J. Drew Lanham: Taking the Wild Path to Human Understanding BY JENNIFER C. SCHÜNEMANN
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“An ornithologist said significantly, ‘If you held the bird in your hand—’; but I would rather hold it in my affections.”
Professor J. Drew Lanham, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Master Teacher, and Certified Wildlife Biologist at Clemson University, is a renowned ornithologist, an accomplished author, poet, and scientist. He is also the keynote speaker at this year’s Thoreau Society Gathering in Concord. It’s not a surprising link. Henry David Thoreau was a careful observer of nature, as well as an eloquent writer and a social justice warrior. All these traits drew the attention of Prof. Lanham, as we discussed in a recent interview. Hailing from Edgefield, South Carolina, Drew (as he prefers to be called) grew up on a family farm that backed onto protected forest lands. As such, the line between farm animals and wildlife was blurred for a young Drew. Birds, in particular, fascinated him at an early age. “The idea of free flight – the ability to just get up and GO but with air under one’s wings with the land sliding beneath you… the whole idea of escape – birds do it best,” he said. “Living off the land, nature was nurture for us. We depended on the farm for physical sustenance, but my soul was nourished by seeing and hearing bobwhite quail or wild turkeys on a spring morning or hearing barred owls call to one another on a summer evening. These experiences were the wild cherry on top of the jelly cake in my childhood.” While many tried to steer this “bright young black kid” towards math and science, Drew knew in his heart that his true passion was linked to the wild. He found a way to take that expectation from society and create his own outcome. “Passion is the fulcrum on which our lives are levers,” he said. I can leverage this thing I love and have a passion for – starting with a rigorous scientific grounding to build up 18
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truth that goes even further with creative writing, the arts, and literature to not only impact people’s heads but also touch their hearts – which is at the core of action. Until we feel, there is no movement towards some effective action or solution.” Drew has been able to take the scientist role as an ornithologist and to move it to a place not just of facts we can know about, but to inspire people through the unknown. By creating a sense of wonder about what birds are thinking or feeling as they fly and flit above us, he opens a space to inspire people in ways that help them do better by birds, nature, the earth…and therefore, one another. “That little boy who was watching birds and wondering how they flew, how they sang, how they built those nests, where they came from is still here. That pause for awe and wonder led me to other questions that led me to become the scientist that I am. I hope
that I have surpassed the expectations others had of me, by taking my own flight path.” A Sense of Self Through Observation Drew describes his love of observing birds as being closely linked to a discovery of the self. “That interaction with that one individual – the chance to watch that individual just be and then I can just be – it creates a very different fraction of bird or wild beast as numerator and me as denominator. As different as we are, the two of us being ourselves creates a sense of unity.” “Recently, I observed a worm-eating warbler in a southern Appalachian forest singing so fervently that it shook from its beak to its tail! I saw that bird vibrate as if it would come apart. But it didn’t. It vibrated again and again. Each time it did that, I felt like I was seeing it for the first time. It moved me profoundly.”
© Joel Caldwell
—Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 10 May 1854
