 OWAA Legends
'My Greatest Joys Are Being in the Woods ... '
By John Swinton
I met Mildred Ericson at the Niagara Falls conference in 1991 and fell in
love. Understand, I’ve been happily married now 40 years. But had I been a
generation older, Mildred would have taken my heart down the stream and across
the lake.
During one of the serious writing seminars, Mildred stood up and addressed the
presenter. “This question,” she said, “may be a bit off the subject. But has
anyone here seen a rose-breasted grosbeak? It’s my favorite bird, and I had so
hoped to see one.”
Mildred sat down. The distracted presenter repeated her question. She waited in
vain for a reply. I introduced myself immediately after the session and asked if
a Baltimore oriole would do. She examined my name tag and entered my name in her
notebook.
I’m describing one of those friendships that spring up and largely justify
organizations like ours. Mildred and I corresponded, and at the Orono, ME,
conference in 1994, she asked if I would edit some of her manuscripts, short
hymns to the flowers and vistas in her Pacific Northwest. She had never sent
them off, but she wanted someone to read them. I massaged her articles gently
and sent them back. Mildred sent me a $5 bill. That Christmas, she sent us a box
of Washington state apple candy.
A pale and willowy woman with a pious appearance and a deferential but confident
manner, Mildred Ericson probably escaped the notice of many members, and others
may have dismissed her as a relic. In fact, she was a trained botanist and an
acute naturalist resting in late life on a long and distinguished career. Her
letters always contained pressed flowers and leaves from the Seattle area with
brief explanations – field notes – for her Pennsylvania friend.
During the Redding conference, we took a full day’s excursion together into
Lassen National Park. Mildred produced a retired ranger ID card at the gate and
got us in free. Word of her arrival spread. Rangers and other personnel
intercepted and welcomed us. “Mildred Ericson” is a name National Park Service
rangers learn at orientation. She quizzed them on their work and got them to
demonstrate the new bear-proof garbage receptacles. She took pleasure in
identifying a magnificent white-headed woodpecker. We drove up the mountain to
watch kids in shorts and T-shirts play in the snow, a western flycatcher rasping
behind them. On the way back, we stopped for cheeseburgers and iced tea in a
backwoods café with barn swallows swarming in the sun above the entrance like
bees. It was her last field trip.
Mildred Ericson was born in Minneapolis on April 19, 1914, and graduated from
the University of Minnesota with degrees in botany, biology and zoology. She
taught high school science at first, then worked as a recreational therapist for
the Red Cross, and went on to teach extension ecology courses for the University
of Oregon.
She had – she still has – the distinction of becoming the first female
ranger-naturalist in the National Park Service and worked as an interpretive
naturalist at Sequoia and Yellowstone and in Washington, D.C. This distinction
accounted for the deference at Lassen.
Over the years, Mildred sold more than 600 items and articles to such outlets as
Sports Afield, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, The Saturday Evening Post and
Boys’ Life. She also designed and wrote several Park Service brochures. She
joined OWAA in 1952 and was a founding member of the Northwest Outdoor Writers
Association.
Mildred once wrote of herself, “My personality is chiefly dominated by my
sincere love of nature, science and the out-of-doors. It seemed to be inborn in
me. My greatest joys are being in the woods, fields, mountains and meadows
viewing birds, animals, wildflowers and trees.”
She spoke with a flat, slightly plaintive Midwest inflection. But delight and
humor came to her quickly – as, for example, when she explained to a young
Lassen ranger how the Park Service had made her wear ankle-length skirts and
sensible shoes while guiding parties into the wilds of Yellowstone, or when she
made elaborate fun of me for mistaking the noxious Scotch broom for a more
benign wildflower.
Badly injured when a Seattle motorist ran her down in 1997, Mildred contracted
pneumonia, then respiratory problems complicated by diabetes. She declined
slowly, and at 87, she died last May 27 in Shoreline, WA. But she asked her
sister, Sylvia Jones of Tukwila, WA, to direct any contributions in her memory
to OWAA’s Bodie McDowell scholarship fund, ideally someday to support a young
woman writing about the outdoors.
Mildred lived a full, independent outdoor life and made many friends. I may be
the wrong person to recall her this way; I knew her for only her last decade.
But I’ll miss her as much as anyone else and wanted to celebrate her
singularity. Some may dismiss the thought of Mildred as a legend. Mildred
herself would have rather spared the trees.
John Swinton is a freelance writer-editor living in State College, PA.
Back to Legends
Index Page |
