at Yale. He himself had come from a small midwestern college, never venturing toward the Ivy League until he was James’s age. From his own swivel chair behind a massive desk, Winchester bade him sit. “So you’re from New Mexico—not far south of my summer haunts. I’ve reviewed your transcripts, which look good. Do you prefer the lab or the field?”
“The field, for sure.”
“Good—right answer. Do you know anything about butterflies?”
“I collected butterflies and moths when I was younger,” Mead said. “Just locally.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Same as most kids, I guess—girls, sports—embarrassed by the net, I suppose.”
“We lose a lot that way.” Winchester sighed. “It becomes socially penalizing. Well, you may have a chance to get back into it if you are still interested. Most of my own work involves Lepidoptera.” Winchester’s large head bobbed as he spoke, and the great rack of his shoulders seemed to hold up the wall of books behind him.
“Will my research project have to deal with butterflies, then?” Mead had half expected to be ushered into an amenable PhD topic, an extension of the major professor’s work, as so often happens in graduate schools.
“Not necessarily, no,” Winchester said. “Though you’ve certainly got the name for it.”
“How so?”
“T. L. Mead was one of the best lepidopterists of the last century. He brought many western butterflies to light. But we’ll get to him later, as we tour the collection. As for selecting a dissertation question, there is plenty of time: don’t rush it. You’ll have to live with it for four or five, maybe six or seven years, depending on how it goes, so you’d better choose something right for you. The only bounds are that it must be original research with a rigorous approach. And, if I am to be useful as an adviser, it should lie somewhere in the area of population biology, genetics, or ecology. Of course, funding may be easier if it relates to any of our ongoing grants.”
“That’s a broad menu. But preferably involving insects?”
“Preferably, but not essentially. One of my students worked on warblers recently, another on human and chimpanzee sexuality. Oh, those bonobos!”
Mead raised an eyebrow at that. Then he wondered whether, when it came down to approval, it would turn out to be like a Russian menu: lots of choices, but few of them actually available. Winchester pursed his lips for a moment or two before he spoke again.
“It is true that the committee must approve the eventual topic. But it’s not likely they would veto a project that you and I agreed was worthwhile. Take your time, and take your pick—so long as we all agree on the value of the work, and funding is available, you should be able to cater to your own interests and, if you’re lucky, your passion. It does happen sometimes. I’m glad you asked, by the way; too many students expect to be led by the hand from square one, which doesn’t interest me.”
The time sneaked by like the silverfish in the corners of the room. Now and then Winchester leaned back and caught a fly with his hand without looking directly at it or breaking pace. Then, at a certain point, his shoulders, or perhaps it was his heroic eyebrows, dropped a degree relative to the bookshelf behind. By whatever subtle signal, Mead knew the interview was over. He stood, nearly all his trepidation flushed away. Dr. Winchester’s broad, high, balding brow was damp. I would hate, Mead thought later, to be on his wrong side. He’d heard too many beery tales of major professors turned into major roadblocks. As Winchester noted their next appointment in his tiny blue pocket diary, Mead remembered one more question he’d meant to ask. “Dr. Winchester, what is that peculiar odor coming from the lab down the hall?”
“Odor?” Winchester narrowed his gaze and tilted his head in puzzlement. “Oh, I suppose newcomers might detect a slight aroma. You’ll find out soon enough,” he said with a leprechaun’s grin. “As curatorial associate, not everything will be your own choice for the first year or two.” It was clear that he did not mean to elaborate, so Mead left it there and made his way from the cool bastion of Osborn