I never had the opportunity to meet or speak with Ned Smith, but I got to know him pretty well. Smith, who passed away in 1985, is an icon in the outdoor and art worlds. He is well-known for his wildlife paintings that possess unmatched accuracy and realism and graced more than 100 covers of Pennsylvania Game News.
But it was through Smith’s words that we were introduced.
Before I read his 1971 book “Gone for the Day,” I had been, unknowingly, spending my teenage years in a manner very similar to Smith.
The book is a collection of Smith’s columns that appeared in Pennsylvania Game News in the 1960s, documenting his daily experiences outdoors.
All of my spare time was spent in the woods behind our Mountain Top home.
Depending on the season, I was either archery hunting for deer, gunning for late-season grouse, calling for spring gobbler or simply taking a walk.
When I returned home at the end of the day, I wrote down what I saw and learned in the woods. It was a practice I maintained for several years, filling numerous journals along the way.
Words are a powerful thing, and through them I got to know a man who I consider Pennsylvania’s version of the late Aldo Leopold, considered to be the father of conservation. Leopold gave us the “Sand County Almanac,” and Smith offered “Gone for the Day.”
Like Smith, who resided in central Pennsylvania, when I stepped off the dead-end paved street onto a narrow dirt path, I knew how it felt to be “gone for the day.”
Smith’s book reaffirmed that I was not alone in the way I felt. Smith also understood that hunting and observing were both productive ways to appreciate nature.
The pages of “Gone for the Day” taught me not to overlook the little things in the woods. Smith writes about seemingly inconspicuous things in nature with a zeal that makes you want to go out in the nearest woodlot and find the source of his excitement.
After I read Smith’s writing, I found myself stopping to peer into an undercut streambank to see if the mud contained the tracks of a mink that hunted there the night before.
My vigilance on the deer stand was more easily interrupted by the curious chickadee that I studied while he hopped among the branches before me. Things I used to overlook now commanded my attention, and the way I viewed the natural world forever changed.
In his book, Smith told me about his daily experiences outdoors such as the time he watched two young muskrats as they learned to dig roots one June afternoon at his pond. I marveled at his recollection of the grouse nest he found in May where he witnessed four chicks hatch. I shook my head in agreement over his assessment of “progress.”
“In this age of pesticides, bulldozers, atomic fallout and urban sprawl, we who love wildlife and the out-of-doors live in an almost constant state of despair. In the space of a few years we have witnessed the decimation of species after species of wildlife. Still worse, we have watched the destruction of habitat vital to countless other species, while do-nothing lawmakers and a disinterested public look the other way. There are times when we wonder if there’s any future at all for the natural creations we treasure,” Smith wrote in “Gone for the Day.”
Still, because of people like Smith, there is hope that our natural world will have a future.
But it can only happen if the appreciation and respect Smith had for the outdoors is shared by the rest of us.
Previously published in the Times Leader, December 31, 2006.
