The Press: The Nature Beat

Big-city newspapers are usually too busy reporting the deeds and misdeeds of man to pay much attention to the works of nature. But not always. Last week the Boston Herald heaved an editorial sigh for the wintry seashore where “the moving sands swirl up the dunes and out gullied chimney tops . . . This is the time of smoking dunes.” On its good, grave editorial page, the New York Times took note of winter: “Stand by ocean’s edge and you can see, feel, hear and smell the grey waters. This is the darkening interlude when the sea changes its hue and forecasts winter . . . snow.” And the silk-hatted Wall Street Journal stuck a straw in its teeth and complained against the “tenderometer,” a newfangled “diabolical machine [that] actually proposes to tell a man when his Baldwins . . . and Northern Spies are ripe enough to pick.”

Readers might think that these were the nostalgic notes of country-born editorialists, trapped in the cities and hankering for the farm. But the country flavor in the Herald, the Times and the Journal was distilled by one authentic New England countryman. Long-faced Haydn S. Pearson, 47, is a hard-working naturalist who covers all outdoors, notebook in hand, as methodically as a police reporter on his beat. His nature editorials have offered vicarious trips to the countryside for city-bound readers of the Washington Star, the Newark News and the Indianapolis Star; 79 papers subscribe to his twice-a-week “Country Flavor Editorial Service.”

Walking Man. Pearson* has been studying nature ever since he was six, when his father, a Congregational preacher, began taking him on country strolls around Hancock, N.H. He began writing Sunday features while teaching high-school English at Utica, N.Y., quit schoolteaching seven years ago to become a full-time nature boy.

Once a month, in fair weather or foul, he leaves his home in Waban, a suburb of Boston, for a walking trip in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont. Dressed in old hiking clothes, he stops to chat with farmers, contemplate ponds, watch cloud formations and take careful notes for his editorials. At home, he dutifully keeps up his reading (botany, ornithology, etc.).

“One of the things that hurts nature writing the most is sentimentalization,” says Pearson. “I don’t like to write a nature piece without some facts.” He has gathered enough to fill five books (e.g., Country Flavor, The Countryman’s Cookbook), and has two more on the way. Says he: “There is a place for some quiet writing that will still be true after the screaming headlines are dead.”

Sleeping Field. Last week his Country Flavor Editorial Service sent out a quiet piece that illustrated what he meant. Wrote Pearson: “Go to an open ridge on a sunny, crisp January afternoon when the snow blanket is deep and drink of the beauty on white hills. Earth lies patiently sleeping . . . Above walls and fences sumacs hold scraggly arms with faded, brown-flame candles . . . Winter birds call from the groves; regal cock pheasants stalk along the hedgerows with their meek ladies. This is the heart of winter . . . but in the tightly wrapped buds is assurance of the Great Promise.”

* No kin to Columnist Drew Pearson.