The Mormon Legend of Bigfoot

Many years ago, during a break in our regular class schedule at Orem High School, I attended the movie/documentary Sasquatch, The Legend of Bigfoot. The large enigmatic ape was popular at that time in Utah and the school auditorium was nearly full. We watched as an expedition outfitted by Chuck Evans trekked for several weeks into the northern wilderness of Canada’s British Colombia in the area of the Peckatoe River.

The film contained impressive footage of wildlife: black bears, a cougar attack, otters sliding down snowfields for fun, a food-stealing badger, and two grizzlies fighting each other. The expedition did not see a Bigfoot, however, but it claimed to have seen their footprints (that it filmed and took casts of), smelled their foul odor and heard their legendary scream.

Most impressive to me were the scenes of many live conifers that had been snapped in two with the top piece being turned upside down and repositioned on top of the broken trunk. I realize now that the trees we actually saw in the film were probably staged. But at the time I was duly impressed – as I am now as I consider such a possibility. It made enough of an impression that I still remember it over 30 years later.

As I look back on the film, I am surprised at how popular it was in our community. I have travelled around a good deal since then and have enrolled by children in many school districts across the country (in six states). And I find it unusual that the public high school in a conservative Mormon community would make such a film available on its own campus.

But, in fact, there is a lingering interest among Mormons regarding these creatures. I don’t mean that every member of the Mormon Church buys into the stories. But in scout camps, on hunting trips and at summer barbeques throughout the Intermountain West, Bigfoot stories abound. And I believe that there are a couple of reasons why.

Sightings of large hairy men have been reported by a couple of credible Mormon leaders. These occurred some time ago, but the stories are well-enough documented that credibility still surrounds them.

The best known account comes from a well-read book written by former Mormon president Spencer W. Kimball entitled, The Miracle of Forgiveness. He cites the biography of former apostle David W. Patten (written by Lycurgus A. Wilson) wherein Patten confronts a being that he calls Cain:

“As I was riding along the road on my mule I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me … His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing, but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark. I asked him where he dwelt and he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and travelled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the earth but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men. About the time he expressed himself thus, I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, and commanded him to go hence, and he immediately departed out of my sight…”

Another account, though much less known, is of the encounter that President E. Wesley Smith (then president of the Hawaiian Mission) had with a creature similar to that reported by Patten. Wesley Smith was the brother of Mormon president Joseph F. Smith and served in Hawaii in the early 20^th Century. My account of the incident is not dated but comes from a woman who served as Wesley Smith’s secretary in the mission home.

Chloe Hodge was the first Mormon missionary to serve from North Carolina. I met Chloe when she was in her 90’s and confined to a rest home. She was part of our faith community and every Sunday after our block of meetings I would visit her with a couple of teenage boys. I got to know Chloe quite well over a period of 3 years and enjoyed our visits together a great deal.

Early on, I learned that she had started to write a personal history but had stopped when she lost the manuscript. I encouraged her to start again, and eventually she agreed to do so with my help. She would hand-write a page every week and I would pick it up on Sunday and type it up before our next visit. In this way she wrote nearly 150 paragraph/chapters of her life’s story. One Sunday she handed me the story of Wesley Smith’s encounter with the hairy man and I was quite surprised and interested. This was all new to me. I would only learn later that the story, in abbreviated form, was already available on the internet.

The story of Wesley Smith’s encounter comes on pages 83-84 as part of Chloe’s mission account. It is tucked away as an interesting story, but is in no way highlighted. Chloe recounted the story just like she recounted the many other stories of her long and eventful life. Her mind was clear and active right up to the time of her death. Her account of the incident seems to me a bit more valuable than other versions (which are often third-hand). Chloe heard the story directly from Wesley Smith with whom she worked closely. And her account is not my interpretation of what she said. It is copied directly (and exactly) from her written account.

           “On one trip out to the temple President Smith told us of an earlier event in his life when he was serving in Hawaii.  He had served there as a young missionary and now he was back in his late 30’s as a Mission President. 

            This was at the time when plans were going forward to erect the temple.  He had become aware of a sense of unrest and contention among the members at a time when there should be great joy and harmony at the promises of a temple coming soon.

            President Smith was sitting in the far corner of his living room pondering these conditions and came to an understanding that the spirit of discontent and discord among the members was the work of Satan trying to prevent the building of the temple.

            Just as this realization came to him, he heard a noise and looked up to see a huge black man about eight feet tall entering the door.  His body was very hairy and he had large protuberant eyes – and he was coming toward President Smith with his arms outstretched as though to seize him.  President Smith threw up his hand instinctively, and as he did so, a light about the size and shape of a small dagger appeared in his right hand.  A voice said to him, “this represents your priesthood.  Use it.”  Immediately he mustered up the courage to command the personage to depart in the name of Jesus Christ; whereupon, the person stopped, backed out of the door, and was gone.  President Smith jumped up and ran to the door and looked out.  There was no one to be seen.

            President Smith wrote to his brother, Joseph Fielding Smith, who was then Church Historian.  He wrote back and said that he had undoubtedly had a visitation from Cain and enclosed a pamphlet which told of Apostle David Patton of the First Quorum of the Twelve who was riding his horse one night, along a country road, when suddenly just such a person as President Smith had described appeared walking alongside him, so tall that his head was about level with Elder Patton’s head as he sat astride his horse.  After going a little way in silence and being very afraid, Brother Patton asked, “who are you?” and the person answered, “I am Cain, of all men most miserable.”  Then he disappeared.  Brother Patton was later murdered by a mob, becoming the first martyr of the church.”

I was duly impressed with the story and I have given much thought to it since then. Chloe made no reference to Bigfoot, or to the possibility that this creature might be an unknown ape. Her story and the story of David Patten are completely independent of Bigfoot legends. How they became connected is still not clear to me. I believe they became part of Mormon Bigfoot lore as a natural extension of the Bigfoot accounts that became more frequent later in the 20^th century.

David Daegling, in his account of the social significance of Bigfoot, identifies 1958 as a watershed year in the creature’s popularity. This was the year that a wire service picked up the story of large footprints around a road construction site in Northern California. Casts were taken of the prints and pictures of the casts were broadcast around the country.

After this exposure, accounts of Bigfoot sightings (and footprints) became much more common. Just a couple of years later, Ivan Sanderson’s popular book Abominable Snowman: Legend comes to Life was published which told stories of large ape-men from all around the world. By this time, Bigfoot was a well-known entity in America. My guess is that the conflation of the large hairy man of Mormon legend with Bigfoot happened around this time (although this is just speculation).

I don’t mean to imply that stories of Bigfoot started in 1958. This is hardly the case. In fact there seems to be a higher proportion of credible accounts before that time. And most of them are from the Pacific Northwest where the famous Patterson-Gimlin film was taken. Two stories that have been told several times include accounts by Teddy Roosevelt and Albert Ostman.

Teddy Roosevelt’s telling (second hand) of an encounter in the Bitterroot Mountains was narrated in his 1893 book Wilderness Hunter (vol.2). The incident involved two trappers (one ended up being killed) and probably took place in the late 19^th Century.

The less credible account (at least to me) of Albert Ostman tells of a presumed encounter that happened in 1924. Ostman had been camping and noticed that some of this things were being taken at night from his pack in a tidier manner than a bear, or other known mammal, would have managed. Then one night while sleeping, a large hairy beast carried him away while he was still in his sleeping bag. He was taken to a place where he was held captive by the creature and its presumed family. Ostman claimed to have escaped when the animal got sick from eating his chewing tobacco.  

Other accounts have been uncovered including one of a miner that shot a large ape-man near Mount Saint Helens (also in 1924). Another story told of a juvenile great ape being shot in British Columbia in 1884. It isn’t clear to me, however, that any of these stories ever made it to Utah, or were known to Mormons generally.

However it happened, these stories are now part of a larger Mormon conception of Bigfoot that includes the Biblical murderer Cain. As a result, Mormons often tell stories that are similar to other versions, but also unique. If Bigfoot is Cain, then it is only expected that a single being exists. If Bigfoot is, instead, the Sasquatch of Native American tradition, then it is to be expected that an entire population (perhaps several populations) exist as a valid un-described species. This distinction is usually not made. And the possibility that Bigfoot, as a species; and Cain, as a wondering hairy man, remain two independent phenomena also remains an infrequent supposition in Mormon culture.

Recently I decided to make a trip to Bigfoot country in order to experience the area and the culture for myself. My nephew Jon came with me. “Bigfoot country”, of course, is a pretty ambiguous term. Sightings have been made of the legendary creature all over North America. Nonetheless, the Pacific Northwest (ranging from northern California to Southern British Columbia) has long been recognized as the oldest and most likely place to hear about Bigfoot. As a biologist, I also find this region more satisfying as it can be fairly well defined and represents a particular kind of ecosystem. Many other creatures also live exclusively in this area. The Pacific Northwest is a moist forest ecosystem – a rainforest in essence. It is a place with such a profusion of plant life that an unknown creature might feasibly remain undetected within its dense canopies. It is one of only a couple of places in North America like this.

Jon and I wanted to see Bluff Creek where the Patterson-Gimlin film was taken and to visit the town of Willow Creek on the Bigfoot Highway where the Bigfoot museum is located (as it turned out, it was closed for the season). Before we got there, we passed through the town of Weaverville (west of Redding) and stopped at the Forest Service office there. I needed a couple of maps but I also wanted to talk to a ranger about Bigfoot sightings.

This first stop in the area proved to be quite enlightening. I had expected to find a good deal of cynicism among the locals – especially when talking with outsiders like us. Accordingly, I had decided to be coy about my Bigfoot interest and present myself as a naturalist looking for good camping and hiking sites – all of which was true. In short, I wanted to have a meaningful conversation and not be snickered at.

But when I asked about wildlife, the gentleman in the office assumed that we wanted to see Bigfoot. I hesitated at this presumption and said we just wanted to know if there were any interesting animals around. Eventually we were directed to a woman with more knowledge of the area. She was helpful but merely professional until I stated bluntly that we would like to know of any sightings by locals.

I was surprised at the change in the woman’s attitude. She became more solicitously helpful and told us that, in fact, a sighting had been made recently near the Swift Creek campground above Trinity Lake. She was very willing to tell us about Bigfoot as soon as she could tell that we were respectfully interested.

Over the next couple of days, Jon and I would talk with a couple more rangers, with people along the side of the road, with the owner of Bigfoot Books (a used bookstore just south of Willow Creek), and with a backpacker that was out looking for Bigfoot. In each case, we were treated with the same casual regard that you might expect if you were asking for directions to a gas station.

And in fact we were told about several Bigfoot encounters made by people in town through the years. But we were never given names. I was told by the ranger at the Willow Creek office that people were hesitant to divulge their identities because of a historic disrespect from enquiring writers and publicists. The people of Willow Creek were not out on a campaign to confirm the reality of Bigfoot. But the creatures’ existence was taken for granted and people were very willing to talk with someone they could trust.

  

As our conversations proceeded, it was surprising to us how many stories there were. Recently a Forest service employee on his way to work had seen a Bigfoot looking into a river. Our backpacker friend had been recently spooked by a Bigfoot in the area near Bluff Creek. I was particularly interested in the story of a child that had seen one at fairly close range for several moments and had pointed it out to her father who couldn’t make it out. Later, there were footprints located in the spot identified by the child.

I was particularly interested in this child’s story because of its numinous implications. The more I have thought on the Mormon Bigfoot legend, the more I see the similarities between them and the mystical elements surrounding many of the Bigfoot stories. Daegling’s seemingly fair yet skeptical study of Bigfoot culture comes to the conclusion that whether or not Bigfoot turns out to be real, it certainly has become part of American mythology in a real way.

The two Mormon accounts of the large hairy wildman (the only two that I know of) fall neatly into Daegling’s categorization. This categorization is comprised of two parts - it includes a belief in a real creature but is often alluded to in religious contexts or in some other form of transcendent experience. In both Mormon accounts the man identified as Cain is thwarted by priesthood power. Yet he is always considered a real being.

What light this sheds, if any, on the legend of Bigfoot is not clear to me. For sure it places the Mormon stories in line with the traditions of many cultures that tell of wildmen. I don’t think, however, that these stories generate more interest in the broader Mormon community than do Bigfoot stories in American culture in general.

At the beginning of the 21^st century, Mormons do not seem to be overly concerned about them. My experience is that these stories rarely come up in religious classes or formal worship services. And the growing Mormon Church is full of members that have never even heard of them. Nor does it appear that Utah, with its predominant Mormon population, has any more Bigfoot sightings than would be expected by its location.

You can find a listing of reported Bigfoot sightings by state at The Bigfoot Field Research Organization website. I have calculated the number of sightings by state population to determine which states have the most sightings per capita. Here are my rough calculations (rounded to the nearest 10, out of a standardized 100,000 persons) for the NW states (and a few other random states for comparison): Washington, 80; Oregon, 60; Wyoming, 50; Idaho, 40; Alaska, 30; Utah, 20; Colorado, 20; California, 10; Arizona, 10; Kansas, 10; Florida, 10; New York, 5; Nevada, 3; Connecticut, 2.

These numbers are certainly not exact. They only represent the number of sightings officially reported. I know of several sighting from Utah from a couple of decades ago that are not on the list – they just weren’t reported. That said, the rough numbers do show that there is a real concentration in the Pacific Northwest with numbers diminishing with distance from this area. The number for California might seem low. This is, after all, the state from which the famous Patterson-Gimlin film was taken. If you look on the map, though, you discover quickly that Bluff Creek (in Humboldt County where the footage was taken) in not far from Oregon. In fact the habitat of the area is much more like that of Oregon and Washington than it is of the rest of the state of California. California’s high population comes from the San Francisco and Los Angeles urban centers which are a long way from Bluff Creek.

Utah doesn’t stand out as any more remarkable than any other nearby state. In this sense a predisposed credulity doesn’t seem to be at issue here. That said, however, Mormon interest in the large hairy wildman continues at multiple levels. It is perceived as a curiosity, as a legend, and also as a scriptural apology. It brings the ancient stories of the Old Testament to our times and gives them a contemporary relevance. And in a community with sacred traditions extending back to Adam and Eve, Bigfoot seems to have found a guarded acceptance.     

References

The Bigfoot Field Research Organization website is www.bfro.net/. The reference in The Miracle of Forgiveness comes from Chapter 9 (Point of No Return, pages 127-128 in my 1969 edition from Bookcraft). The autobiography of Chloe Hodge was privately published in 2008 as A Whale of a Tale, My Life Story by Chloe Belle Hodge. Daegling’s The Social History of Bigfoot is Chapter 3 in his Bigfoot Exposed (published in 2004 by Altamira Press). See also Chapter 11, the Phenomenon.

Mother Nature's Medicine

Mother Nature is one of the greatest healers the world has ever known. Her work can be found in the pharmacy, the examination table and the recovery room. It fills the aisles of health food stores and grocery chains. More immediately, it dwells in a lonely garden path, within a fragrant orange grove, on a fallen-needle path of pines.

Ironically, Mother Nature is both the purveyor of health and the cause and deliverer of decay. She is constrained by the laws of death, but confirmed as the harbinger of life. She is, so very often, the prescription of Heaven. 

This is not a political truth or an advocate’s plea. It is a reality that most of us have recognized at some point in our lives. And yet, with only a few exceptions, we as Christians clearly draw the distinction between valuing the Creation and worshiping it.

Our sacred history is celebrated mostly in church and temple. Of course it also includes many exceptions – in garden, mountain and grove. But for some reason we become wary of those who take their religion to the wilderness.

So it is with a bit of suspicion or with an inherent hesitation that some of us admit how much we need the natural world for our own peace of mind. We shouldn’t need to feel this way. Admitting that we love to walk in the woods shouldn’t make us feel like we’re admitting a sin.

Take the masculine hobby of hunting as an example. It is filled with men that love being outdoors. It is also filled with men that have learned that it isn’t polite, in mixed company, to brag about their trophies. Neither do you hear these men talk about how much they love the wind in their hair, a beautiful sunset, or the honking of geese. Yet these are all very common feelings of most hunters.

I have felt, on a number of times, like I had to explain my political position at church or in a social gathering after being caught enthusing over a trip into the wild. Just recently I had an influential member of my community come up to me at church with surprise written all over his face. He had just learned how conservative I am on many issues. “Sam,” he said, “all this time I thought you were a tree-hugger.”

Because this sort of thing happens often enough, I have learned to boil my feelings down to a couple of simple points. I seek out nature because of a real curiosity about the created world. But I also seek out nature because of its profound ability to heal.

I recognize that other people do not share my fascination with animals and plants. Try as I might to convey my enthusiasm for beetles, these people only recoil at the sight of long antennae and stout mandibles. These individuals seem to survive happily behind manicured lawns in town.

Yet in spite of differences in our individual preferences, Mother Nature remains one of the greatest healers of all of us. This is just as true for the committed urbanite as it is for an aboriginal shaman. And no matter how blind we are to anything that isn’t man-made we can fix our lives and our relationships more often than we realize if we would just let go of the control we impose upon the world and let the natural rhythms of nature teach us a thing or two.

There are several extreme examples of this in a little book by Diane Ackerman entitled A Slender Thread.  This is a book about the author’s thoughts and phone conversations while volunteering at a suicide prevention center. As this fascinating book unfolds, it becomes clear that psychological health is a fragile thing indeed.

Ackerman shows that one of the best ways to help someone experiencing a deep suicidal depression is to get them out in the natural world. Dealing with these cases on an individual basis becomes very situational, but there is no doubt about the benefits of the real world.  

This can be frustrating to many people used to our world of quick fixes – to a world that has come to rely on modern medicine and a pharmaceutical solutions. Unfortunately mental and emotional angst is not always so easily cured and sometimes Mother Nature is a tremendous help.

On one occasion a woman, that Ackerman refers to as Louise, calls and admits that her life is in ruins and she is ready to end the suffering. Ackerman listens to her problems, coaches her and then listens some more. She tries appealing to Louise’s need to care for her teenage daughter. This doesn’t work. Then she asks the woman if she happens to be outside. As it turns out, she is.

“Look up,” she tells Louise, who laughs just a little at the beautiful cloudy sky. The conversation then turns to other natural things. Louise mentions a tree. “What kind is it,” asks Ackerman.

“It’s a gingko, it has fan-shaped leaves,” answers Louise. The conversation then turns more directly to botany and the disaster is averted, at least for the time being. For some reason (deeply embedded in human nature) the sky and a tree were capable of grounding this troubled woman.

The most obvious reason for this is that we are natural beings ourselves. It is true that sacred literature teaches us of our unique position in the world. Clearly we are different than other beings. And yet we are still created from the dust of the earth. Physiologically and anatomically we belong to this earth just like the squirrel outside the window or the dogwood blooming in the spring.

And so it should not be a surprise that we respond to the ways of nature. And it shouldn’t surprise us either that our manmade world – a world that takes us away from nature – might just be the cause of many of our ailments.

This was brought home to me a few years ago in a conversation I had with Reese Nelson, Professor of Horticulture at BYU – Idaho. Reese had grown up in the rural town of Grantsville, Utah amid old poplars and sagebrush and had learned to appreciate the rhythms of rural life.

During his graduate work at Idaho State University, he came up with a plan to see if he could measure the benefits of nature on a group of college students in a fairly stressful situation. He decided to create an area on one side of the university’s testing center with an abundance of ornamental plants. Then he arranged for the testing center to randomly assign some of the students taking a math exam to this area.

Reese’s design was straightforward and yet fairly convincing. He was able to show that students taking the exam near the plants were both calmer and scored higher than students that took the exam away from the plants. The differences were not enormous but they were real (and they were conducted on enough students to be scientifically valid).

After thinking about this study I realized that I already believed its basic conclusions. The natural world can calm us down and help us regain peace of mind. One particularly telling example of this happened at the time I lost my job a number of years ago. This was a very stressful time and for years, even after finding other employment, I was anxious much of the time. The experience had left me quite vulnerable and numb, both mentally and emotionally.

Fortunately, I was able to escape to wild places often and this helped a great deal. I also learned that a bracing bath in a cold stream (or in a cold shower) did wonders. The sudden (and uncomfortable) sensation of the frigid water left me wide awake and acutely aware of the moment. During the time of the bath or shower, and for over an hour afterwards, I felt very much alive.

I became convinced over the years that mental, physical and emotional health all require that we interact with the natural world. When we fail to do this, we build instead a wall of unnatural barriers between us and the way we were meant to live.

Consider all the things that fill our lives today that were not part of the world our ancestors lived in – not part, that is, of the world in which we were created. We live in buildings that are kept at constant comfortable temperatures. We only walk a fraction of what we used to. And when we do, it is in shoes that keep us from strengthening our feet. We travel at speeds and at heights that our bodies do not understand completely – not to mention the shock of changing time zones so suddenly.

We eat foods that are saturated with refined sugars and carbohydrates that our ancestors often considered to be rare delicacies. We sit around most of the day in postures that don’t match our bodies’ needs. We breathe a myriad of chemicals that have completely unknown effects on our bodies. And we fill our heads with an almost constant stream of noise and visual stimuli that are quite unnatural. Is it any wonder that so many of us struggle?

The reality is that our many technologies, for all of their conveniences, almost never reach us at a visceral level. And if we never allow the natural world into our lives; then, by definition, we are living unnatural lives. 

My favorite example of the healing power of nature is the classic children’s story The Secret Garden written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The story is about three children that circumstances bring together in a setting of Victorian gardens.

Mary Lennox is a spoiled and petulant girl who loses both of her parents in a cholera epidemic in India. Because there is nobody left in the household to take care of her, she is sent to England to live at Misselthwaite Manor in the home of her uncle Archibald Craven.

Mary hardly ever sees her uncle who travels a great deal after having lost his wife. And Mary’s sour disposition doesn’t win her many friends in her new home. Even so, Mary becomes captivated by a young boy named Dickon who loves being outside and who has a patient way with animals and plants. When Mary discovers that Dickon feeds and plays with animals, she is so fascinated that she manages to stop being mean and the two children become friends.

After arriving in Misselthwaite, Mary begins hearing cries coming from someplace within the large house. Despite warnings that she is never to venture into unbidden rooms, Mary sneaks around searching for the source of the sounds. As it turns out, the cries have been coming from Mr. Craven’s invalid son Colin, who is confined to his room and almost never leaves his bed.

Colin is a very spoiled boy who insists on getting his own way. He is not expected to live very long and the household has been instructed by Mr. Craven to humor the boy until he dies.

When Colin meets Mary for the first time, he is both frustrated and pleased that she is not afraid of him and will not be intimidated by his domineering ways. The two children become friends and Mary tells Colin of all the wonderful adventures that she is having outside with Dickon.

Eventually Mary tells Colin about a great secret. It is a hidden garden that she has discovered outside the manor. This garden was the former treasure of Colin’s mother, but after her death it had been closed. His wife’s death, in fact, had been such a blow to Mr. Craven that the garden was abandoned and the key was thrown away.

Through the passing years, the outside door to the garden had become hidden in vegetation and nearly forgotten. It was only by chance (and the instincts of a robin) that Mary found the key and the door. Then, together with Dickon and the forbearance of the gardener, the two children set to work rehabilitating the long abandoned wonderland.

When Colin was finally trusted enough to secretly join Mary and Dickon in the garden, his spirits greatly improved and he began to heal. But this was all kept highly confidential among the three children. Finally, at the end of the story, the family learns that Colin has been sneaking outside and has been healed in the secret garden. He can stand up and walk and his complexion is ruddy and full of health. He is no longer expected to die. In fact he stands to inherit Misselthwaite Manor.

My wife, Kathy, and I read this wonderful book together some time ago. And as it happened, we finished it on Easter morning. We couldn’t help but notice the impressive moral implications. The theme of renewal and healing was so obviously and effectively portrayed that the connection between nature and Christianity seemed the most natural thing in the world.

And in fact most of us already believe this to be true. But the relationship between Christianity and nature is a complicated one. We see it tangentially in Christian romantics like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In America’s Christian culture we have the examples of William Bartram, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and John Muir. Each of these nature writers drew heavily from their Christian heritage.

Yet, even as Christianity has been the vantage point from which much of our natural interest derives, we don’t often find the likes of a Saint Francis who was as clearly passionate about the Creation as he was about the Creator. And even though Jesus Himself clearly loved sparrows and the lilies of the field, we find little of this dual appreciation throughout Christian history.

Part of the reason is clear enough. Christianity has a long and complicated history associated with nature religions. In the beginning of the Christian Era, the Roman Empire’s religious diversity included several cults and religious groups that worshipped some aspect of the natural world. Magic and pagan worship such as the Bacchanalia (celebrating the wine god Bacchus) were practiced along with the more popular Olympian deities imported from ancient Greece.

Much of the natural world – including trees, mountains and springs – was worshipped by these non-Christian groups. Yet in spite of this perceived (and undoubtedly real) threat, these early Christians refused to distance themselves from the same natural objects that their pagan rivals worshipped. Springs were particularly important to both groups – with references to springs in the Bible having particular sway among the Christians.

Robert Bartlett points out in his recent history of saints and martyrs that these early Christians often built churches over sacred wells. Bartlett makes the ironic observation that, “despite all this evidence for saints as opponents of and substitutes for the holy springs, the saints left their deepest mark on the landscape through their association with wells and springs.”

This complicated Christian relationship with nature and pagan nature worship continues to our day. The religious scholar Peter Beyer, in an attempt to get a handle on what he considers to be an abstract mix of religious practices, places several groups in the broader category of “Nature Religion”. These groups mostly tend to be critical of Christianity and it is easy to see that there still exists a substantial divide. These groups include modern witchcraft (Wicca), Neo-paganism, aboriginal spirituality, portions of some environmental groups, and even some feminist and New Age groups.

This tension is not going to disappear anytime soon. But, in fact, neither will the Christian love of nature or the very real healing power of the natural world. Our Christian heritage and belief in the importance of the Creation are more venerable and real today than are its rivals.

I think this is abundantly clear not only in our history but also in our literature. The Canadian novelist Lucy Maud Montgomery put it quite simply and elegantly in her classic story Anne of Green Gables. You will recall that Anne was an orphan who came to the town of Avonlea by mistake. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had originally asked for a boy that could help with the chores.

Anne was about to be sent back to the orphanage but Matthew had sympathy on her and persuaded Marilla to keep the young (and at times exasperating) girl. Anne loved Avonlea, with its woods, flowers, lakes and meadows. Through the years she became the pride of both Marilla and Matthew. But she always had a special place in her heart for Matthew. And when he died, it nearly broke her heart.

A few days after the funeral, Anne found herself talking with Mrs. Allen, the minister’s wife. She was concerned that she was beginning to enjoy nature again and wondered if this didn’t imply disrespect for Matthew. Mrs. Allen assured Anne that, on the contrary, Matthew would want Anne to continue enjoying the beauties of the natural world. “I am sure,” she told Anne, “we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us.”

Perhaps no better call to nature exists than this simple line form a classic Christian story. The beauty of it stems from its universal truth and applicability – no matter what our heritage and faith may be. Mrs. Allen knew it. Anne knew it. And so do most of the rest of us. God’s creation – fallen and imperfectly understood as it is – can make all of us feel a lot better.

References. Diane Ackerman’s book A Slender Thread, Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis was published by Random house in 1997. A good reference dealing with the health needs of our ancestors is John Durant’s book The Paleo Manifesto, Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health published by Harmony Books in 2013. My copy of The Secret Garden was published by the Folio Society in 2006. Reese Nelson’s work on restorative environments can be found in his dissertation: Mitigating Stress in College Students by Enhancing Testing Center Environments through Passive Interaction with Plants. Idaho State University, 2006. Peter Beyer’s article, Globalization and the Religion of Nature can be found in Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World (compiled by Pearson, Roberts and Samuel in 1998, and published by Edinburgh University Press). For a summary of the early Christian perception of nature see Chapter 15 of Jim Bartlett’s Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things, Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (published by Princeton University Press, 2013). Anne’s conversation with Mrs. Allen in Anne of Green Gables is found in Chapter 37 (The Reaper Whose name is Death).

Master Gardener

The world is gifted with amounts

Of wind and snow and rain

Sometimes they come and stay awhile

Then disappear again

No sooner do they leave behind

A path of wetted earth

Than seedlings and dark dormant buds

Elaborate in girth

Who organizes all of this,

The seasons and the living things

That know just what to do

It’s almost as if every place

Were gardened by a certain grace

That it already knew

The New Mormon Studies Review and the Passing of an Age

I guess I’m getting old enough to understand that I have lived through historically significant times. What used to be current events are now my personal (should I say biased?) memories of the past. I have just recently come face-to-face with this reality as my son Spencer handed me the first volume of the new (and much anticipated) Mormon Studies Review (Volume 1, 2014).

I have been eager to read this new issue for many months now. As a regular subscriber to The FARMS Review (which had just recently changed its name to Mormon Studies Review), FARMS Review of Books, and Review of Books on the Book of Mormon – all of which (together) comprise a continuous publication that began in late 1980’s – I had been receiving notices that the next issue had been put on hold while new formatting and editorial changes were being made. The new Review was scheduled to come out by the end of this year (2013). And indeed it has.

I realize that it may be presumptuous of me to comment on the recent changes. I have never been privy to the decisions that have directed any of the previous forms of the Review. My perspective is simply one of an interested reader – albeit a reader of decades. And it is with this limitation in mind that I consider this important LDS publication through my own historical lens.

In truth, the new publication has left me feeling a bit nostalgic. I discovered the earlier versions of the Review during the formative years of my under-graduate and graduate education at BYU. From an academic standpoint, I have grown up with the Review.

In the mid 1980’s I had just recently returned from my mission and had stumbled upon my first volume of Nibley’s opera while foraging in the Harold B. Lee Library for something religiously substantial to read. This first encounter with Professor Nibley’s work was a real life changing experience for me, just as it has been for hundreds (if not thousands) of others.

This was during the time when the newly formed Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies had joined efforts with Deseret Book to publish The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. In 1989, the year I graduated with my Master’s Degree, I received a copy of Volume 1 of the Collected Works from my parents for my birthday.

That year (1989) also marked the beginning of the Review (called then the Review of Books on the Book of Mormon). And, in hindsight, it is obvious how I have come to associate both the Review and the works of Nibley in a common light. Both (together) have virtually defined Mormon apologetics for over half a century. Yet this admission almost seems to be an understatement. Beyond defining Mormon apologetics, they have come to define a large part of Mormon scholarship to a rapidly expanding world of educated Latter-day Saints. The Review, in particular, has been one of only a few venues that faithful Latter-day Saint scholars have had available to them.

And this has been beneficial. But, as I can see now, it has also been limiting. It was immensely satisfying to emerging academics, like me, to see that there were legitimate answers to our critics. We could continue our scholarly subjects even as we continued true to our faith. Indeed, our scholarly pursuits could often be seen as strengthening our faith. We developed a real regard for the scripture in the 88^th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants (verse 118) that encourages us to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith”.

I should add here a note on the significance of this to young people of the Church. Most emerging scholars come into their own during the very impressionable years of their 20’s. This is a period of important spiritual development, a period when students rely heavily on mentors – especially academic mentors (such as major professors, committee members, teachers, and other capable adults), and a period when academic zeal can get away from the best of us and relegate the importance of the First Commandment to a side-bar in our lives.

Ecumenicalism can have the unfortunate effect of minimizing faith or of making faith a matter of relative preference. Faithful arguments – especially scholarly arguments in defense of faith – have a way of balancing this tendency. They are also the arguments that endure where current scholarly trends often become dated. There is a reason that Christian apologetics has been around from nearly the beginning of the faith. And it is a needed endeavor among Latter-day Saints today even as it was nearly two millennia ago among the first Christians. 

There is a recognized place for scholarly apologetics among our other Christian friends. The ecumenical journals First Things and Touchstone are two that come readily to mind. These journals are filled with a Christian scholarship that is not afraid to defend the faith. Are we unwilling (or unable), as Latter-day Saints, to do the same?  

Or maybe the time is not right. Perhaps now is the time for bridge-building, for mending some of the relationships that have been strained and broken through decades of misunderstanding. Mormonism certainly lends itself to American ecumenicalism. If we have to put or defensive hats in the closet in order to fully engage with this needed dialogue among our religious peers, maybe it is for the best.

But what is to become of our Latter-day Saint tradition of apologetics at this stage of the game? Will the changing focus of the Review absorb this history of debate into a more conciliatory dialogue? Will Mormon detractors become less vitriolic, or will we simply ignore them? Maybe these are not even the right questions.

To the extent that the new publication refuses to review misinformed and sloppy anti-Mormon publications, it will be providing a needed service. This I see as a positive development if, in fact, the first issue is any indication of things to come. Sadly, however, I don’t think it likely that deeply flawed anti-Mormon publications will stop being produced. The average Latter-day Saint will continue to be confronted with critics and will need to look for answers about specific texts. I’m not sure that the new Review will meet this need. For readers that want a balanced and nuanced treatment of Mormon publications, the new Review will be a clear improvement. For those needing a simpler clarification of a text – spelled out in more black and white language – some other resource will need to become available. Perhaps we will rely on the internet, and this may be sufficient. But it may also leave many of us disappointed, if not misled.   

The new Review is a publication for scholars – Mormon and non-Mormon alike. But it also serves the Mormon Church as a resource to promote inter-faith dialogue. It is very well named – focusing, as it does, on “Mormon studies”.  But it will not be lost on previous readers that this focus, now long in coming, will be seen to contrast with Mormon apologetics. We will not be seeing any more classic defenses of the faith in this new Review. Any defense that we do see will be more of a nod to scholarly decorum than to a reasoned faith.

In the final essay of the new Review, Blair Hodges finds Mormon Studies extending back as far as Leonard Arrington and Moses Rischin, then proceeding to authors such as Grant Underwood and Jan Shipps, and continuing with Richard Bushman, among others. These are impressive names, for sure, but it is quite a different pedigree from what the “former” Review would claim. As an organ of Mormon apologetics, the former Review carried on a tradition that extended back at least as far as Nibley’s Lehi in the Desert and The World of the Jaredites (published by the Deseret News Press in 1952). 

So while I am impressed with the new Review – with both the wisdom and timing of this new direction – I am also saddened at the passing of an age. And I’m somewhat worried about where this will send our would-be Mormon apologists. Is it too soon to recognize a now erstwhile period of classic Mormon apologetics? Maybe we should call it the “Age of Nibley” – but this sounds too patronizing. Maybe this former tradition will move in another and equally profitable direction. Or maybe the significance of the period, and the demise of classic Mormon apologetics, will go un-noticed and fall from our interest altogether. I guess we will have to wait and see. In the meantime I wish the new Mormon Studies Review and its custodians a healthy and long-lived success. And even more to the point – I look forward to a long and positive dialogue with our non-Mormon colleagues. Bon Voyage!

Real Live Treasure Maps

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel Treasure Island, the young Jim Hawkins finds a map in the sea chest of the erstwhile pirate Billy Bones. Jim learns that the map is, in fact, a treasure map and sets out with a colorful crew of adventurers to find the hidden wealth.

In Susan Cooper’s children’s classic Over Sea, Under Stone, the Drew children find themselves secretly going through the attic of an old coastal house in Cornwall while on vacation. The youngest child Barnabas happens upon an old manuscript containing a map and an ancient text that lead the children on an Arthurian adventure to find the Holy Grail.

Treasure maps and coded messages make for fun suspenseful stories. They show up regularly in books and magazines targeting all age groups. The film industry also capitalizes on their appeal on a regular basis. The Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean movies are just a few of the more popular examples but there are many others.

Another genre of treasure maps exist, however, that far fewer people are familiar with, even though they involve very real maps and just as much romance and adventure as their more popular counterparts. I’m referring to the hand-crafted maps tucked away in the notebooks and memories of naturalists and other outdoor enthusiasts. And it is no exaggeration to say that these maps are sometimes guarded with the same level of secrecy as any map pointing to a stash of precious metal.

I’m not referring to the thousands of distribution maps of organisms that occur in the libraries and private collections around the world – the kinds of maps one finds in field guides and in the more scholarly journals describing animals and plants. These maps are very important in showing the geographic ranges of species. And as animals and plants change where they live over time, these maps can help us understand more about them. They are fascinating maps in their own right. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call them treasure maps. They are usually drawn to scale and are widely published – without the sensational aura that surrounds a secret.  

Treasure maps are different. They are not generally printed in color on glossy paper (at least not until the treasure has been discovered or until it has gained a general historic interest). They tend to be drawn in notebooks, on separate sheets of paper, or on whatever writing scraps happen to be available. They are frequently drawn in pencil with thin curvy lines showing streams, natural outcroppings, farms, buildings, meadows, prominent trees, etc., all of which are almost never drawn accurately to scale. And the location of the specific habitat is usually marked with an ex – which is often encircled.

Yet while it is true that these crude methods of crafting treasure maps can add to their mystique, I don’t mean to imply that other maps are not similarly appealing. Most maps are capable of sparking the imagination.

The first gifts that I remember receiving as a young boy were maps. One was a globe and another was a book of antique maps. Before I learned to enjoy reading, I loved to look at them and imagine what unknown places were like. Then as a young teenager I became fascinated with birds, mammals and insects, and I discovered – from distribution maps – that different kinds of creatures could be found in different places not far from my home.

This discovery led me on day hikes and short overnight adventures into the foothills and mountains above my home. I was thrilled to find an abundance of interesting mammals including squirrels, chipmunks, and deer. On occasion I also saw moose, badgers, and skunks. I loved watching the juncos and towhees that were common, and I was thrilled beyond belief the first time I saw an owl – at dusk, as it flew silently over my head. Maps, in a very real way, introduced me to a whole new world.

I began making my own journal entries that occasionally contained hand-written maps of the places I had been. As I go back and read these entries (at least the ones that aren’t lost) I find that the maps are more interesting to me than the texts. I think I understood this at a fairly basic level even as a teenager.

It was then that I began to look at maps a bit more closely. What could I find on another mountain or by a desert spring? What about the many streams and rivers with unusual names that curved in thin blue lines away from mountain peaks? Maybe I would discover a new species near one of them.

Jerry Brotton has recently pointed out that maps have given many imaginative souls the ability “to rise above the earth and look down on it from a divine perspective…”. This comes pretty close to describing the thrill I have often experienced looking at maps and planning expeditions to fascinating places both near and far. I have never really lost my romantic fascination with unknown wild places. Just opening a field guide and glancing through the pages of distribution maps inevitably sets my mind to work planning my next trip.

I have to admit, however, that this sort of thing often gets me into trouble – sort of like chasing a wild goose, as my Mother used to tell me. Just because a map shows the distribution of an animal or plant does not mean that you will automatically find the specific habitat or location of what you go looking for.

Take for example Lewis’s woodpecker. This is a fairly good-sized bird – about the size of a robin – with an attractive red face and pink and white breast. It was named after Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame). A distribution map indicates that this interesting bird occurs throughout the western United States – especially throughout the Rocky Mountains. It occurs over a fairly large area. And yet I have only seen it on one occasion, even though I have been watching birds in the Rockies for decades.

I remember the occasion well. I was at home one weekend working in the yard when my friend Steve – obviously excited about something – found me and divulged his important news. He said that a pair of Lewis’s woodpeckers had been sighted near the town of Mapleton, and he wanted to know if I would be interested in driving down to look for them with him.

I quickly rearranged my schedule and off we went. I remember well the lonely road where we found them. There were a few scattered farm houses about with meadows and fields extending into the foothills of the Wasatch Front. We were driving slowly with heads peering up into trees and into bushes looking for any sign of the birds. Finally Steve spotted them in a distant tree.

They weren’t behaving like typical woodpeckers. They would often be perching on branches instead of hanging to the trunk of the tree. And at times they would fly into the air after insects instead of pecking at the bole for subcortical creatures – like most woodpeckers do.

Both Steve and I were thrilled. The place is marked in my memory like a real treasure map. Sadly I have lost the one I think I drew. Even the two tall cottonwoods and the barbed-wire fence – where the two birds where foraging – remain clear to me after all these years. I remember thinking as we left the site that I had just experienced something unusual, something unexpected. In a way I felt privy to a secret.

Through the years I have marked many of these experiences in my journal – often with lined maps and descriptions on how to find the place again. Many biologists do the same thing, especially if they keep a field notebook, like most field biologists do.

I was surprised many years ago to find that these same landmarks and general features found in field notes are also part of real treasure maps. My brother-in-law, who is fascinated with the history of Spanish mines and miners, introduced me to some of the maps of the lost Rhoades gold mines in the Uintah Mountains of Utah. The kinds of maps that have been found (and, in some cases, recreated) are just what one finds in dozens (perhaps hundreds) of field notebooks around the world. Of course this makes perfect sense. A landmark is a landmark regardless of the treasure.

And make no mistake about it, this information is guarded. Biologists know that many species – especially the less common and unusual ones – can be easily exploited by unethical collectors. And so they withhold information about specific localities where some of them live.

I recall some years ago hoping to find a few specimens of the beautiful tiger beetle (Cicindela pulchra). I knew a place above Fort Collins, Colorado where several had been collected in previous years and went looking for them. In fact I ended up returning to the same place several times over several years (always at the right time of the year when they would be out and active) yet I never found a single individual. It turns out that they had been driven to extinction in that place by over-collecting. It’s no wonder that serious biologists are suspicious about anybody they don’t know seeking locality information. And while the removal of a few individuals from a healthy population may be fully justifiable – even helping to promote understanding about a species – removing too many can destroy the population.

Some time ago I was involved with a discussion group considering this very issue. The group was comprised of editors of the international journal Zootaxa. One editor, that was responsible for an interesting but less popular animal group, wanted to get feedback on why specific localities were not listed with the original description of a species. The dilemma became apparent immediately. Locality information should be available, especially in a professional publication; and yet it also needed to be protected, especially when vulnerable species were involved.

This may seem like an unsolvable problem, and yet it has been handled quite nicely now for hundreds of years. Since specific locality data are almost always kept on museum labels near the individual specimen or in the field notebooks of researchers, museum curators get to monitor who has access to this information and who does not. Field notebooks and their accompanying “treasure maps” aren’t available to just anybody.

I don’t mean to imply that only museums keep these valuable maps. This would be impossible given the fact that professional biologists are not the only people interested in finding interesting species, or who draw maps of interesting places. And this brings me to a very important part of the issue: we need more people keeping field notes. We need you to start taking field notes.

Maybe your notebook will be nothing more than a list. Birders are famous list keepers and many of their lists also include valuable locality information. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in keeping butterfly and dragonfly lists too. Wildflower enthusiasts are frequently good note and list makers – as well as good photographers (and artists). When one considers just how intimately connected many animals are to the plants that sustain them, it becomes obvious how valuable good geographic information can be.

If you happen to stop by the side of a country road to take a picture of a pretty wildflower, why not take an extra minute or two to draw a little map of where you spotted it – and perhaps a note of the date and circumstances. Try and capture any insects that might be feeding on the flowers, or what other kinds of plants are doing. The more you do this, the more you will become drawn to the area and its inhabitants even as you begin making a record that could become quite valuable. And you will have started creating your own real live treasure maps.

Perhaps this all sounds a bit too fanciful. But that is precisely the point. Remember that the word “fancy” has several meanings.  Yes, it can refer to an impulse or a delusion. But it can also refer to a skill, to an inclination, or to a dream. It most certainly refers to the imagination. And it is in this context that the difference between joy and sadness are most apparent. And why shouldn’t we be part of a very long and honorable tradition of adventurers, dreamers and romantics? Being able to appreciate a beautiful sunset or the song of phoebe depends entirely upon your fancy – upon your imagination – just like it was for the artists and adventurers of generations past. And besides, human nature is quite clear on this point: there is no better way to capture this very real and very local fancy than with a picture, a poem, or a map.  

References.

The statement from Jerry Brotton comes from the introduction of his book, A History of the World in 12 Maps, published in 2012 by Viking. My distribution map of Lewis’s woodpecker is from National Geographic’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America (fifth edition). For several images of the Rhoades treasure maps visit utahtreasure.blogspot.com.