My
mentor, Dr. Walter B. McDougall, Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA),
H.S. Colton Research Center, was born in 1883, and died at 97 in
1980. I was 21 and he was 88 when I started my internship under him,
later securing a permanent position as his field botanist.
Dr.
Walter B. McDougall, or to us, ‘Dr. McD’, drove a bright orange
VW, did his own grocery shopping (carrots, Cheerios were favorites)
and walked a mile circuit in the fields behind the research center
almost every day, a morning ritual on which I tried very hard to join
him as often as possible. He tended to wear cardigans, layered
according to the weather, over his Park Service green Khaki shirt and
pants, with his thin Service tie.
His
hearing aids provided a means to turn off the world, more than a way
to hear better. When A. J. came into our staff meetings screeching
about the latest injustices to her, he’d smile and scratch first
one ear, then the other.
There
was a smallish meadow on the back side of his walking path, an
unusual and protected pocket wedged between massive pines and the
rocky start of Horse Mountain. We would invariably find that magical
place and spend extra time carefully observing whatever might be
growing there.
Finally,
and only once during all those years, the orchid plants he sought
showed their pale blue flowers above the low grass. We moved to the
margin, sat down for a moment and he explained that the patch of
orchids had surfaced once every seven years in the decades he had
been at the Center, without a trace of leaf appearing at any other
time. He asked me if I thought that plant was ‘rare and
endangered’, and if the rest of the forest should be managed to
save that one small colony. The Federal Endangered Species Act hadn’t
been Law for very long; to Dr. McD, the law was an excellent example
of how little Man understood the world he lived in.
I
eventually collected, and together we curated, over 2,500 specimens
for the Research Center herbarium from the Northern Arizona region.
The bulk of my collections came from the Grand Canyon, as a result of
our lengthy Park Service ecological research contract.
A
highlight of my life was to discover and publish on a new species,
and be able to name it after my mentor: FallugiaMcDougalli, a scruffy
perennial shrub, resilient
and desert adapted, unchanged through the ages.
I
had been struggling with the identification of a very small
herbaceous specimen. Every once in a while, he’d walk slowly by
behind me and peer over my shoulder, to just walk away whistling
softly through his teeth as he always did. He let me sweat for at
least two days, then asked, “Do you know the best way to find the
answer to a difficult problem like that?” I turned hopefully to
him, and he went on, “Ask somebody who knows …”
