Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts

Breaking Through

The August and Susan Frugé Endowment Fund in California Natural History honors the memory of August Frugé, who served as Director of University of California Press from 1951 to 1977, and his wife Susan. The fund commemorates the Frugés’ dedication to California’s natural environment by supporting the finest books UC Press publishes in this subject. We gratefully acknowledge the founding donors whose generous contributions established this fund. •

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benefactors Harlan and Esther Kessel supporters Ernest Callenbach and Christine Leefeldt

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A. K. Smiley Public Library /

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Breaking Through Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts edited by

Katharine A. Rodger Foreword by Susan F. Beegel

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley

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Los Angeles

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London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2006 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ricketts, Edward Flanders, 1897–1948. Breaking through : essays, journals, and travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts / edited by Katharine A. Rodger ; foreword by Susan F. Beegel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13 978-0-520-24704-8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10 0-520-24704-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Marine invertebrates—Pacific Coast (U.S.) 2. Marine invertebrates—Mexico—California, Gulf of. 3. Pacific Coast (U.S.)—Description and travel. 4. California, Gulf of (Mexico)—Description and travel. 5. Teleology. 6. Ricketts, Edward Flanders, 1897–1948—Travel—Mexico—California, Gulf of. I. Rodger, Katharine A. (Katharine Anne), 1974– II. Title. ql365.4.u6r57 2006 578.77′092—dc22

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Manufactured in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100% recycled fiber of which 50% is de-inked postconsumer waste, processed chlorine-free. EcoBook 50 is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/astm d5634–01 (Permanence of Paper).

For Susan Shillinglaw who continues to teach and inspire me

Contents

Acknowledgments

xi

Foreword

xv

Editor’s Note Introduction 1.

Foreword to the 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories Catalog

xix 1 80

2. “Zoological Introduction” to Between Pacific Tides

84

3. “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through’”

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4. “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry”

105

5. “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking”

119

6. “Verbatim Transcription of Notes of Gulf of California Trip, March–April 1940”

134

7. “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico”

202

8. “Outline and Conspectus” for a Book on the Mandated Islands

215

9. “Transcript of Summer 1945 and 1946 Notes Based on Trips to the Outer Shores, West Coast of Vancouver Island, Queen Charlotte Islands, and So On”

222

10. “Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage” Epilogue

324 331

Living at the Lab with My Father Memoir by Ed Ricketts Jr.

333

Early Days: Nicknames and Such Memoir by Nancy Ricketts

336

Works Cited

341

Index

347

Illustrations

figures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Inscribed portrait of Edward Ricketts, circa 1910 Edward Ricketts family, mid-1930s Ricketts collecting near Carmel, circa 1932 Ricketts, circa 1934 Ricketts holding a squid in front of Pacific Biological Laboratories, circa 1935 Page 69 in Ricketts’s “Post Fire Notebook VII” Ricketts sitting on rocks by Hopkins Marine Station, Pacific Grove, 1948 Contents page from the 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories catalog Ricketts collecting in southeast Alaska, circa 1932 Ricketts, circa 1933 First entry of Ricketts’s Sea of Cortez log, in his “Post Fire Notebook VII” Sketch illustrating the idea that “the point draws the waves” Sketch illustrating the small gulf by Puerto Escondido Sketch illustrating the collecting sites near Concepcion Bay

3 9 19 24 30 35 77 81 88 106 135 136 155 163 ix

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Illustrations

15. Ricketts and Toni Jackson collecting in the outer shores region, 1945 or 1946 16. Original sketch from the “Outer Shores Transcript” 17. Ricketts working in the laboratory at the California Packing Corporation, 1947

223 273 325

maps 1. Route of the Sea of Cortez expedition 2. Vancouver Island 3. Graham Island, part of the Queen Charlotte Islands

41 62 68

Acknowledgments

I began the research for this collection of Ricketts’s writings very soon after finishing my edited volume Renaissance Man of Cannery Row. I have been fortunate to have the help and support of many individuals throughout the course of my work on Ed Ricketts, now spanning more than six years. The first and most ardent is Jim Levitt, longtime member and former chair of the board at San Jose State University’s Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. Jim’s interest and generosity stem, in part, from his commitments to the center, to the university itself, to the city of San Jose, and to California studies. Jim’s dedication to education and literacy are part of the legacy of his father, who once met Ricketts, and who was also active in supporting local arts and research. Jim has made opportunities happen for me, and I remain deeply grateful to him and his entire family. I am surrounded by equally supportive friends and colleagues at the University of California, Davis. Professors Peter Hays, David Robertson, and Jack Hicks especially all took personal time and energy to help make the process of balancing graduate school and writing easier. I thank Anett Jessop in the graduate office, without whom I would have been truly lost. Fellow graduate students and friends Laura Maestrelli, Tony Magagna, Ginny Robinson, and Karen Walker have all been part

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Acknowledgments

of my support network of family and friends. A UC Davis and Humanities Graduate Research Award allowed me to travel to Alaska in 2003 to meet Nancy Ricketts, and Miller travel funds made available by the English department have helped supplement research costs. In 2002, I was one of San Jose State University’s first Steinbeck Fellows—a program created by Professor Emeritus Martha Heasley Cox. I thank Martha and Dean (now Provost) Carmen Sigler, who were both integral sources of encouragement throughout my years at the university. I also thank Pieter Smith for providing an apartment during my fellowship year. In spring 2004, I spent time in the Sea of Cortez with the members of the “Back to the Sea of Cortez” expedition. The scientists William F. Gilly, Chuck Baxter, and Nancy Burnett; the cook, Sue Malinowski; and the captain, Frank Donahue, were among the many people who shared with me their experiences of retracing Steinbeck and Ricketts’s 1940 route. I am especially grateful to writer and project coordinator Jon Christensen for his invitation to participate in this remarkable project, and I value his insights about the region and the time Ricketts and Steinbeck spent there. In early 2005, I had the good fortune to participate in a unique class at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, where a number of faculty, staff, and students participated in long discussions about Ricketts’s scientific and philosophical achievements. Those conversations and the hours we spent collecting in the tide pools inform this book in many, many ways. I thank Andrew Packard, Joe Wible, Judy Thompson, Susan Harris, Jenny Cribbs, Harris Fienberg, and Jon Sanders. I am especially grateful to Bill Gilly and Susan Shillinglaw for their enthusiasm and support for the class and for my own research. I spent many hours in archives and libraries housing collections of Ricketts’s papers and photographs, and I thank the wonderful individuals who helped locate many of the tidbits in this book. At Stanford’s Department of Special Collections, Margaret Kimball and Polly Armstrong have been indispensable. Archivist Dennis Copeland at the California History Room at the Monterey Public Library has been extremely supportive, and he provided a number of the images in this volume. I am especially grateful to the National Steinbeck Center for enabling private funding of my research. Special thanks go to the center’s chief executive officer, Kim Greer, who has created many opportunities for me over the past few years.

Acknowledgments

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Conversations and interviews with many individuals contributed greatly to my understanding of who Ed Ricketts was. I had the pleasure of meeting Mary Purvis, Jack and Sasha Calvin’s granddaughter, who allowed me access to the Grampus log book and provided insights into the working relationship between Ricketts and Calvin. I also met Don Emblen, a poet and friend of Ricketts during World War II, who shared his thoughts and insights generously. Professors John Pearse of University of California, Santa Cruz, and M. Kathryn Davis of San Jose State University both shed light on how Ricketts’s scientific project remains significant to contemporary scientists. I also benefited greatly from conversations, interviews, and friendships with other Ricketts scholars and researchers. Joel W. Hedgpeth— Ricketts’s friend and colleague—met with me and gave me encouragement for my work. I am grateful also to his son, Warren, for valuable conversations and support during my research and writing. Richard Astro graciously talked and corresponded with me during the past year. Eric Enno Tamm is always generous with his time—sharing long phone calls and in-person conversations—and also helped locate research materials essential to this book. I thank Herb and Robbie Behrens of Monterey, California, for directing me to documentation of Ricketts’s education in Chicago and information about Albert E. Galigher. I am indebted to my editor at the University of California Press, Blake Edgar, who enthusiastically supported this project from the start and provided valuable guidance at every step of the editorial process. Editor Kate Warne provided excellent insight and judgment during production. I especially appreciate copyeditor Bonita Hurd’s careful handling of Ricketts’s writing. I also thank Susan Beegel for composing the foreword to this book—her insights about Ricketts and the significance of his work are indispensable. As with Renaissance Man, I relied heavily on the generosity of the Ricketts family in compiling the material for this book. Ed Ricketts Jr. spent hundreds of hours (maybe more) helping me sort through typescripts, photos, and letters, and he read drafts at every stage of production. Nancy Ricketts generously opened up her files, photo albums, and memories to me. Cornelia (Rikki) Dirstine, Ricketts’s youngest child, also shared some of her thoughts and ideas in interviews. My family and friends have been and remain my greatest supporters. I would need many more pages to thank all who listened, read, and talked with me about Ricketts, but here I must single out Adam J. Lafond,

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David Halleran, Bara Bonnet, Paige Grande, Cory Lepage, and John Brinckwirth. I especially thank my family—David and Kathy Rodger, Amy and Joe Dubow, and Jonathan Feagle. Without you, this book would not be here. Finally, but most significant, I thank Jack Hicks, my professor, mentor, and friend. He helped me navigate this project at every stage and spent considerable personal time reading drafts and helping me to see how this book might best take shape. For his insights, support, and sense of humor, I remain grateful.

Foreword

A marine biologist by profession and a philosopher by vocation, Edward F. Ricketts is paradoxically famous and yet relatively unknown. Hundreds of thousands have met him without ever learning his real name; he is best known as John Steinbeck’s immortal character Doc— half Christ and half satyr, scientist and mystic, sinner and savior— protagonist of the bittersweet experimental novel Cannery Row and its comic, popular sequel, Sweet Thursday. The fictional Doc has taken on a life of his own. In 1982, the actor Nick Nolte played Doc opposite Debra Winger—as the prostitute Suzy—in a movie version of the novels. In Monterey, California, home to the historic Cannery Row, Doc has become a tourist attraction. There, Ricketts’s lab is preserved as a landmark and his bronze bust graces a city square. But most tellingly, his life-size effigy appears in the Palace Flophouse tableau at the John Steinbeck Spirit of Monterey Wax Museum. For tourists who may or may not have read the novels, Doc is the presiding genius at astonishing parties peopled by colorful whores and bums. More people have heard of the fictional Doc than recognize the real Ed Ricketts’s scientific achievements. Yet Ricketts is widely admired by marine biologists as a pathbreaking early ecologist. His handbook to the Pacific littoral, Between Pacific Tides, coauthored with Jack Calvin, was among the first texts in marine biology to classify organisms by xv

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ecosystem, and is still in print today, in revised form. A collector who organized expeditions to the little-explored waters of the Baja California peninsula and to Alaska’s offshore islands, Ricketts discovered dozens of species of marine invertebrates previously unknown to science. He was among the first to realize that the ocean’s seemingly infinite resources could not withstand the onslaught of industrial fishing technologies and to advocate conservation of marine species—including the sardines supporting the original Cannery Row. Today, the Monterey Bay Aquarium recognizes outstanding work in the marine biological sciences with the Edward F. Ricketts Prize, and a marine reserve protecting the bay’s intertidal zone also bears his name. A handful of literati as well as scientists recognize Ricketts as the coauthor, with Steinbeck, of The Log from the Sea of Cortez—despite the fact that Steinbeck’s publisher deliberately removed Ricketts’s name from the cover after his tragic death in 1948. Yet the Ricketts-Steinbeck literary friendship was a passionate intellectual collaboration as important as (or more important than) that between Fitzgerald and Hemingway or Melville and Hawthorne. The Log from the Sea of Cortez, at once a scientific and a metaphysical voyage of discovery, as well as a pioneering work of spiritual ecology, is the outstanding fruit of that collaboration. Ricketts’s ecological ideas also helped shape the social vision of The Grapes of Wrath and the Cannery Row novels. Steinbeck was not the only major figure in twentieth-century American letters to fall under Ricketts’s sway. His Monterey laboratory was a salon for Henry Miller and Joseph Campbell, and he was a staunch early proponent of Robinson Jeffers, introducing the poet’s work to the lab’s intellectual circle. Ricketts may have remained relatively obscure because his greatest gifts were modesty and generosity. Despite his remarkable contributions to the arts and sciences over two decades, he was a humble man content to nurture the minds and spirits of others. In “About Ed Ricketts,” Steinbeck recalled his friend’s ability “to receive anything from anyone, to receive gracefully and thankfully, and to make the gift seem very fine.” Other minds flourished in his presence because “you found yourself telling him things—thoughts, conjectures, hypotheses—and you found a pleased surprise at yourself for having arrived at something you were not aware that you could think or know.” Ricketts gave as generously as he received: “When you had a thought from him or a piece of music or twenty dollars or a steak dinner, it was not his—it was yours already, and his was only the head and hand that steadied it in position

Foreword

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toward you. Association with him was deep participation with him, never competition.” According to Steinbeck, Ricketts did not “keep things as property.” That may be why so much of his best writing has remained unpublished until now. Once written down, once shared, once given away, the work—in his view—had served its purpose. Ricketts was less interested than most in publicly declaring ownership of ideas and receiving recognition or compensation for them. Until now, the influence of this scientist-philosopher could be experienced only as the gravitational force of an invisible moon, affecting the ebb and flow of ideas in literature and science but itself unexplored. And so we greet Breaking Through, Katharine Rodger’s selection of Ricketts’s hitherto unpublished essays, logs, and notes, as well as his uncollected scientific writings, with special excitement. Ricketts’s foreword to the catalog of his biological supply house, his “Zoological Introduction” to Between Pacific Tides, and his late article on Monterey’s devastated sardine fishery display his thinking as a conservation biologist. His essays “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through’ “ and “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry” were read in manuscript by Steinbeck and Miller. Surprisingly moving, the essays demonstrate Ricketts’s inclusion of mystery and spiritual experience with scientific objectivism as necessary ways of knowing the world. A celebration of art’s emotional content, they are a refreshing corrective to today’s desiccated and disparaging theoretical criticism. Also included is Ricketts’s “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking,” the draft of the so-called Easter Sunday sermon at the heart of The Log from the Sea of Cortez. His materials for a script on Mexico, as well as his conspectus for a book on Japan’s Mandated Islands, demonstrate his wide-ranging interest in politics and primitivism and in other cultures and environments. But the real gems in this collection are Ricketts’s notes on the voyages. Rodger gives us his “Verbatim Transcription of Notes of Gulf of California Trip.” This is the true log from the Sea of Cortez voyage with Steinbeck, the urtext from which the two authors created the book we read today. Detailing the events of the trip as they occurred, it forever lays to rest any idea that Ricketts was not a full partner in writing the Log. Transcripts of notes from two other voyages made by Ricketts—to the islands and outer shores of Alaska—offer an intriguing hint of what might have been. At the time of his death in 1948, Ricketts was planning an expedition to this region with Steinbeck. Their goal was another voyage of discovery that might have rivaled The Log from the Sea of Cortez.

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To have begun to know Ed Ricketts even a little—whether as the magical Steinbeck character whose spirit presides over Cannery Row, pioneering ecologist and marine biologist, coauthor of a classic voyage of discovery, or legendary friend and mentor of the great—is to want to know more. Katharine Rodger offers us the opportunity to do just that, not only with a collection of Ricketts’s own writing but also with the painstakingly researched and delightfully readable biography that opens this book. We are grateful to her for enlarging our acquaintance with this protean mind, so that we too may claim Ed Ricketts as a friend and teacher. Susan F. Beegel, Research Associate Williams College—Mystic Seaport

Editor’s Note

Previously published pieces in this volume are reprinted as they appeared originally in print. All other pieces have been transcribed from Ricketts’s own original manuscripts and typescripts. Small errors and inconsistencies in spelling, grammar, and punctuation have been corrected without comment. Necessary additions appear in brackets. Ricketts sometimes included in the text of his essays and travelogues citations for sources he consulted; these citations were often incomplete. Missing bibliographic information has been added in brackets when possible. Ricketts often abbreviated names and words. Those that hinder comprehension have been corrected. The most common abbreviations— listed below—have been left as they appear in the original documents. altho Crl Jn/Jon tho thoro thoroly thot thru VVP

although Carol Steinbeck John Steinbeck though thorough thoroughly thought through very, very prevalent xix

Introduction

I. Early Writings, Between Pacific Tides, 1923–1939 Edward F. Ricketts’s passion for zoology began when he was a child in urban Chicago during the first years of the twentieth century, well before he was a fledgling collector on the shores of Monterey Bay in California in the 1920s. In a letter, he recalls, “At the age of six, I was ruined for any ordinary activities when an uncle who should have known better gave me some natural history curios and an old zoology textbook. Here I saw for the first time those magic and incorrect words ‘coral insects’” (to Harcourt, Brace, and Company).1 In her unpublished notebook, Ricketts’s sister, Frances, emphasizes her brother’s early attractions to science, noting he was “interested in zoology from birth” (2). Both statements may be exaggerations, but there is little doubt that Ricketts developed an early and enduring fascination with marine animals. When he was ten years old, his family moved from Chicago to Mitchell, South Dakota, after his father, Abbott Ricketts, accepted work as a traveling salesman-auditor. Frances recalls that the children adopted rural South Dakota, but their mother, Alice, preferred city life, and so the family returned to Chicago after one year. Frances writes, “But for that year we children had the time of our lives, . . . were outdoors constantly, and grew healthy and noisy. During this year Ed had many interests. He raised pigeons, collected butterflies and birds’ eggs and enjoyed every aspect of small town life” (4–5).

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Introduction

The pleasures and curiosities he discovered during that year in South Dakota stayed with Ricketts for a lifetime, and when he entered Illinois State Normal University in Chicago in the fall of 1915, he began his formal education with three courses in zoology. There is scant information available about Ricketts’s brief stint at the university (a teachers’ college at the time), but it is clear he was dissatisfied with the typical academic routine during 1915–16. He left the university and Chicago in 1916 and headed to the Southwest. He yearned for new people and new places— a restlessness that would spark many of his future travels and expeditions. Working first in El Paso, Texas, as an accountant at the Oak Park Country Club, and in a surveying party in New Mexico, Ricketts seemed content to lay aside his scientific studies, at least temporarily. He was drafted into the army in 1917, to serve just less than one year in the Medical Corps at Camp Grant in Illinois. Enrolling at the University of Chicago in 1919, Ricketts took courses in philosophy, Spanish, and zoology. From the outset, he planned to focus on the sciences. During his first quarter, he studied elementary ethics in the philosophy department, general geology, and evolution and genetics in the zoology department. Despite his intellectual interest in his classes, he was not emotionally committed to academic life. Six months after entering the university, he moved out of his parents’ home and into an apartment with two classmates, Albert E. Galigher and J. Nelson Gowanloch. He soon reduced his studies and began working full-time at the Sinclair Refining Company. But Ricketts grew restless, and he left both school and Chicago again in 1920. In November, he traveled by train to Indianapolis, where he set out on a walking trip across the southeast. Inspired by John Muir’s A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, he trekked through Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Georgia. He mostly walked alone, though at times he accepted rides and found shelter, food, and company with locals. The account of his trip, “Vagabonding through Dixie,” his first publication, appeared in Travel (November 1925) and documents his experiences in detail. Significantly, much of the essay focuses on Ricketts’s interactions with local people he met and reveals his affinity for individuals and groups on the fringes of society. In later travelogues and essays, he records his encounters with Indians in Mexico’s Gulf of California and along the outer shores of British Columbia, Canada, as well as his interactions with the local vagrants in Monterey whom he employed throughout the 1930s and 1940s to collect marine specimens for his biological supply house.

Figure 1. Inscribed portrait of Edward Ricketts, circa 1910. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

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Introduction

Ricketts returned to Chicago in early 1921, and the two years he spent there between his walking trip and his departure for California were significant for personal and professional reasons. He arrived back at the University of Chicago and enrolled in English, Spanish, and vertebrate paleontology courses. Along with meeting his academic commitments, he spent time working at Anco Biological Supplies, a small division in a fishing tackle supply company, and the work at Anco prepared him for a later career in California as proprietor of his own biological supply house. But his encounter and subsequent studies with zoologist Warder Clyde Allee (1885–1955), an early pioneer in the field of ecology, were an even more formative influence. Allee, also a graduate of the University of Chicago, devoted most of his career to studies of animal aggregations—the tendencies of individuals to group together. He and a dedicated group of graduate students spent summers from 1915 through 1921 in Woods Hole on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, observing and recording the distribution of marine animals of the northern Atlantic intertidal zone. Allee’s summer expeditions were the basis for his Animal Aggregations: A Study in General Sociology (1931). What interested Allee most was how and why animals come together into groups; he believed cooperation was fundamental to virtually all species, mediated by the concepts of independence and natural selection, as most notably expressed by Darwin. “We may conclude,” he writes in Animal Aggregations, “that the mutual interdependence, or automatic co-operation, of which we are speaking is a fundamental and important principle in biology . . . [and] that the two great natural principles of struggle for existence and of cooperation are not wholly in opposition, but that each may have reacted upon the other in determining the trend of animal evolution” (360–61). This was a radical notion at the time, as Darwin’s theories had come increasingly under scrutiny. To acknowledge the “survival of the fittest” as a “natural principle” was a remarkable insight and a courageous intellectual position. Allee was interested in applying his studies and ideas not only to animal communities but also to human society, as he saw the two as being inextricably linked. Today, he is recognized as an early innovator in the field of ecology, but when he arrived as a young scientist at the University of Chicago in 1921, he had yet to articulate the concepts that would define an era in the history of the field. Allee found a group of enthusiastic students in the university’s zoology department who took an active interest in him and the work he was doing. Ed Ricketts, who was clearly among the most inspired of them,

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enrolled in Allee’s animal ecology course in the fall quarter of 1922, his final formal college class. Allee likely influenced Ricketts to move to California; he was well aware of the rich diversity of marine life on the West Coast, later writing in Animal Aggregations: “Along the seashore, in such favorable locations as part of the California coast, the supply of animal life is appalling. One cannot step on the rocks exposed at low tide without crushing sea urchins, sea anemones, barnacles, or mollusks” (358). Ricketts left the Midwest shaped by Allee’s ideas, and, as Joel W. Hedgpeth, a marine biologist and Ricketts’s friend, asserts, “Ed took to these ideas, kept them, and thought them over for the rest of his life” (“Philosophy,” 93). By the time he left Chicago, Ed Ricketts had completed just ten college courses in the sciences, a modest formal foundation that helped shape his budding intellect. But in truth, he was an autodidact who thrived on research and exploration, and this modest bedrock allowed him to devote much of his life to independently discovering the marine world of the Pacific coastline. At about the same time that Ricketts first met Allee, he also met Anna “Nan” Barbara Maker, a twenty-one-year-old woman originally from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Maker was the fifth of nine children born to a couple from a small village near Karlovac, Croatia (Nancy Ricketts, e-mail, November 2, 2003). As a bold teenager, she moved by herself to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and worked in a printing house. Later, at the urging of her friend Doris Kingsley, she relocated to Chicago (Anna Maker Ricketts, interview). Kingsley was dating a young man named Albert E. Galigher, and she was responsible for introducing Maker to his classmate and roommate Ed Ricketts. The two couples were close, double-dating (Nancy Ricketts, interview) and, eventually, both marrying in 1922. Nan remembers Galigher leaving Chicago soon afterward for California to start the biological supply house he and Ricketts had decided to open. Ricketts initially stayed behind in Chicago, as Nan was pregnant and he wanted to be near her and continue working. The Ricketts joined Galigher in California shortly after their son, Edward F. Ricketts Jr., was born in Chicago on August 23, 1923. In addition to the “appalling” abundance of intertidal life Allee described, the Monterey Peninsula in California also fostered a culturally diverse enclave of writers, artists, and scientists. Franklin Walker traces the cultural history of the region and notes that, in the early years of the twentieth century, Carmel-by-the-Sea—nestled a few miles down the coast from Monterey—drew a lively, artistic community of intellectuals (The Seacoast of Bohemia). Mary Austin, George Sterling, Jack Lon-

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don, and Sinclair Lewis were among the earliest of this notable group, and they were the impetus behind a new West Coast “renaissance of letters.” By about 1920, many in this original band had departed the area—most could no longer afford the community that had grown and attracted a more moneyed citizenry. During this period of transition, Robinson Jeffers, the poet and visionary, settled in Carmel and built Tor House, where he would spend much of his life capturing the pulsing ferocity of the Pacific, which he translated into long-lined free-verse narrative poems. He described the rhythm of that place as coming from “many sources—physics, biology, the beat of blood, the tidal environments of life to which life is formed” (quoted in Bennett, 152). Although Jeffers and Ricketts never met, Jeffers’s poetry, deeply rooted in a worldview in which science and art are inseparable, would become one of the most profound influences on Ed Ricketts, who lived and worked just miles away, on Cannery Row. Jeffers’s arrival signaled the start of a second wave—or new generation—of artists and intellectuals drawn to the area, including Ricketts and later John Steinbeck, Joseph Campbell, and Henry Miller. Indeed, the Monterey Peninsula and surrounding region has held enduring power, drawing the creative and innovative to the “continent’s end.” Arriving as a transplant with his wife and son in 1923, Ricketts would remain connected for the next twenty-five years to the shores of the Monterey Bay and the curiosities he found in the intertidal zone there. Ricketts and Galigher established Pacific Biological Laboratories, a supply house aspiring to provide specimens to schools, on Fountain Avenue in Pacific Grove and worked hard for over a year to build their clientele and reputation. Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, founded in 1892, had become a locally accepted institution. But Pacific Biological Laboratories was the first of its kind in the area, and, as Nan Maker Ricketts notes in her memoir, “Recollections,” “the townspeople were very puzzled about what the Pacific Biological Laboratories were” (23). Neighbors and locals were so baffled by the newcomers that Ricketts and Galigher were stopped on one occasion by the police. “They said they were collecting specimens,” continues Nan, “which meant nothing to the policeman. Ed and Albert explained that they would preserve the specimens and send them to schools and universities for studies” (23). Customers were slow in coming, and the partners improvised ways to improve their financial situation. Nan remembers: Things were getting a bit hard for Ed and Albert at the Lab. Something had to be done to raise more money to carry on, and Ed was writing letters for

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possibilities. One to an Eastern lab, one to University Apparatus, and one to the Del Monte Hotel—he had an idea that he could conduct tours to tidepools for hotel guests that might be interested in local color, or biology. We used to see a lot of people gathered around Ed when he was collecting at low tides, asking questions. That is where he got the idea. He would have made an excellent tour guide. He loved telling people around him about the animals he uncovered and about their habits. (5)

Ultimately, the University Apparatus Company of Berkeley, a laboratory equipment supplier, invested in the lab, but even then Ricketts and Galigher struggled to keep the business afloat. Yet for two young married men starting out with very little money, the Monterey Bay area was in many ways an ideal locale. The geography of the Monterey Bay itself—defined by the largest and deepest submarine canyon in the North American Pacific, teeming with marine life—was still virgin scientific territory. When Ricketts and his partner arrived in 1923, there was no handbook about the region or catalog of specimens to be found, so Ricketts observed and recorded as much as he could on his own. The men spent their time collecting, seeking not only the more common, plentiful animals that they could sell to high schools and colleges but also the rare ones. “Ed began to collect unknowns,” writes Hedgpeth. “He sent specimens to the Smithsonian and to other specialists for identification. He also observed the creatures’ ways in the tidepools. He found in the seashore the most abiding love of his life” (Shores, 1:6) and thus was on his way to becoming the foremost authority on the region. Ricketts clearly loved the work he was doing, but despite his enthusiasm, he and Galigher ended their partnership in 1924 or 1925. In an effort to increase sales, the solo Ricketts put together the first commercial catalog for Pacific Biological Laboratories. The slim paperback volume is well organized and illustrated with photographs and drawings, and its foreword offers early evidence of Ricketts’s interest in how animals were distributed in shore environs. He used this habitat-distribution schema to arrange his thinking about species community interaction, and he later structured his seminal text, Between Pacific Tides, along this very arrangement, grouping animals by five primary intertidal habitats: rocky shores, sandy beaches, sand flats, mud flats, and wharf pilings. To consider the interrelations between communities and their environment was unique for the time, a pilot project for a way of thinking about the littoral that differed from the prevalent and classic vertical taxonomic approach advocated by biologists and zoologists of his time.

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Introduction

Significantly, Ricketts concluded his foreword with a warning about the possible effects of overcollecting, his first written statement extolling the importance of conservation, a concern that would not take center stage in scientific circles for several decades. It may already have dawned on him that his own collecting might presage a much larger problem: “One or more formerly rich regions, according to reliable authorities, already afford instances of the ease with which depletion is brought about.” Somewhat ironically, the front page of the catalog includes a photograph of Ricketts collecting a starfish (Pisaster ochraceus) from the intertidal zone—a species that has since become “more scarce” due in part to overcollecting (Barry et al., 672). His concern with depletion grew as he continued to live and work in Monterey— particularly after he took up permanent residence on Cannery Row in 1936 and bore witness to the devastating effects the canning industry had on the sardine and other marine life—and his later essays include explicit warnings about exploiting the ocean’s natural resources. Most significantly, the foreword presents the first indication of Ricketts’s propensity toward holism. The concept, as understood in the field of ecology, centers on the notion of nature as a single indivisible unity encompassing all things, animate and inanimate. His first concern was in observing the distribution of marine animals in the environment and then looking at how they interacted with other animals and their physical surroundings. From the start, Ricketts sought to understand the shoreline as an integrated system in which all organic elements are interdependent, an unfamiliar approach to marine biology in his time. The latter half of the 1920s was a period of growth and change for both Ricketts’s business and his family. Daughters Nancy Jane and Cornelia (nicknamed Bee and later Rikki) were born in 1924 and 1926, and his parents and sister, Frances, had all moved to California by 1927. His father, Abbott Ricketts, who lived in Pacific Grove with his wife, Alice, became his son’s principal assistant in the lab, and the two worked closely together until the elder Ricketts died in 1936. Frances moved briefly to Berkeley, working at University Apparatus, and returned to Monterey around 1930. Ed and Nan Ricketts’s marriage was rocky at times due, in part, to Ricketts’s attentions to other women, and on a number of occasions they separated and later reunited. But without a doubt, Ricketts’s family was a vital part of his life, and his letters and journals reveal his deep commitment to his children and other loved ones.

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9

Figure 2. Edward Ricketts family, mid-1930s. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

In 1928, when the Pacific Grove building in which he rented space was sold, Ricketts moved Pacific Biological Laboratories to a new location. He found property in Monterey on Oceanview Avenue—later renamed Cannery Row—that suited him, as he describes in notes from a shareholders’ meeting in July of that year: “[The] only desirable possibility was a location backing on the waterfront in new Monterey, on Oceanview Avenue, a paved street. It consists of a 50′ lot with a stoutly built three-bedroom plastered house in fair condition and a cementfloored shed in fair shape containing four cement tanks offering a splendid place for storing dogfish (heretofore a serious problem). This property was priced at $8000, $1000 down.” By the fall of 1928, Ricketts was comfortably settled into his new lab sandwiched between two canneries. The cannery industry flourished as increased mechanization—such as the new motorized fishing boats, which benefited from the new sources of fuel oil—revolutionized production in the 1920s. California

10

Introduction

Department of Fish and Game records reveal that, between 1916 and 1926, sardine landings in Monterey increased more than tenfold: from 7,710 tons to 81,860 tons (quoted in Hemp, 102). The once small fishing town expanded rapidly, due in part to a lack of regulation—a pattern of exploitation of natural resources that is a familiar element in the California story. “Following World War I,” notes the Monterey historian Tom Mangelsdorf, “the sardine industry was largely unregulated except for market fluctuations. Little, if any, concern was shown for industry quality, sensible expansion, or conservation of the resource upon which the industry depended for its future growth” (36). Ed Ricketts’s interest in the canning and fishing industries was immediate, and his concern about depletion of the tide pools grew to encompass resources in the open ocean. In addition to focusing on his lab business, Ricketts spent his first decade in California conducting studies fundamental to his development as an ecologist. He looked closely at wave shock, hoping to understand how the frequency and force of waves determined, in part, which animals could survive in a given location. Along with this, Hedgpeth notes, “Ed apparently began to study the relation of the tides to life on the seashore, and tabulated thousands of numbers to analyze tidal levels. His love for philosophizing also crept into the project when he thought of the ancient primal rhythms of tides that govern all life on earth” (Shores, 1:9). Studies of wave shock, tides, and the sardine were integrated into Ricketts’s lab work—he constantly cross-referenced and compared his findings from one project to another as he became intrigued by the Pacific Ocean that was now his own backyard. Business for Pacific Biological Laboratories grew and, by the late 1920s, provided Ricketts with a stable, if modest, income. He was not a natural businessman, but he made good intuitive decisions. He spent much of his time collecting specimens to fill orders, primarily for college and high school students to dissect and study. The zoology department of Smith College in 1929, for instance, requested one dozen “medium Pacific toads” at a total cost of one dollar. He harvested as many species as possible locally, but he took periodic collecting trips up and down the North American Pacific coast to replenish his inventory and gather more data about variations of wave shock and tidal exposure. He hired local children and Cannery Row vagrants to collect everything from frogs and cats to starfish. In a letter to Harold “Gabe” Bicknell, the model for Mac in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, for example, Ricketts agreed to pay five cents per “sea mouse,” a type of annelid worm. As his

Introduction

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business developed, Ricketts and the lab and his eclectic band of workers became fixtures on Cannery Row. Though Ricketts had some assistance from his father, Pacific Biological Laboratories was largely a one-man operation. Ricketts handled advertising, correspondence, billing, shipping, collecting, preserving, and cataloguing mostly by himself from the mid-1920s through the early 1930s. His life was often a solitary one—particularly in a professional sense—but the friendships Ricketts established in the early 1930s would prove vital to his life, work, and worldview and would help define the terrain of midcentury American literature and intellectual culture. In 1930 John Steinbeck and his wife, Carol, moved into his family’s summer cottage in Pacific Grove. Like most residents of the area, they lived modestly, but as Steinbeck’s biographer Jackson J. Benson notes, “the young Steinbecks were not exactly engaged in a grim struggle for survival” (177). The cottage property included a garden that they utilized, growing food year-round, in addition to, as Steinbeck recalled years later in “A Primer on the ’30s,” making use of the great benefit of living near the ocean. “In the tide pools of the bay,” he writes, “mussels were available and crabs and abalones and that shiny kelp called sea lettuce. With a line and pole, blue cod, rock cod, perch, sea trout, sculpin could be caught” (21). The couple quickly integrated themselves into the community, finding a network of artists, writers, and bohemians in and around Monterey with whom they formed an extended family: “There was a fairly large group of us poor kids, all living alike. We pooled our troubles, our money when we had some, our inventiveness, and our pleasures. I remember it as a warm and friendly time. Only illness frightened us. You have to have money to be sick—or did then. And dentistry also was out of the question, with the result that my teeth went badly to pieces. Without dough you couldn’t have a tooth filled” (21). An apocryphal story describes John Steinbeck’s first encounter with Ed Ricketts in a dentist’s office, but it is more likely they met through their mutual friend Jack Calvin, a graduate of Stanford University who knew Steinbeck, if only casually. Calvin received his master’s degree in English at Stanford and settled as a young high school English teacher in Mountain View, California. He taught for two years and then moved to his mother’s house in Carmel sometime in 1927 to write adventure stories for boys (Fred Strong, interview), publishing Square-Rigged in 1929 and Fisherman 28 in 1930. Calvin socialized with his former students Ritchie Lovejoy and Fred Strong, and in all probability he met

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Introduction

Ricketts through Lovejoy, likely in late 1928 or early 1929. They all became fast friends. At about that time, Ricketts settled on the idea of writing a book about the littoral of the California coastline, describing specimens in their natural habitats, an unusual endeavor for a scientist of the time. “There were very few people thinking in ecological terms,” notes John Pearse, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Most marine ecology at the time was focused on fisheries and then on single species. There were only a few people who were concerned with patterns of plant-animal assemblages, such as intertidal zonation” (e-mail, August 16, 2004). Having few contemporary texts as models, Ricketts was undeterred, and he asked Calvin to join the project as a collaborator, assisting with collecting specimens, taking photographs, and writing text for what would become Between Pacific Tides. The project was one of Ricketts’s earliest collaborative efforts, the first of a number that followed over the years, and he thrived in such relationships. A crucial part of his process of developing ideas, whether scientific, philosophical, or emotional, was discussing them in a wide circle of friends, family, and colleagues and generating dialogue. Friends often accompanied him to the tide pools, and he was known to be a patient listener who enjoyed explaining the intricacies of marine animals and their interactions. Though he kept to a rigorous schedule while completing the book, he remained sociable, finding inspiration in discussions about his progress. Working together diligently, Ricketts and Calvin assembled a draft of Between Pacific Tides by 1931. But as seminal as the work is now considered to be, Ricketts initially faced opposition to his book. The process of publishing the text was long and difficult due in part to its ecological organization. Ricketts wanted to describe animals in their natural shore habitats, instead of by taxonomy, which was the norm. Such a structure was simply not considered appropriate by Ricketts’s more formal scholarly contemporaries, who regarded taxonomic organization as the only true scientific approach. In 1931 he and Calvin sent a draft of the book to Stanford University Press for consideration; the manuscript was then forwarded to W. K. Fisher, director of Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, for evaluation. Fisher’s response was not enthusiastic: The method of taking up the animals from the standpoint of station and exposure on the seashore seems at first sight very logical but from the practical standpoint it seems to me not particularly happy. . . . Certain zoological

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keys could be inserted which might overcome to a large extent this difficulty. After all, the end and aim of a book of this sort is to answer the question “What is it?” After this the reader is concerned with habits, etc. . . . In any event I think the manuscript should be carefully read by a professional zoologist. It must be remembered that neither of the authors can be classified in this category, although Mr. Ricketts is a collector of considerable experience. (December 2, 1931)

Hedgpeth aptly notes, “It was an odd quirk of fate that Ed should establish himself in a community where there was so little intellectual stimulation for a field naturalist, despite the presence of a marine station” (Shores, 1:28). But over the years, Ricketts garnered the respect of Hopkins Marine Station scientists and graduate students, with whom he exchanged ideas, information, and research. Indeed, Ricketts’s reputation spread among colleagues throughout the world. His correspondence reveals that a wide circle of scientists and specialists sought his expertise during the 1930s and 1940s regarding the North American Pacific intertidal zone. His own ongoing studies of the region in the 1930s likely informed revisions of Between Pacific Tides, and he and Calvin resubmitted the work to Stanford University Press in 1936. In the meantime, John Steinbeck spent most days writing at the kitchen table of their cottage while Carol worked a variety of day jobs to provide for the two of them, including the position she held for a brief stint as Ricketts’s secretary at Pacific Biological Laboratories. After long days alone writing, Steinbeck sought conversation and companionship, and it was during this time that his friendship with Ricketts deepened. As Benson describes it: [Steinbeck] started stopping by to see Ed for a few minutes now and then, and gradually it became a habit. If Ed was busy, sometimes John would stand by and watch. As they got to know each other better, John might help with some task that was under way, and occasionally he would go out with Ed on a collecting trip. After a while, he brought his daily writing with him, and if there was an opportunity, read it aloud. . . . What brought them together originally was probably a mutual interest in biology. What kept them close friends for so long was that each discovered that the other had a boundless curiosity about almost everything, and that their personalities meshed so well. (196–97)

Steinbeck relished the contact with an expert on the biology of the region. He had already completed a course in marine biology (general zoology) at Hopkins Marine Station in the summer of 1923, and the field, enriched by the exchanges with his new friend, held his interest—and informed his writing—for the rest of his life.

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Introduction

C. V. Taylor, Steinbeck’s instructor at the marine station, emphasized the “organismal conception”—the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—a doctrine developed by William Emerson Ritter, a professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. Ritter’s ideas had a powerful effect on Steinbeck’s notions about human interactions, and they became the matrix for his concept of the phalanx, articulated in a 1933 letter to friend George Albee: “A further arrangement of cells and a very complex one may make a unit which we call man. . . . He also arranges himself into larger units, which I have called the phalanx” (Steinbeck, Steinbeck, 79). Examples of the phalanx are abundant in Steinbeck’s writing of the late 1930s, particularly in such works as In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath. He and Ricketts shared long discussions about the similarities and differences between Allee’s and Ritter’s proto-ecological theories. In a typed fragment found among his papers from the mid-1930s, Ricketts reveals insights into how Steinbeck’s fiction issued from the scientific ideas they discussed: “I have been especially interested in John Steinbeck’s notions because they develop widely the holistic concepts being felt specifically in modern biology. The zoologist Allee must be interested in these enlarged horizons which might very easily (although I happen to know they couldn’t) have sprung from the germ of his animal aggregation concept. Many workers in the vanguard of science and the arts achieve independently expressions of the same underlying ferment.” Ricketts accurately suggests that Steinbeck’s “enlarged horizons” were not derived directly from Allee’s theories but were grown more independently. Yet there is little doubt that concepts like the phalanx theory are, in fact, fundamentally rooted in the ideas of both Allee and Ritter, as well as in the discussions Steinbeck shared with Ricketts and others at the time. This early fragment also illustrates Ricketts’s tendency to amalgamate concepts from many disciplines, as he often saw expressions of scientific (and at times metaphysical) phenomena articulated in literary texts. As an intellectual, he worked counter to prevalent dogma, making interdisciplinary leaps that sometimes yielded ideas that were ahead of his time. Steinbeck worked on several books during his first few years in Pacific Grove. In 1928 or so, he had begun To a God Unknown, based on the play The Green Lady, composed by his college friend Webster “Toby” Street. The novel underwent a number of drafts, possibly with suggestions from Ricketts, as Steinbeck struggled to meld themes and

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develop characters to his satisfaction, and in early 1932 he started a thorough revision of the piece. In February 1932, Joseph Campbell, later a world-renowned mythologist and author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), moved to the Monterey Peninsula, and he soon became an integral part of Steinbeck’s revision process. Campbell listened to parts of the To a God Unknown draft that Steinbeck read aloud, and provided insights that the writer incorporated into his rewrites. “John has a fine, deep, living quality about his work which ought to ring the bell, I think,” Campbell wrote in his 1932 diary, a manuscript later edited and published in 1991 by Stephen and Robin Larsen as A Fire in the Mind (166). The men formed a fast friendship, but they soon came into conflict when Campbell and Carol Steinbeck engaged in a very public affair that Steinbeck and others witnessed. The lovers abandoned their relationship shortly after it began, but the Campbell-Steinbeck link was broken. They remained on distant terms for the rest of their lives. The bond between Ed Ricketts and Joseph Campbell, however, was marked by close connection and longevity, and was severed only by Ricketts’s death in 1948. The two met when Campbell moved to Pacific Grove and rented Canary Cottage, the house next door to Ricketts, on Fourth Street. He found Ricketts, seven years his senior, fascinating, and their friendship brought a sense of exuberance the younger man had not known before. “In my enthusiasm for living as opposed to mere thinking,” Campbell writes in his diary on May 10, 1932, “I have radically revised my attitude toward a great many matters. I have begun to react positively instead of negatively to the invitations of life, and as a result I find things wearing a warmer, more friendly light than they used to” (quoted in Larsen and Larsen, 179). He joined Ricketts on local collecting trips—more like daylong holidays than work—which had a lasting effect on the young mythologist. “Every time I see a rocky coast,” Campbell wrote to Ricketts years later, “I think of you in your boots” (August 22, 1939). He was interested in Ricketts’s biological inquiries and quickly recognized the deep philosophies at the heart of his ecological vision. The high point of their relationship occurred in the summer of 1932, when Campbell accompanied Ricketts on a collecting trip to southeastern Alaska. Jack Calvin and his wife, Sasha, had moved to Sitka, Alaska, in 1931, and the following summer they sailed their thirty-three-foot boat, Grampus, to Tacoma, Washington, where Ricketts and Campbell

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Introduction

joined them. The Calvins had spent their honeymoon canoeing from Tacoma to southeastern Alaska, and they knew the region well.2 Ricketts himself had been making “annual collecting and observing trips” (“Notes and Observations,” 2) from at least 1930 to these northern regions, and he invited Campbell to join him in the summer of 1932. Campbell accepted, having just said a final good-bye to Carol Steinbeck. Calvin’s Grampus log book records the group’s departure from Tacoma on June 29: “Under way—Alaska bound at 4 a.m.” Their route wound them circuitously north, as Ricketts later described in his report, “Notes and Observations”: “We cruised to Juneau by easy stages, traversing the inland channels via Nanaimo, Pender Harbor, Alert Bay, Prince Rupert, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Sitka” (4). This trip became, in many ways, a model for Ricketts’s intellectual process and was the first of a series of expeditions to conduct both scientific and philosophic inquiries. As with the Sea of Cortez journey eight years later, Ricketts was accompanied to Alaska in 1932 by a circle of companions who shared a deep interest in marine science, ecology, and philosophy. The Calvins were knowledgeable collectors in their own right, and Jack Calvin himself, as coauthor of Between Pacific Tides, understood the shore habitats and littoral of the northern Pacific region. After settling permanently in Sitka, he earned a reputation as one of the region’s foremost environmentalists. In 1932 Joseph Campbell thought of himself primarily as a story writer and teacher, but he was an enthusiastic student of marine science under Ricketts’s tutelage, and during the months he lived on the Monterey Peninsula he also became a proficient collector. “Ed brought [Campbell] back to his early love of biology, and initiated him into the mysteries of the tide pools, where there were always new revelations lurking under a rock or under an anemone” (Larsen and Larsen, 204). Ricketts, surrounded by others who shared his interest in and excitement for scientific inquiry, pushed farther north and enjoyed a ten-week expedition that expanded his thinking about ecology. From the start of his professional career as a collector and the proprietor of Pacific Biological Laboratories, Ricketts took an approach to studying the intertidal zone that was ecological—that is, he observed the various shore zones with an interest in the interplay between marine animals and their surroundings. As his life and career unfolded, his interest lay not in specializing but in understanding, in broader terms, the natural patterns of and exchanges between shore life communities. Concerning the Alaskan region that Ricketts and his friends visited in

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1932, he later wrote, “A good many systematic surveys have been made and reported on by specialists; but seldom in a general way or ecologically—the point of departure having been specific rather than general” (“Notes and Observations,” 3). Ricketts went to British Columbia and Alaska for an “ecological reconnaissance,” as he termed the purpose of their trip, which was an unusual objective at a time when highly focused expeditions and strict taxonomic recordings were the norm. Ricketts’s other primary objectives were to collect specimens to add to his Pacific Biological Laboratories stock and to further develop his theories on the effects of wave shock on the distribution of marine animals. He recorded his findings in “Notes and Observations,” a travelogue and collecting record.3 Though a great deal of the group’s time was spent collecting and preserving marine specimens, they also enjoyed the spectacular scenery and the mixture of people and communities they came across. As was true of any of Ricketts’s voyages, philosophical conversation—frequently near the water with a friendly glass in hand—was paramount. Throughout his career, Ricketts continually balanced simultaneous projects in a range of subjects. In addition to his early ecological studies, during the 1930s he developed a number of key philosophical ideas that proved to be fundamental in his life and work. On the Grampus, he shared his early notions of “breaking through” and “non-teleological thinking”—philosophies that shaped his worldview—with Campbell and the others. “Breaking through” was Ricketts’s phrase for a kind of transcendence based in part on his readings and understanding of Zen Buddhism and the Tao Teh Ching. He was possibly introduced to such matters by the watercolorist James Fitzgerald, a friend whose interests included eastern philosophies and art. Ed Ricketts Jr. remembers visiting Fitzgerald with his father and the two men sharing long conversations (interview, July 9, 2004). Many such eastern concepts had appeared as early as the mid–nineteenth century in the United States,4 but they did not become common literary and philosophical currency until World War II. That Ricketts was introduced to and influenced by Zen Buddhism and Taoism in the mid-1930s was not only unusual but also profoundly significant, as it became a cornerstone of his developing worldview. The data Ricketts recorded in “Notes and Observations” about wave shock on the 1932 Alaska trip were part of a projected study of the entire North American Pacific coastline, which inspired Between Pacific Tides. He also incorporated material from his essay about tidal expo-

18

Introduction

sure, “The Tide as an Environmental Factor,” into the manuscript of the book and resubmitted it to Stanford University Press in 1936. In addition, he added his “Zoological Introduction,” which articulates the habitat-based organization of Between Pacific Tides. Though he concedes that “ecological arrangements cannot yet, possibly cannot ever, achieve the finality so characteristic of the taxonomic order,” he goes on to defend the book’s organization, modeled in part after E. Verrill and S. I. Smith’s 1874 classic Report upon the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound and Adjacent Waters issued by the U.S. Fish and Game Commission. Ricketts read voraciously, and the journals he kept throughout his career include extended bibliographies of the texts he consulted while working on his scientific projects. He jotted excerpts and quotes from sources that interested him—both scientific and philosophical—and commented on how a particular idea or passage might fit into his own work. He fused key ideas, incorporating them into his own ecological studies of the Pacific and, ultimately, his holistic worldview. For example, in the “Zoological Introduction,” Ricketts writes, “Inter-relation seems to be pretty much the keynote of modern holistic concepts, wherein the whole consists of the animal or the community in its environment, the notion of relation being significant.” Here Ricketts recognized the significance of the relationship as paramount to understanding a system—in this case the intertidal zone—more fully. When Stanford University Press received the revised Between Pacific Tides along with Ricketts’s “Zoological Introduction,” W. K. Fisher was asked again to review the project. As before, he harshly criticized it: “There is some good ecology scattered through the work but I hardly see the need of a zoological introduction. This particular 4 1/2 pages is a classic for words which reveal an attempt to reach a clientele which will not be impressed but only puzzled by it” (quoted in Hedgpeth, Shores, 1:27). The press chose to publish the book despite Fisher’s comments, ultimately omitting the “Zoological Introduction,” a decision that was, as Hedgpeth notes, truly regrettable: “Ed had attempted in this preface to point up what was really going on in ecology at the time. . . . Fisher’s reaction to this introduction and its resulting omission may well have delayed progress in marine ecology of the Pacific Coast for decades” (Shores, 1:28). Hedgpeth goes on to relate that Fisher ultimately conceded, although “grudgingly,” that the book was well done overall. A Stanford Univer-

Figure 3. Ricketts collecting near Carmel, circa 1932. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

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Introduction

sity Press contract dated June 11, 1936, shows Ricketts and Calvin as coauthors of “A Natural History of Pacific Shore Invertebrates” (a later copy of the contract shows the title crossed out and changed to Between Pacific Tides) and notes that the manuscript was “now in hands of publishers.” Along with working on Between Pacific Tides, during the 1930s Ricketts started to pay closer attention to advances in fishing and canning technology—such as the purse seiner—that industrialized Cannery Row. Somewhat paradoxically, as the Great Depression wore on and the nation fell deeper into economic hardship, canning centers along the California coastline prospered. Each year increased tonnages were caught and canned or reduced to fishmeal—the 1936–37 season set a record with more than 700,000 tons processed along the coast and on offshore reduction plants (up from 160,000 tons just four years before; figures are from Heimann and Carlisle, 59). By the late 1930s, Ricketts was among the few people alarmed at the results of overharvesting, as evidenced by his December 27, 1938, letter to his friend Torsten Gislen, a Swedish zoologist: “Now it is warm and sunny; the canneries are going strong—they will extract every single sardine out of the ocean if legislation doesn’t restrain them; already the signs of depletion are serious. Funny how Americans can’t learn the lesson that the north European countries have known for a century.” The California Fish and Game Commission warned of overfishing throughout the 1930s, but their alarms went unheeded by commercial fishing companies, businesspeople, and cannery workers. In 1939, Dr. Frances N. Clark, a scientist with the commission, stated, “The California State Fisheries Laboratory . . . has been crying the wolf of future scarcity for several seasons until it now seems futile to repeat the cry. Nevertheless, it appears that the wolf will be at our doors in the all too near future” (quoted in Mangelsdorf, 120). The profits in factory fishing and processing were intoxicating, and, at the end of the decade, sardine landings and production continued to rise. Throughout the 1930s, while continuing to work on his ongoing scientific projects, Ricketts also developed his “unified field hypothesis,” the term he borrowed from contemporary physics to describe his worldview. In this hypothesis, he integrated the spiritual and the ecological, thus enlarging the original scientific meaning of the latter term. The nuclear chemist Peter A. J. Englert notes, “In physics, a unified-field theory, one that would explain the connection and interaction between all of these fields, has not yet been found” (187). Ricketts’s notebooks and

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papers from the 1930s and early 1940s document his quest for a “unified field hypothesis” that would wed literature, philosophy, music, and science, and significantly, he discussed his ideas with Steinbeck during their 1940 trip to the Sea of Cortez. In Ricketts’s notes from that trip, the influence of Eastern philosophies on his worldview is evident: “I may be able to understand, in a moment of enlightenment, and to formulate, a unified field hypothesis, but to fulfill it is another thing. And to fulfill it constantly is an impossibility: that would be the perfect Tao that leads to or that is Nirvanah. Or for anyone else to use that formula is difficult, although it may be correct for me, and objectively correct, too. A child may not be able to use an algebraic theorem despite its objective correctness” (“Verbatim Transcription”). In the decade before that seminal trip to the Gulf of California, Ricketts had begun to piece together the concept in a series of three philosophical essays that articulated the components of his holistic worldview. “The Philosophy of Breaking Through” grew from his interest in transcendence and, as I noted earlier, his studies in Zen Buddhism and Taoism. In “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry,” his second essay, he explored poetic verse as a potential vehicle for breaking though. “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking,” the third and best known of his essays, develops Ricketts’s notion of “is thinking,” which attempts “at most to answer the questions what or how, instead of why.” Together, these three essays represent Ricketts’s attempts to articulate the personal, holistic worldview on which he had worked his entire adult life. He composed the first draft of “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through’” in the mid-1930s and continued revising it for about a decade. Letters and journals reveal that, in the late 1930s in particular, his interest in and work on the essay peaked, prompting intense and extensive discussion with others about not only its key ideas but also its overall organization and even its sentence-level phrasing. One of the most interesting of these discussions involved Joseph Campbell, who visited Ricketts at the lab in the summer of 1939—their first meeting since his departure from California in 1932—and who soon afterward read drafts of the essays. “I am going to let your three papers serve as excuse for three more letters,” Campbell wrote to Ricketts on September 14, 1939. The latter responded, recounting his attempts (and subsequent failures) at publishing the essays with Steinbeck’s help. Campbell’s reply, a letter focused specifically on “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through,’” offers suggestions for improvement that he thought might ultimately increase its chances of publication. His comments were de-

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Introduction

tailed, citing specific pages and passages to revise and even, in one instance, typographical errors. Campbell’s critique was candid. He saw the scope of his friend’s thinking and praised him: “This is the third time I have read the essay, and I hope that I may hold it, to read it again. It is really a beauty. I am not surprised that the journals have failed to take it: it is a bit (not to say an enormous bit!) off the God damned beatentrack. But if you hang onto this thing a few years, and continue to develop your point, I should not be surprised to see a handsome little volume” (December 10, 1939). In “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through,’” Ricketts articulates one of the cornerstones of his personal philosophy: the belief that moments of transcendence, of integration and deep participation in the universe, could be achieved spontaneously throughout a person’s lifetime. He pondered long on the “vehicles,” as he called them—emotions, events, art—through which these moments occur, and his notebooks and letters include tantalizing and often cryptic insights about the various means by which one might “break through.” For instance, in his “New Tidepool Notebook,” Ricketts notes that he might further elucidate the concept in “an essay on Jeffers along the lines of my breaking through” (86), though he never composed it. He begins “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through’” with a series of anecdotes about experiences culminating in moments of transcendence, describing them as instances in which “we were really living, we were ‘beyond,’ things had a new meaning, so that the former values must have seemed dwarfed and strange if we had stopped to think of them.” The four incidents he cites in these anecdotes are each prefaced by intense strife, which he later notes “seems to be a necessary prerequisite of the beyond quality.” He also remarks, “The greater the struggle, the greater the possible breaking through.” Each of the examples served, in Ricketts’s estimation, as a catalyst. “It’s all part of one pattern,” he writes. “I suspect now that the pattern is universal, that we fail to see the transcending simplicity of it only because of obstacles on our inward horizons.” He indicates that internal “obstacles” and “defenses”—paradoxically necessary for human survival—prevent moments of transcendence, and suggests that a more constant state of breaking through could be maintained were it not for such personal inhibitions. Ricketts goes on to explore literature as a vehicle for experiencing visionary moments, citing numerous poets whom he felt captured this breaking-through quality in their work. He referenced Robinson Jef-

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fers’s Roan Stallion, writing, “The thing is stated clearly, with full conscious recognition, and with that exact economy of words which we associate with scientific statements,” and, of course, Ricketts borrowed the term breaking through itself from Jeffers’s epic. A key tenet in Ricketts’s unified field hypothesis was the notion that one’s complete existence might be glimpsed only in brief instances of enlightened awareness, in moments of breaking through. His second essay, “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry,” represents his attempt at describing how poetry can become an instrument for breaking through. He believed that instants of breaking through arose spontaneously, occurring both in everyday life and during major human events: “that is, in anything in life,” he writes in one of his notebooks. “Literature, science, human relation—anything. I chose poetry” (“New Series Notebook No. 1,” 9). As such, “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry” considers how poets and poetry can be mediums for transcendence. The essay is divided into four sections, the first two offering working definitions of Ricketts’s primary terms: spirit (or content) and form. He notes that traditional literary analyses focus on poetic form and not spirit, and he argues for a more balanced approach to poetry. The essay’s third section, divided into subsections, describes the “four possible growth stages” into which—according to Ricketts—poets may be classified. The first group, the “naïve” poets, “extols pastoral beauty. Their poetry involves a simple and fresh statement of the joy of existence,” and he places “most Western poetry”—including that of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Yeats—in this category. The second group, the “sophisticated” poets, “are, on the contrary, conscious particularly of the clay feet, and each reacts characteristically with honest expressions of regret, resignation, repudiation, or substitution.” “Clay feet” intrigued Ricketts—the term appears numerous times in his notebooks and letters. Using it, he suggests that acceptance of the flaws inherent in human nature might promote better understanding of the human condition itself and, ultimately, lead to a more nonteleological mindset. Arnold, Swinburne, Baudelaire, and “the more searching poetic intellects of Victorian times” are Ricketts’s examples of sophisticated poets. He describes the “mellow” poets, his third group, as those who “catch glimpses of a new promised land, a heaven far greater than the Eden which is all its inhabitants can know”—that is, they glimpse the “beyond” quality that marks breaking through, but do not necessarily

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Figure 4. Ricketts, circa 1934. Courtesy of Nancy Ricketts.

reach it in their work. “Most Chinese poetry speaks from this plane,” he writes. “But, most consciously of all, Jeffers expresses it again and again.” The final group, or “all-vehicle mellow” poets, have “not yet emerged, at least in this culture.” Such poets would lead readers into deep participation with, first, the poem and, then, the universe and the “beyond,” ultimately allowing the reader to break through. He writes in the first section of the essay, “Poetic content as the expression of a metaphysical (more frequently implied than stated explicitly) seems to me one of the fine features of fine poetry.” Ricketts concedes, “Although no great poet has yet stated this clearly and consciously, there have been hints.” Ed Ricketts was an almost compulsive categorizer, always seeking ways to organize and classify ideas and information, whether gleaned from poetry and art or from specimens found on the shore. He once created a chart for the walls of his lab documenting where and when “geniuses” had lived; he plotted the life spans and major achievements of composers (and possibly artists and writers), color-coding them by nationality. Though such charts and his poetry essay were subjective and anecdotal (and sometimes problematic), importantly, “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry” lends further insight into his worldview and his drive to categorize even states of the ineffable. His concern with the psychological and spiritual effects of poetry placed him in opposition to the New Critics, who reigned over American literary criticism of the time.

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Their emphasis on reading texts solely as linguistic constructs—eschewing biography and any form of speculation—rejected ideas like those Ricketts pursued. Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, Kenneth Burke, and Allen Tate—the dominant New Critics of the era—would likely have forthrightly dismissed his attempts to articulate the potential for a poetry of transcendence as misplaced and inappropriate naïveté. Of his three philosophical essays, “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry” has received the least amount of critical consideration—due, no doubt, to its subjectivity, as well as to the fact that it addresses the realms between literature, philosophy, and mystical revelation. Yet the significance of the essay lies in Ricketts’s attempt at finding a subject— poetry—with which to exemplify his philosophy of breaking through. He sensed that poetry might prove difficult as the point of departure for his discussion, as a handwritten note tucked among drafts of “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through’” reveals: “Possibly better title? The Spiritual Morphology of a discipline as exemplified by poetry (maybe poetry isn’t the best example, but an individual works with what he has and poetry is one of my special interests).” Of Ricketts’s three philosophical treatises, “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” typically garners the most critical attention. This is largely because of John Steinbeck’s interest in and appropriation of the concept of non-teleological thinking (and the term) in his writing and his incorporation of a version of the essay in Sea of Cortez (1941). The most fully developed of Ricketts’s philosophical essays, it articulates a key tenet in his unified field hypothesis, or worldview: the method by which to break through and participate deeply in life. The term nonteleological thinking itself is awkward and suggests Ricketts was reaching once again beyond what language could bear. As he points out, “Because it involves more than thinking, that term is inadequate. Modus operandi might be better—a method of handling data of any sort.” The essay is a fascinating graph of his struggle to meld the minds of a descriptive scientist and visionary philosopher. Early in the essay, Ricketts contrasts teleological and non-teleological thinking. Teleological thinking “is associated with the evaluation of causes and effects. It considers changes and ‘cures,’ what ‘should be,’ the presumed bettering of present conditions.” Teleology—as he defines it—often precipitates “a fierce and sometimes hopeless attempt to change conditions which are assumed to be undesirable,” and is, therefore, one cornerstone of a perspective that champions Man over Na-

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ture. In Ricketts’s view of teleological thinking, causality gives way to a human desire to correct or change what are often viewed as problematic circumstances. In contrast, his definition of non-teleological thinking “derive[s] through ‘is’ thinking associated with natural selection as Darwin understood it.” He juxtaposes a human-centered, teleological world with one in which Man was merely part of a larger whole—a world in which he cannot always control circumstances. By accepting that life is “just ‘so,’”—a perspective based in part on Taoism’s notion of “quietism”— one may come to view “conscious acceptance as a desideratum and certainly as a prerequisite to all else.” Among his unpublished personal papers are notes Ricketts jotted titled “Quietism vs. the Deep Thing,” in which he further elucidated his thoughts, writing, “If a person can see the large picture, he tends to be quiet, relaxed. The supra-personal view sheds light over all things that even includes the personal.” In his seminal book John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts: The Shaping of a Novelist, Richard Astro finds Ricketts’s definitions of teleological and non-teleological thinking awkward and incomplete and notes that he “unfortunately isolates part of the concept of teleological thinking from its total philosophical and etymological context” (38). Although the scientist is once again reaching for words to describe a concept that eludes definition, what is most significant here is his attempt to integrate philosophy, spirituality, and science into a practical methodology through which he can experience transcendence. Despite its shortcomings, “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” generated some of the most significant philosophical dialogues Ricketts shared. Joseph Campbell corresponded with Ricketts about the latter’s philosophical essays throughout 1939 and 1940, exchanging close to a dozen letters in this short time. Henry Miller, a visitor to Monterey who later settled in nearby Big Sur, also read and commented on the essays after meeting Ricketts in June 1941. But undoubtedly, Ricketts’s ongoing discussions and collaborations with John Steinbeck had the most far-reaching effects on his writing about non-teleological thinking. A common misconception about the deep exchange of ideas shared by Steinbeck and Ricketts is that the former simply adopted his friend’s philosophies fully and extolled them in such fictions as Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. More accurately, though Steinbeck was fascinated by Ricketts’s philosophical notions, he was even more interested in the fact that “the biologist in life was a demonstration of those ideas” (Benson, 245). Without a doubt, the two shared a fascination

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with non-teleological thinking, but Steinbeck was attracted by Ricketts the man as an embodiment of such principles; thus Ricketts emerges as the character Doc in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. Scholars such as Astro and Hedgpeth argue that, while Steinbeck’s interest in non-teleological thinking—as defined by Ricketts—was undeniable, he did not necessarily fully grasp it or agree with it completely. Astro in particular states that, although “both men were grounded in the traditions of scientific naturalism and drew their responses from the natural environment,” for Steinbeck, “Ricketts’ monistic approach to life . . . ignored man’s common human needs and so was socially flawed” (43). Despite such variances on the subject of non-teleological thinking, when they later embarked together for the Gulf of California in 1940, Ricketts and Steinbeck shared a cohesive perspective, each inflecting his own emphasis. John Steinbeck included a version of “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” in the log portion of Sea of Cortez, which he composed in mid-1941, striving to convey the tone of the journey, a scientific expedition imbued with philosophical exploration. At the center of their objectives—philosophically speaking, at least—was the desire to enter and experience the Gulf of California fully and in the moment, from a nonteleological perspective. In writing the log, Steinbeck saw fit to include Ricketts’s essay at the center of the book—a philosophical climax—as the Easter Sunday chapter. In March 1941 Ricketts prepared a revision of his essay for the writer—that version is included in this volume— which Steinbeck then edited. Ricketts’s original draft ran 5,610 words, in 217 sentences and 54 paragraphs. The published log included 6,019 words, 234 sentences, and 52 paragraphs, a clear indication that Steinbeck expanded the essay significantly. Steinbeck rephrased many of Ricketts’s original sentences for syntactic clarity and to shift from the first person singular subject “I” to the plural “we.” But most significant is a paragraph he composed addressing the “greatest fallacy” of teleological thinking, in which he writes, “But the greatest fallacy in, or rather the greatest objection to, teleological thinking is in connection with the emotional content, the belief. People get to believing and even to professing the apparent answers thus arrived at, suffering mental constrictions by emotionally closing their minds to any of the further and possibly opposite ‘answers’ which might otherwise be unearthed by honest effort—answers which, if faced realistically, would give rise to a struggle and to a possible rebirth which might place the whole problem in a new and more significant light” (143). Ricketts was satisfied with

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Steinbeck’s use of his essay, and his letters throughout 1941 and 1942 reveal his pleasure in the log as a whole. “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” was the only major philosophical essay Ricketts saw published in his lifetime. He had hoped to publish all three of his philosophical essays, possibly along with others he never composed, in a volume tentatively entitled Participation, but his life ended too abruptly for that dream to be realized. The concept of participation stemmed from Ricketts’s belief that the deep interaction and understanding formed between individuals and, in turn, the universe surrounding them was the most significant aspect of being fully alive. Breaking through and non-teleological thinking were facets of participation, which he sometimes referred to as “all things.” An unpublished typed fragment slipped into his papers further illuminates his vision of the concept and his philosophical writings as a whole: A group of such essays could be published under the title “Participation.” There are participating people whose gifts are given out of an inner necessity; there are no conditions to their giving. . . . Everyone has some participation. There is a deep wisdom somewhere in all this. . . . Conflict has been thought to be the most dramatic thing in the world. I think that participation is, if not the most dramatic, at least the most deeply interesting thing in the world. To the degree of its intensity or depth, it’s “all things” not superficial or spread out—diffused, but deeply participatingly, all-things, and so, in its absolute sense, beyond life but often glimpsed nevertheless—as considered in the essay on poetry. Each one of the essays, although on a specific subject, is thot to be general in that its ideas are universally applicable. It transcends its specific vehicle. (“Participation”)

Ricketts sought evidence of participation in all parts of his life—from his own interpersonal relationships to those he observed between species in the tide pools. As Astro notes, a richer understanding of Ricketts’s worldview regards his studies of philosophy and science as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. “Convinced that all knowledge is relational,” Astro writes, “and that to understand nature means to discern the relationship to its constituent parts, Ricketts combines science and mysticism to show that the totality of life is more wonderful than even most biologists have realized. . . . Mysticism may be a creed or simply an attitude toward life. And Ricketts’ mysticism, firmly grounded on a naturalistic, scientific base, is of [this] type and suggests an approach toward a perception of reality which does not ignore but rather builds upon the analytic and discursive methods” (29).

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In another typed fragment from his papers, Ricketts addresses this very point and, in doing so, allows us insight into his thoughts about his own intellectual and philosophical development: “At the charge that I have inclinations toward mysticism, I say only that, if in observable phenomena such as tides, earthquakes, growth patterns of animals, marine sociology, in the ‘pre-natal’ behavior pattern which impels grunions towards discharging their eggs on the shore at extreme high tide, that sends marine salmon back into perhaps parental fresh water for spawning—if in all this there is mysticism, then I’m of course a mystic” (“Miscellaneous Thoughts in Process”). By 1936—a pivotal year for Ricketts—his three philosophical essays were drafted and circulating in the hands of friends, and the manuscript and illustrations for Between Pacific Tides were at Stanford University Press awaiting publication. In January, his father, Abbott, had suddenly fallen ill and died, leaving him to handle virtually all the lab work alone. Later that spring, Ricketts and Nan—after fourteen volatile years of marriage marked by periodic separations—split permanently, and he moved into Pacific Biological Laboratories on Oceanview Avenue. He lived upstairs and worked long hours downstairs in the laboratory, taking on his late father’s work processing orders, embalming sharks and cats, cataloging, and other tasks. During his first thirteen years living and working on Cannery Row, Ricketts amassed what may have been the most extensive private biological library on the Pacific Coast. He read voraciously and kept notes about books ranging in subjects from psychology to natural history. He loved music too—lab visitors recall that it played throughout the day and many nights—and he added a vast collection of recorded music and art reproductions to the crammed quarters. He entertained a stream of friends and visitors, from local characters to more prominent guests, and his son recalls that, during the years he lived with his father at the lab (1938–43), “almost every night people dropped by casually and would maybe stay for supper. Dad usually cooked up a steak, . . . maybe [served] a little bit of wine; and after, usually Dad would pull out his records—time for a little bit of music” (interview, October 15, 2003). Ed Jr. and others also remember that Ricketts would go through “periods” during which certain composers or pieces affected him and were played incessantly: Gregorian chants, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20, Beethoven, Monteverdi Madrigals, and Palestrina were all, at one time or another, among his favorites. Years later, Steinbeck’s rendering of Doc in Cannery Row, listening to Bach’s Art of the Fugue, in

Figure 5. Ricketts holding a squid in front of Pacific Biological Laboratories, circa 1935. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

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this milieu was memorable and accurate. In 1936, although separated from his wife and living away from his children, Ricketts was comfortable in his life at the lab. In the early morning hours of November 25, 1936, an electrical fire at the Del Mar Cannery next door spread quickly to Pacific Biological Laboratories, destroying the structure and its contents. Ricketts’s life work, letters, books, belongings, and equipment were incinerated in one stroke, and he escaped, devastated, with only a few cherished possessions—his typewriter, his car, and a large portrait of himself by friend Jim Fitzgerald. Thankfully, his essays—circulating among friends—and the Between Pacific Tides manuscript, which was at Stanford University Press, were spared. The process of rebuilding was financially and psychologically difficult; insurance money was minimal, and despite efforts to win a lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric, he never quite regained his financial footing. Friends assisted with rebuilding the lab, offering support with its design and furnishings, and helped replace Ricketts’s cherished library with a surprise “book shower” in December 1936. The lab remains a fixture on Cannery Row, cherished by local residents and tourists, and was awarded a California Governor’s Historic Preservation Award after being retrofitted and restored in 1999. In early 1937, Nan left the Monterey Peninsula permanently, taking the girls with her. Ed Jr. stayed with his aunt and uncle, Frances and Fred Strong, in Carmel until 1938, when he then moved into the lab with his father, remaining there until he was drafted into the army in 1943. Ricketts and his son were very close, and over the years Ed Jr. assisted his father in the lab and accompanied him on collecting trips. He recalls his father’s excitement and satisfaction when Between Pacific Tides, after almost a decade of delays, was finally published in 1939. More than fifty years later, the text remains in print and is one of Stanford University Press’s all time best-selling publications.

II. Sea of Cortez and World War II, 1940–1944 The friendship between Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck bore its greatest fruit in 1940. In 1939, each had completed his greatest accomplishment—Between Pacific Tides and The Grapes of Wrath. Yet they emerged from their respective projects in very different states of mind: the publication of Between Pacific Tides after years of struggle with Stanford University Press energized Ricketts, while Steinbeck was ex-

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hausted after composing The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred fevered working days. Facing a whirlwind of critical acclaim and violent opposition to Grapes, Steinbeck sought a new direction for his energies, one that would temporarily take him away from fiction. In an oft-quoted letter to his friend Carlton “Dook” Sheffield, he captures this pivotal moment: “I must make a new start. I’ve worked the novel—I know it as far as I can take it. I never did think much of it—a clumsy vehicle at best. And I don’t know the form of the new but I know there is a new which will be adequate and shaped by the new thinking” (Steinbeck, Life in Letters, 194). Steinbeck’s “new form” was marine biology, and he embarked on a project, and ultimately a voyage, that would mark the culmination of the philosophies and ideas that he and Ricketts exchanged over the course of their relationship. In mid-1939, after completing Between Pacific Tides, Ricketts started work on a handbook of the most common intertidal species in the San Francisco Bay area, at the Stanford University Press’s suggestion. Steinbeck eagerly signed on, seeing it as a stepping-stone of sorts into marine biology and hopefully the first in a series of collaborative projects. “Ed always thought that Steinbeck would have been a fine biologist,” Hedgpeth notes, “and admired his very sharp eye on the seashore, his ability to see things that even Ed missed” (Shores, 1:31). But Steinbeck expressed uncertainties about the San Francisco book to his friend and agent Elizabeth Otis: “I have a terrific job of reading to do. Ricketts is all right but I am a popular writer and I have to build some trust in the minds of biologists. This handbook will help do that” (Life in Letters, 196, emphasis Steinbeck’s). They would write the book together, each man composing material, including essays on general principles of ecology and animal descriptions, that Steinbeck would then collate into a handbook for high school students and general enthusiasts. By early 1940 they had each completed partial drafts. These drafts revealed that the book’s format would mirror the ecological arrangement of Between Pacific Tides but delve even deeper, finding connections between human and intertidal communities. For instance, in the “Zoological Preface” to the San Francisco book that he drafted, Ricketts writes, “Even the two chief philosophies of human society are paralleled on the shore: those dedicated to the principle that the individual serves the state, chiefly as a unit or cog in that suprapersonal social organization that is the colony; and those based on the democratic principle that the state serves the all-important individual.” We can see the influence of Allee’s most recent theories, articulated in

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Cooperation among Animals (1938), on the correlations between animal cooperation and human society, particularly his consideration that war may be a “product by natural selection of the results produced by the struggle for existence” (177). In Ricketts’s “Zoological Preface,” he widens the scope of his ecological gaze, from the tide pools to human interactions. Steinbeck, living in Los Gatos at the time, also worked at writing text for the book, and his journal reveals periodic feelings of inadequacy: “Came down here [to Pacific Grove] to try to work on the tide pool hand book,” he writes on January 4, 1940. “I discover that there are no easy books to write and that this may well be one of the hardest” (Working Days, 109–10). He finally completed a draft of the preface, “Second Try at Opening Preface,” which argues for the importance of a holistic approach to intertidal life, in which he writes: “It is as though one went into a city like New York and chose one family for study. Surely there is enough in a family for a life to study, but there remains the city as a whole. And in tide pool or exposed rock there is a similar association—the whole which is ecological symbiotic, commensal, and sociologic. It is a whole which has been little dealt with for the beginning observer and more than that, probably the least investigated field in biology” (29). He asserts the need for more ecological considerations of marine life, and the preface includes some of the most concise statements Steinbeck ever wrote about ecology. It was later revised and included in the 1948 edition of Between Pacific Tides. In these two short prefaces, both Steinbeck and Ricketts articulate the concept of the macrosystem—the larger picture encompassing tide pools, human societies, and the entire universe. As I mentioned previously, Steinbeck’s concept of the phalanx, or group man, issued from his studies in marine science. As he and Ricketts began drafting outlines for their San Francisco handbook, Steinbeck’s continued interest in the correlations between human nature and animal behavior became evident. As they started work on the “San Francisco Bay Area Handbook” in late 1939, Steinbeck and Ricketts also began planning an extensive trip to the Gulf of California for the spring of 1940. They bought and outfitted a truck ideal for collecting, described by Steinbeck in a letter to Pascal Covici, his friend and editor: “A tiny pump, a small refrigeration plant, small aquaria, and a beautiful new microscope, bookcases and typing stands. All mounted in the truck. Very pretty. Insignia is π √-(R+S)2. Don’t think about this too much. It will drive you crazy” (quoted in Benson, 428). Their plan was to drive around the gulf, col-

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lecting at frequent stops. In his “Post Fire Notebook VII”—a recently discovered journal with entries from September 28, 1939, through March 27, 1940—Ricketts recorded the events leading up to the Sea of Cortez expedition: Because I will probably be interested in the factual history of this later on, at a time when I may be unable to reconstruct it, I will try now to delineate the rapid workings-out of this thing. Jon has been saying that his time of pure fiction is over, that he’d like next to portray the tide pools, that his next work will be factual. He came down [to the lab] this time depressed and unconfident, headed for a long walk or a bus ride. He said that in February he and Crl would go to Mexico. I said if they’d wait until March I’d go along; that I wanted to go, that I’d rather go with someone who knew the ropes, and that I’d rather go with them. He said, “Fine,” that maybe too we could get in a little collecting. I said if I had any gumption I’d get busy first and get well started on the [account] of SF Bay invertebrates that Stanf[ord] suggested I should do. Then Jon said, “Why don’t we do that book together?” We talked it over a while and it began to seem to me quite feasible. So we began to lay plans for it, work to start immediately. Then somehow or other we got to talking about the Mexico trip; it changed around more and more from the idea of a motortrip down to Mexico City, to the idea of, primarily, a Gulf of California collecting trip. (Jon said, “If you have an objective, like collecting specimens, it puts so much more direction onto a trip, makes it more interesting.”) Then he said, “We’ll do a book about it that’ll more than pay the expenses of the trip.” And as we considered it, we got more and more enthusiastic about the whole thing. We started at once to lay out plans, to write down lists of things to do, to get, to take, to plan our itinerary and activities, and went down to Chev[rolet] that next morning (Wed., Nov. 29) to look up [a] station wagon. There happened to be one coming in, and Jon just about closed with him that same day. Then the idea of the book loomed up more and more as the significant feature of the whole thing. We both became quite sure that it could be a great thing, maybe very great, a modern Odyssey. (69–70)

A few pages later, Ricketts writes that he and Steinbeck are going to the Sea of Cortez, suspending work on the “San Francisco Bay Area Handbook.” The reasons for this sudden shift were many. Backlash from The Grapes of Wrath continued and Steinbeck’s marriage to Carol was deteriorating. And Ricketts’s notebooks reveal that his longtime affair with a married young woman in Monterey had recently ended, leaving him devastated. Both men were ready to get away. In February 1940, they decided to charter a boat from Monterey to the Gulf of California in lieu of driving down the Baja California peninsula of Mexico

Figure 6. Page 69 in Ricketts’s “Post Fire Notebook VII.” Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

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as originally planned. In a letter to Jack Calvin, his Between Pacific Tides collaborator, Ricketts relates, “Jon and Carol and I have a fine plan to explore the Gulf of California by purse seiner, but the Mexican government hasn’t yet put its blessing on the cruise. Everything is ready otherwise, including a refrigerator for sea water (and, quiet please, beer)” (February 26, 1940). He planned extensively, and Ricketts’s notebooks from this period detail the books, equipment, and supplies he ordered, as well as hand-drawn plans for a traveling desk-bookcase he wanted Ed Jr. to build.5 Steinbeck advanced the expenses for the trip, with the understanding that Ricketts would reimburse him for his share with royalties earned from their resulting book. On March 7, 1940, days before leaving the Monterey Bay, they hired Tony Berry’s Western Flyer, a seventy-six-foot purse seiner. The charter was last minute, as Ricketts notes in a letter to his friends Herbert and Rosa Kline: “The boat we had lined up had a change of heart at just the last minute, thought a few dollars more per day would be just lovely, especially since we were in such a hurry and therefore couldn’t look around to get another. . . . The new boat is the Western Flyer, call letters WPTO” (March 7, 1940). Four days later, Steinbeck and Ricketts departed for the Gulf of California with Berry, the engineer Tex Travis, and two seamen, Tiny Colletto and Sparky Enea. Carol Steinbeck was also aboard; her presence could scarcely have been tranquil, and she was not mentioned in Sea of Cortez. Steinbeck’s friend and lawyer Toby Street accompanied the crew from Monterey Bay to San Diego. They agreed to keep journals that Steinbeck would use to write the narrative of their trip, but Steinbeck did not follow through. Ricketts kept a number of journals simultaneously during 1939 and 1940—a practice typical throughout his life—and, consequently, references to the trip are scattered throughout other documents. The log and notes he kept specifically on the Western Flyer were presumed lost until very recently, when Ed Ricketts Jr. revealed he had located his father’s “Post Fire Notebook VII.” The first half of Ricketts’s notebook consists of personal observations on various subjects—Mexican art, his dreams, literature. He observes, for example, while discussing Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”: “That short time was the only time during his life that Francis Macomber ‘really lived’ “ (41). A number of early entries also describe Ricketts’s frustration and sadness about the end of his aforementioned love affair. The latter third of the notebook includes preliminary plans for the Cortez trip and is followed by the log

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and notes for the first sixteen days of their six-week expedition—March 11 through March 27, 1940. Ricketts was a prolific journal writer; other notebooks he wrote in after the fire of 1936 may not have been located yet, and the whereabouts of the remaining part of the log are as yet unknown. A fascinating document, the handwritten log in Ricketts’s notebook differs only slightly from the typescript he drafted later for Steinbeck, “Verbatim Transcription of Notes of Gulf of California Trip, March–April 1940.” Upon their return, Ricketts prepared the typescript for Steinbeck as a reference for writing the log portion of their book. The “Verbatim Transcript” itself is actually more detailed than Ricketts’s onboard notes. Hedgpeth included a heavily edited version of the typescript in The Outer Shores (1978), omitting portions of species lists and many of Ricketts’s key observations. In this volume, I have restored excised sections, and the document appears intact for the first time. In the typescript, Ricketts fleshes out his ideas, expanding passages about philosophical discussions they shared and citing Latin names and scientific information for specimens they collected, thus providing Steinbeck with a more complete account to work from as he composed Sea of Cortez.6 Observing the progressive development of ideas, from Ricketts’s notebook to his typescript and to the published book, allows a rare glimpse into their collaborative process and provides insight into how Steinbeck used his friend’s notes as source material for Sea of Cortez. In most cases, each rendering reveals significant changes, but in several instances Steinbeck adopted Ricketts’s account of a particular episode with few changes. For instance, on Easter Sunday, March 24, Ricketts wrote in his notebook: From about 10 or 10:30 to 11:30 or 12, Tiny Colletto and I walked along the ridge between Amortajada Bay and the lagoon beyond. On the lagoon side of the ridge there were thousands of burrows presumable of a big land crab (since we saw what I took to be one, which however scuttled into his burrow in a hurry.) Hopeless to dig out, lacking time, shovel and manpower. The shores of the lagoon were teeming with fiddler crabs and estuarine snails of which we took representatives. Mangroves. A salicornia-like plant from where we were wading around in the lagoon. We could see a picture of still water, the green of the fringing trees and the burned red brown of the distant mountains. (143)

Ricketts’s revision in the “Verbatim Transcription” is almost unchanged:

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Introduction From about 10 or 10:30 until 11:30 or 12, Tiny and I walked along the ridge between Amortajada Bay and the lagoon beyond. On the lagoon side of the ridge, there were thousands of burrows, presumably of a big land crab (since we saw what I took to be one, which, however, scuttled into his burrow in a hurry). Hopeless to dig out, lacking time, shovel, and man power. The shores of the lagoon were teeming with fiddler crabs and estuarine snails, of which we took representatives. Mangroves (the flowers may have caused the fine, fragrant, tropical hay-ey smell we noticed while coming into Cape San Lucas that midnight). A Salicornia-like shore plant. From where we were wading around in the lagoon, there was a fine picture of still water, with the green fringing trees against the burnt red-brown of the distant mountains, like something out of Conrad, or like some fantastic Doré engraving of heaven.

And in Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck’s alterations are minor: The beach was hot and yellow. We swam, and then walked along on the sand and went inland along the ridge between the beach and a large mangrove-edged lagoon beyond. On the lagoon side of the ridge there were thousands of burrows, presumably of large land-crabs, but it was hopeless to dig them out. The shores of the lagoon teemed with the little clicking bubbling fiddler crabs and estuarian snails. Here we could smell the mangrove flowers without the foul root smell, and the odor was fresh and sweet, like that of new-cut grass. From where we waded there was a fine picture, still reflecting water and the fringing green mangroves against the burnt red-brown of the distant mountains, all like some fantastic Doré drawing of a pressed and embattled heaven. (131)

Ricketts trusted Steinbeck unreservedly and was proud of how the writer used the “Verbatim Transcription” in Sea of Cortez. Indeed, Ricketts was also very satisfied with how Steinbeck incorporated his “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking.” “I was very charmed with the book,” he writes to Campbell in an oft-quoted letter of December 31, 1941. “Jn certainly built it carefully. The increasing hints towards purity of thinking, then building up toward the center of the book, on Easter Sunday, with the non-teleological essay.” The essay’s placement midway through the narrative sets it as the log’s climax, but as Ricketts notes in a brief synopsis he called “Morphology of the Sea of Cortez,” which he wrote after the book’s publication, “a universal thesis was stated in the introduction—the way things are. The trip is shown to have been an example of that thesis.” Ricketts saw the journey as an opportunity both to fulfill their philosophical objectives and to apply his ecological method to a new region, and his excitement is apparent throughout his notes.

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As in his Monterey Bay studies, he sought a better understanding of the most common marine life in the Sea of Cortez, recognizing in the “Verbatim Transcription” that thorough information about the “ubiquitous forms” along the shoreline would better serve general readers “and even . . . zoologists.” His notes also further expand his holistic ecological perspective, through which he sought to examine the complex system of the Gulf of California as a whole—seen particularly in passages on the efficiency of the ecosystem food chain: In connection with the unified field hypothesis, note the horror with which Tiny regards such “waste” as throwing dead fish overboard (as the Japanese were doing on that shrimp boat). (I couldn’t tell him that, of course.) Every bit of that fish is eaten by scavengers. If by chance they miss any, the minute particles are utilized by detritus feeders, of which worms and cucumbers are most noticeable. Any microscopic portions—or even large portions, for that matter—so missed are reduced by the bacteria. So that what is one group’s loss or death is another group’s gain or life. Nothing is wasted. The equation always balances. The elements which the fish elaborated into an individuated physical organism, a microcosm, go back again into the undifferentiated macrocosm. There is no “waste”; there are, simply, forms of energy and/or food not utilizable by man.

Ricketts effectively links the microcosm (the individual animal) with the macrocosm (the food chain), but most significantly he emphasizes the effect of humans on this cycle. He aptly notes that “waste” is a manmade, introduced concept that ultimately does not truly exist in the undisturbed “large picture,” which he also refers to as a “unified field hypothesis.” Ricketts and Steinbeck both remained acutely aware that their mere presence altered the environment, that by stepping on shore they were at once an inextricable element in the tide pools and beaches they had come to see. “We could not observe a completely objective Sea of Cortez anyway,” they explain, “for in that lonely and uninhabited Gulf our boat and ourselves would change it the moment we entered. By going there, we would bring a new factor to the Gulf” (Sea of Cortez, 3). The Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw notes, “As ecologists, both Ricketts and Steinbeck thus rejected a man-centered universe and stressed the interconnectedness of humans with nature. . . . That profound ecological awareness was somewhat unusual for a Depressionera scientist, even more so for a writer of fiction” (xii). They practiced more than traditional ecology in the Sea of Cortez, blending philosophic holism with scientific discovery.

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The Steinbeck scholar Louis Owens extends the approach a step further: “It is hard to see why we might need a better articulation than this of what today we term a philosophy of deep ecology,” he writes of Sea of Cortez. “It is an argument that demands the most acute sense of our interrelatedness with all of existence, not merely what we customarily term ‘life,’ and not merely what we term ‘humanity’ “ (17). Formally articulated in the 1970s, deep ecology imbues traditional environmentalism with philosophic and spiritual perspectives. “The essence of deep ecology,” write Bill Devall and George Sessions in their seminal Deep Ecology: Living as If Nature Mattered, “is to keep asking more searching questions about human life, society, and Nature as in the Western philosophical tradition of Socrates. . . . Thus deep ecology goes beyond the so-called factual scientific level to the level of self and Earth wisdom” (65). Ricketts and Steinbeck explored the Sea of Cortez hoping to better understand both the natural and metaphysical realities of life, at times experiencing moments of breaking through. As a result, Sea of Cortez is difficult to classify and is unquestionably more complex than its subtitle—A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research—suggests, and it is more accurately seen as a literary narrative of blended scientific and philosophical discovery. The trip was rigorous—four thousand miles in six weeks. Typically, the crew would rise before dawn and take the skiff, equipped with the temperamental outboard motor they dubbed the “Sea-Cow,” ashore to collect at low tide. It was often backbreaking, meticulous work, as Steinbeck later reflected in Sea of Cortez: “The period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on the attention. The picture is wide and colored and beautiful. But after an hour and a half the attention centers weary, the colors fade, and the field is likely to narrow to an individual animal. Here one may observe his own world narrowed down until interest and, with it, observation, flicker and go out” (84). Eating and drinking were also integral parts of each day, and the group often caught fresh fish for meals. Steinbeck captures the happenings of daily shipboard life with vivid detail and humor in the published log. They returned from the gulf exhausted but pleased. Ricketts had disembarked in Los Angeles, opting for a smoother ride home by car, and the Western Flyer docked in Monterey on April 20. Eager to collate scientific data gathered on the trip, he immediately began sending specimens to experts for identification. Steinbeck, increasingly interested in documentary films, shifted to working on a film project, The Forgotten

Map 1. Route of the Sea of Cortez expedition. By Joel W. Hedgpeth; previously published in The Outer Shores. Reprinted with permission of Joel W. and Warren Hedgpeth.

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Village, and departed Monterey for Mexico City in May 1940. The relationship between the two men was growing strained, and Astro notes that “Ricketts would have preferred that the novelist remain in Monterey and complete the narrative” based on their Sea of Cortez trip (136). Sorting, studying, and identifying the more than five hundred species they collected was a daunting task for Ricketts, and he was frustrated when Steinbeck left town. Yet Steinbeck often needed time to process experiences before writing them, and his decision to take on another project was not out of character. Steinbeck asked Ricketts to join him in Mexico City, and to drive there in the Steinbeck’s station wagon, which he wanted to use in the film. Ricketts reluctantly agreed, and his letters reveal friction between the two. “I received a not very warm welcome,” he writes in a letter to friends Ritch and Tal Lovejoy. Yet he concludes the letter by noting his intention to make the best of the situation, “being good natured and not holding grudges very much makes it not bad at all. . . . I’m certainly getting to know Mexico City better” (June 18, 1940). Additional letters indicate Ricketts spent much of his time exploring the city and working on the phyletic catalogue and bibliography for Sea of Cortez in the library of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. He also occasionally helped Steinbeck’s film crew transport and set up equipment at various locations, and apparently rarely saw his friend. The rift between them deepened to a deep disagreement over the thesis of The Forgotten Village. The film was a collaboration between Steinbeck and the documentary filmmaker Herbert Kline. Focusing on a poor Mexican family, it portrays the conflicts that arise when modern technologies and traditional customs clash. The village faces an epidemic caused by bacteria in the well water, and as young children become ill and die, the story’s protagonist, a boy named Juan Diego, turns away from the traditional medicine offered by the village’s curandera and seeks help from a city doctor. Steinbeck champions Juan Diego’s actions, underscoring what he sees as the inherent right of all people to advances in science and medicine. Ricketts did not agree with his friend, and he believed that native and folk culture, including traditional medicine, would be lost if modern technology were brought into villages. Heavy-handed at times, Steinbeck in The Forgotten Village maintains a focus similar to that of The Grapes of Wrath: the plight of a particular family in a specific time and locale which ultimately reveals universal truths about humanity. “But somehow,” notes Astro, “one does not feel the same way about the Mexicans villagers as one feels about

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the Joads. . . . And because the doctrine of medical reform in The Forgotten Village is not supported by a network of principles conveying sound philosophical truths, the brunt of Steinbeck’s social argument lacks force” (139–40). The film triggered the anxieties Ricketts felt about the growing breach between humans and their environment, which he saw manifested in the increasing desire for technology at the expense of a sense of individual and communal indigenous spirituality. The curandera and her role within the community were not to be dismissed so simply. In characteristic fashion, he organized and “worked through” his ideas through writing, composing what he titled “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico Which Shall Be Motivated Oppositely to John’s ‘Forgotten Village.’” In this “antiscript,” he points out the disparity between the “outer or intellectual-material things” and the “inward things,” revealing his frustration with modernity. These connections were not new to Ricketts’s thinking, and the beliefs that welled up to the surface of the antiscript derived from the Sea of Cortez expedition just months before. A number of lengthy passages in his “Verbatim Transcription,” for instance, reveal his anxieties about the problems that “progress” brought to rural Mexico. Ricketts’s antiscript is structured as an outline, not as a traditional film script. In the first part, “Thesis,” he articulates his views, contrasting the “Region of Outward Possessions,” which is “related to the realm of physical and mental acquisitions,” with the “Region of Inward Adjustments,” including religion and human relationships. “Having (I hope) indicated the validity of entities of the second or spiritual order, as contrasted to those of the first order,” he writes, “the foundation will have been laid for the materials I have in mind.” His concern was that the human drive toward progress via increasing technology ultimately “upsets the age-old relation between man and the land, and between man and man,” an upset that, he believed, could be prevented only by balancing the traditional and the modern, which he saw as extremes. He recognized, however, that they rarely coexist: “Developing coordinately is probably equivalent to walking the knife edge.” Though Ricketts was, in fact, prompted by Steinbeck’s film to write the antiscript, it is clear that his frustrations stemmed from more than his friend’s story. Significantly, there are few known references in Ricketts’s papers to either The Forgotten Village or the antiscript—unusual for a problem that occupied so much of his attention. But this further underscores the fact that, for Ricketts, the issue was not Steinbeck’s film

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but his own doubts about human technological progress, particularly as it devalued traditional culture and spirituality and disconnected human beings from their natural environment. Ricketts used The Forgotten Village as a springboard for his ideas, creating a dialectic between Steinbeck’s film and his antiscript. During both of his 1940 trips to Mexico—to the Sea of Cortez and then Mexico City—Ricketts compared the native people and culture he encountered to their American counterparts, concluding that exposure to many aspects of modern society, technology in particular, would degrade their indigenous spirituality and erode natural communities. “Steinbeck and Ricketts argued openly about the effects progress might have on rural Mexico,” Astro notes, and their differences ultimately led to their most heated disagreement and the antiscript (59). In “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico,” Ricketts includes in his outline the episodes and scenes that illustrated the ills modernization wreaks on native culture, and he harshly condemns American notions of “progress.” In fact, the antiscript includes some of the most critical comments Ricketts ever wrote about America and the Western world: he notes that he and others “have been treated better and more honestly in Mexico as a whole than they have been in the States.” But ultimately he uses his criticisms to illustrate the effects of modernization on Mexico, and relates his examples specifically to the debates he and Steinbeck had during the summer of 1940. Throughout the second section of the antiscript, Ricketts reiterates his belief that a balance must be found between the spiritual and material desires of men in order to reach a holistic balance. In the “Prelude,” he describes a scene in which a painter finishes a mural with the inscription “La verdadera civilizacion sera la harmonia de los hombres con la tierra y de los hombres entre se,” which translates as: “The true civilization will be the harmony of the men with the land and of the men among themselves.” In this statement, which he repeats at the end of the antiscript, lies the root of Ricketts’s argument: his concern with the growing dissonance between humans and the environment. Eric Enno Tamm notes that Ricketts “understood that with every scientific discovery . . . a great chasm had grown between science and religion,” and that he “was actually setting about to create a rapprochement between science and religion” (172). Both Sea of Cortez and the antiscript were attempts to articulate the importance of recognizing and taking conscious steps to remedy this “chasm.”

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Disheartened, Ricketts returned to Monterey in early July to compile the phyletic catalogue and annotated bibliography that constituted the latter half of Sea of Cortez. The structure of that catalogue and bibliography is traditional—marine animals are identified and ordered taxonomically. In 1940, very little scientific data about the Gulf of California had been compiled, and Ricketts knew that a comprehensive survey of the available information and publications was a necessary preface to considering the region as a system. To underscore the significance of the Sea of Cortez journey, a group of Stanford University marine biologists and scientists embarked on an expedition on March 26, 2004, retracing Ricketts and Steinbeck’s trip. Following the 1940 route, they explored the collecting stops detailed in Ricketts’s “Verbatim Transcript,” noting differences in the environment and littoral. His phyletic catalogue was a primary reference for the scientists, and as William F. Gilly, a marine biologist and the chief scientist of the Sea of Cortez Expedition and Education Project, notes, Ricketts’s original bibliography was likewise essential: It was necessary at the outset to assemble all the available literature, references, etc. and to identify what organisms they found down there. The second step, which they didn’t really get to, was to look more deeply into patterns of distributions and so forth. The latter would eventually, in theory, reveal the type of holistic picture of the [Sea of Cortez] that Ricketts had put together in [Between Pacific Tides] for the CA coast. . . . In the end, it is interesting that, in order to come up with a visionary picture like that in [Between Pacific Tides], one must systematically and minutely examine one’s subject and develop an almost inconceivable feeling for it—which in the end turns into an informal understanding and a big picture. The big picture that comes casually is very likely to be totally wrong. That which comes from the heart after the head is full has a much greater chance of being closer to the truth. Albert Szent Gyorgi said something like: “Genius is to see what everyone else has seen and to think what no one else has thought.”7 I think that is so true—but to see what everyone else has seen can’t be done in one quick glimpse, even if it was one 6 weeks long in the [Sea of Cortez]. (e-mail, August 20, 2004)

Ricketts’s arduous work on the catalogue took months, and the solitary work yielded what remains one of the most thorough scientific documents about the Sea of Cortez. Despite the brief estrangement between Ricketts and Steinbeck in Mexico City during the summer of 1940, Ricketts’s correspondence indicates his friendship with Steinbeck was not irreparably damaged. In a

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July 30, 1940, letter to his former wife, Nan, Ricketts’s admiration for his friend was as strong as ever: I have been working hard on the new book. My part of it is pretty well upto-date. Jon plans to tear into his part [in] October and work right thru until finished, possibly in the spring. . . . I haven’t Jon’s positive genius to go on, so have to make it up by plodding hard work. And then the very nature of my contribution involves long and studious work. I wrote up the original notes based on our travel experience, from which Jon with his fine thinking and writing will work up an interesting and I imagine worth-while account.

The summer of 1940 also proved significant for more personal reasons. Shortly before leaving for the Sea of Cortez, Ricketts met Toni Jackson, a beautiful and intelligent divorcée. During the summer after his return from the gulf, their relationship deepened and she moved into the lab; her daughter, Kay, was often with them. Toni immediately began assisting Ricketts with his portion of Sea of Cortez, typing the phyletic catalog from his handwritten notes. Later, Steinbeck hired her to type the log portion for submission to Viking Press. Steinbeck began work on the Sea of Cortez log in the spring of 1941, and by June he was close to completing the first draft. “I’m pretty sure the book will be good but that doesn’t mean it won’t flop completely,” he writes to his friend and editor Pascal Covici, not realizing at the time how prophetic his words were, as the book did indeed flop. He continues: “But I do think if it gets a slow start, it will gradually pick up because there is much more than just collection in it. Gradually it will be discovered that it is a whole new approach to thinking and only very gradually will the philosophic basis emerge. Scientific men, the good ones, will know what we are talking about. In fact some of them out here already do” (Life in Letters, 230). An interesting meeting occurred at that time, when Henry Miller visited Monterey. Living as an expatriate in Paris while his books were banned as pornography in the United States, Miller had written to Steinbeck at Pacific Biological Laboratories earlier in the year, and Jackson—who also periodically helped with his business correspondence—received the letter and wrote back, inviting Miller to visit Steinbeck at the lab. During their meeting, Ricketts gave Miller copies of his three philosophical essays and Jackson read aloud from the typescript of Sea of Cortez. Miller enjoyed the visit immensely, particularly his conversations with Ricketts, but he and Steinbeck did not seem to connect as well. Miller’s June 26, 1941, letter to Ricketts says as much:

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“My regards to Steinbeck. I hope you told him how much I enjoyed the fragments that Toni read us. That he so categorically refused to talk ‘literature’ struck me as foolish. Talk everything, I say. . . . I guess I started off with him on the left foot.” But Miller’s admiration for Ricketts is apparent in the same letter: “I began reading your MSS. the next day in a cabin en route for L.A. Everything just as I expected. More so, even. D’accord, as they say. . . . I repeat what I told you face to face—you are one of the rare souls on this earth. I know men when I meet them. My trip, otherwise so futile (about America, I mean), was worth it for meeting you and one or two others.” Ricketts was likewise impressed with Miller and admired his writing, having read the manuscript of The World of Sex that Miller sent after their visit. Ricketts thought a great deal about his new friend and later wrote of Miller in one of his notebooks: “Sex was for him also a vehicle for ‘breaking thru.’ Because of these intensities, there have been few who could view him objectively. Aside from the sexual ailments, his work is characterized by . . . its philosophy, which I personally appreciate and approve as far as it goes, and perhaps even more by his aesthetic. [. . .] So he’s not nearly so good or so bad an artist as he’s painted, a terribly good person, a fair but very honest artist with a flair for imagery” (“New Tidepool Notebook,” 85–86). Henry Miller’s 1941 visit with Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck is representative of the diverse intellectual culture that flourished on the Monterey Peninsula during the 1930s and 1940s. The actor Charlie Chaplin, the painters Ellwood and Barbara Graham, the composer John Cage, and the marine scientist Rolf Bolin were just a few of those who passed through Monterey and Pacific Biological Laboratories. But even more important than individual visits and meetings was the energetic and bohemian climate of the area that I discussed earlier. Significantly, amid the immense pleasures they devoted themselves to, John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts were tremendously productive, and in this exhilarating atmosphere their ideas burgeoned, culminating in their collaboration on Sea of Cortez. Covici was enthusiastic about the book, but unfortunately, Viking Press “seemed suspicious of the collaboration and reluctant to invest in the illustrations and special typefaces required for the catalogue” (Benson, 482). The quality of drawings and photographic reproductions of marine specimens, in particular, became a point of contention between Viking and the authors that remained unresolved even as the book went

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into production. In a previously unpublished letter dated October 31, 1941, Ricketts expresses his frustrations about this issue to Steinbeck: The first lot of illustration dummys came thru last night, of Spratt’s [drawings]. And they were on the whole good. Better than I should have imagined. So I began to feel pretty relieved. Glick wrote that the next would come thru tonight, and, judging by my experience with last night’s batch (I got them in the mail, all corrected, and with the missing or confused captions all allocated to the proper drawings before midnight, and they only got in at 8 PM), I supposed it would be merely a matter of a few hours. And then tonight, I went down confidently, to find that some of the photo [reproductions] were the poorest I have ever seen in a decent modern book, that all of them are reproduced too small, due to their not having used bleedplates after all our talk and sending of Ricketts and Calvin [Between Pacific Tides], and wiring, and raising hell, and that some of the captions were written on the back of the photo where nobody could possibly lose them—and with specimens that I cannot myself identify from the photo. That’s why we put such good photos in. So the animals can be recognized. The photo is the chief diagnostic character, it is the description. Just between you and me, I think that Viking—and maybe the other publishers for all I know—conform to your description of MGM. They have some superb technicians and workers (witness the fine job of editing, of correcting, of index making, even of typesetting and proof-reading); individually the units are hand picked. But somewhere an integration is poor, or there’s poor direction—no, that can’t be true. Look at the good job they did this year on that fine English poetry anthology—best I’ve ever seen. Or something wrong. Sometimes our suggestions are followed perfectly. And sometimes equally good suggestions are not followed, not even acknowledged. Anyway, I am sending back this second dummy, not to Viking, but to McIntosh and Otis, who are intelligent people and have a well integrated organization, with a letter to Viking enclosed, and with a letter to McInt[osh] and Otis, with the suggestion that you look the whole situation over, and decide, from being on the spot, what can be done. Privately and personally, lots of the personal stuff in my letter to Viking is neither true or important. I don’t give a damn if my name is attached to a shoddy job, just so I did a shoddy job. But good work is rare in the world. Mediocrity, by its very definition, is common. And I don’t care very much about the personal glory. The work tho is important. It’s very important. And when everyone else on this job has done a labor of love, and a job of really first class significance (some in the work), I hate to see part of it, even 1/3 of the illustration part, ruined, bollixed up by one little link in a long chain of good links.

Steinbeck was also dismayed with production difficulties, which continued until the book’s release a few days before Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941.

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Critical response to Sea of Cortez was mixed. Most reviewers assumed the book’s two parts—log and catalogue—were authored separately. Just weeks after its release, Ricketts wrote to Hedgpeth and expressed concern about how critics would respond: However much it seems otherwise, “Sea of Cortez” is truly a compilation. Jon worked at the collecting and sorting of animals, and looked over some [of] the literature, including the specialist literature, and I had a hand even in the narrative, altho the planning and architecture of the first part, of course, is entirely his, as the planning of the scientific section is entirely mine. But much of the detail of the narrative is based on a journal I kept during the trip, and some of the text derives from it and from unpublished essays of mine. I shall be interested to see what the critics have to say about the various parts of the job in connection with the oft repeated assumption on their part that they can spot a person’s writings anywhere by characteristic tricks of style and thinking. (November 18, 1941)

Soon afterward, Ricketts commented on the first set of reviews in a letter to his friend Jewel Stevens: “All are favorable except for that in the SF Chronicle, which simply blasted the first part (which is supposed to be Jn’s entirely) and which approved of the second. Reviewed by different hands” (December 15, 1941). Viking Press decided to cut their losses in 1949, planning to issue an edition of the log without the phyletic catalogue and bibliography, fueling the ongoing debate about the coauthorship of Sea of Cortez. One year after Ricketts’s death, Steinbeck wrote to Ed Ricketts Jr. to secure permission for the new volume. He wrote a lengthy introduction titled “About Ed Ricketts,” a loving, if somewhat fictionalized, portrait that was included as a foreword to The Log from the Sea of Cortez, ultimately published in 1951. Covici felt the essay was an appropriate addition to the text of the log: “I just re-read your profile of Ricketts. I think it is a most penetrating and at the same time most affectionate portrait of a friend. The ease and relaxed way with which you tell it, the seemingly artlessness, as if you were telling the story to a bunch of cronies over a bottle of beer—all of it is delightful reading” (quoted in Fensch, Steinbeck and Covici, 133). “About Ed Ricketts” details the close friendship the men shared. “We worked and thought together very closely for a number of years,” Steinbeck writes, “so that I grew to depend on his knowledge and on his patience in research” (263). Although lighthearted at times, the essay was intensely personal to Steinbeck, as was the Sea of Cortez trip. In a 1958 interview, a journalist remarked that “About Ed Ricketts” had af-

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fected him deeply, and Steinbeck, a decade after Ricketts’s death, replied: “Well, I’m glad you were moved—I was destroyed. He was my partner for eighteen years—he was part of my brain. At one time a very eminent zoologist said that the two of us together were the best zoologists in America, and when he was killed I was destroyed” (quoted in Fensch, Conversations, 68). Actor Burgess Meredith, Steinbeck’s friend, offers another reading of the writer’s decision to republish The Log from the Sea of Cortez: Later, he told me—and this was after Ricketts died—that Ricketts had not written any of the diary, and so John felt justified in reissuing it without Ricketts’s pictures and scientific data. In the original edition, there are many technical descriptions given in the enormous index at the end of the book. Apparently, that index, plus the pictures, of course, were the extent of Doc’s contribution. John also told me that his publisher begged him not to use Ricketts’ name as co-author, but that John had insisted that his friend be so designated. John immortalized that trip; he was the one who made it work. He did it for Ed Ricketts’ sake, and all of us have benefited. (quoted in George, 35)

There is no question about Steinbeck’s authorship of the log—Ricketts’s letters and notebooks affirm his pleasure with the narrative his friend “built”—but the assertion that the scientific information in the Sea of Cortez was the “extent of Doc’s contribution” is an oversimplification at best. As I illustrated earlier, Ricketts’s “Verbatim Transcript” was an essential source for Steinbeck when he composed the log, and he drew on both Ricketts’s notes and the many discussions they shared throughout the expedition and their years of friendship. Meredith is correct in stating that “all of us have benefited,” but the observations of scientists such as William F. Gilly make clear that Steinbeck was not alone in immortalizing the trip. When Sea of Cortez was initially published in 1941, Ricketts maintained high hopes the book would bring him financial stability, but with the country’s entry into the war and plummeting book sales, he soon realized he had “fathered a financial flop.” Adding to his financial woes, Pacific Biological Laboratories suffered declining orders at this time, and it all but closed in the years following Pearl Harbor. Ricketts had thought and written extensively about the dawning war as early as 1940. He was more sociological than political, struggling to understand the function of conflict within a larger sociological and ecological framework, and he compared war to competition within and between species. In one of his notebook entries, he writes:

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I conceive of war as essentially a matter of competition, a matter of race control primitively (among animals and primitive humans) for food, oxygen, attachment space, etc., specializedly (among the so-called civilized nations) for commerce, power, etc. . . . Animals always produce more larvae than there is conceivably room for, and the excess doesn’t perish; it’s used, it’s eaten, by animals we term its enemies. Situation of all life [is] postulated on the presence of an excess of forms such as itself for food, not for waste. No star is lost. Situation of the fish thrown over[board]. But this isn’t quietism, the person who understands this isn’t cynical; he’s kind and deeply understanding. And he has energy that comes from understanding; you can’t get him into war so easily, he’s not blind and he cannot be driven blindly. (“Second 1940 Mexico Trip Notebook,” 49–50)

In the months leading up to Pearl Harbor, Ricketts became increasingly focused on the parallels he saw between animal and human conflict, and in a fragment from this period called “What’s Wrong with the World” he expresses frustration about the use of technology for “victory” and not human improvement—an extension of his antiscript written in response to Steinbeck’s Forgotten Village: We are an engineering world, overbalanced on the mechanical side, and the very mathematic that could help us, goes instead into computing statistics, and atom smashers, and production for victory. *Victory for our side— which in its turn goes to defeat; never victory for the world of men. There’s the nostalgia thing which makes us resent changes. There’s prejudice blown into intolerance and served up as fascist empires by little men with big power drives. These correspond in marine animals to stresses of their various environmental factors. Differentials in wave shock, in type of bottom, in temperature, in intertidal level exert stress on shore animals individually and in communities, the social factor being an added variable. . . . Wherein does human society differ? And if it does, how? And how much? I say very little. I say the difference is only in degree, and not much of that! . . . Perhaps all this is in part an apology of my own. In the remote field of marine biology, I have been distressed at being able to contribute so very little to a world structure that obviously needs so much. But my own position seems still to do what I have to do and, in the doing of it, to be as relaxed and happy as may be. Lord only knows we have enough frustrated people as it is, and I’m not sure but that their major contribution is irritation in an already irritated time. Mostly I have to do biology, perhaps out of that, even, light can be got on the public events that are now so overwhelmingly important as to threaten our world of science, and art, and book publishing, and advertising, and making airplanes.

Extending his scientific and philosophical studies into contemporary social and political realms, Ricketts, in this fragment, reveals his sense of

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helplessness as virtually the entire human world seemed poised on the brink of a second world war. Ricketts recognized and accepted aggressive and predatory behavior in oceans, bays, and tide pools, and while the prospect of war pained him, he saw no contradiction in volunteering his talents to a national effort to which he felt committed. His notebooks indicate that, during the early 1940s, he began compiling information about the Philippines, a project that occupied much of his attention and helped satisfy his desire to contribute “to a world structure that obviously needs so much.” After Pearl Harbor, Japan became a primary focal point for the United States, and Ricketts intensified his examination of scientific literature— books, reports, maps, and studies—of the regions contiguous to that country, finding interesting information about the Mandated Islands, specifically the Palau Islands, located in westernmost Micronesia. Held first by the Spanish, then purchased by Germany in 1899, they fell to the Japanese during World War I and were officially mandated to Japan by the League of Nations in 1920. This archipelago made up of hundreds of tiny, relatively unknown islands became one of Japan’s outermost borders in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, a region of great strategic importance to both Japan and the United States during World War II.8 Studying detailed documents about the geography, topography, tides, and currents of these islands—all published in English by Japanese scientists at work well before war was officially declared—Ricketts gathered material he believed useful to the United States government and military effort. He wrote to navy officials offering his findings, but to no avail. On April 28, 1942, he related to Steinbeck, “I am sending copies of the abstract of this info to you there in NY, and to Norm in Army Intelligence here in SF. Wish I knew someone in Naval Intelligence where this would be most useful of all.” Steinbeck, in turn, forwarded Ricketts’s abstract to Frank Knox, the secretary of the U.S. Navy, with a letter reiterating his friend’s desire to turn over his research and assist in the war effort. Steinbeck received a note of acknowledgement from the navy thanking him for the “sincere patriotism which motivated [his] letter” (Stucky, May 13, 1942). At some point between mid-May and early June 1942, a naval officer visited Ricketts at the lab, though the exact details of that meeting are unknown. On June 11, Ricketts wrote to Lieutenant Commander R. E. Lawrance at the Naval Intelligence Office

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in San Francisco: “Lt. Brown suggested that I forward to you any additional info that came to hand with reference to the Mandated Islands. I have been thinking about this almost constantly since his visit here, and it occurred to me that some data I have right here in my own library might be of value. I don’t know but that you may already have it, but in any case it will do no harm to make doubly sure.” Lawrance’s reply was brief, thanking Ricketts for his “continued interest” in the matter. It is unclear whether the navy ever used any of the information Ricketts gathered. Ricketts temporarily set aside his studies of the Mandated Islands to spend part of the summer of 1942 exploring the northern Pacific coast with his common-law wife, Jackson, collecting and conducting preliminary research for a new book on the region. He had conceived the notion to write a handbook about the outer shores of Vancouver Island and southeastern Alaska that would complete a trilogy—which included Between Pacific Tides and Sea of Cortez—mapping the entire North American Pacific coastline, and he hoped to work with Steinbeck on the project. But by early 1941, Steinbeck had left California, settling in New York City with Gwyn Conger, who later became his second wife, and spent the ensuing few years focused on projects of his own. On Ricketts’s return from the outer shores, he was drafted into the army. At forty-five, despite his protests of advanced age and his pleas for a post that would use his biological expertise, he began active duty at the Monterey Presidio in early October 1942 running blood and urine tests in the medical laboratory. His schedule there allowed him to spend most nights at home, and with the constant flow of soldiers he made many new friends and contacts. In November the Military Intelligence Service in San Francisco wrote him regarding the report on the Mandated Islands he had sent to the War Department in May. In the letter, Colonel A. E. Ahrends asks if Ricketts could read Japanese and “whether [he] could assist in compiling a complete gazetteer of the Mandated Islands” (November 2, 1942). Already stationed at the presidio, Ricketts was unable to work for the military on that gazetteer, but he began outlining a book about the Japanese Mandated Islands geared toward a popular audience. That a marine biologist would suddenly aspire to write a popular, political, sociohistorical text might seem surprising, but Ed Ricketts felt certain that understanding how the Japanese and native people thought and lived would help both military and civilian Americans respond to

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the war, and he recognized the currency his scientific studies would carry in such a book. His early focus on the Palau Islands may have been serendipitous, but as political events in the early 1940s escalated, he quickly discerned the significance of the region for all Americans. In August 1942, he typed a meditative piece about the nature of war and his reasons for wanting to write a book about the Mandated Islands: Like many another peaceful American, thrown into the ageless pattern of war too suddenly for comfort, I have been working off my maladjustment by trying to find out how things are in this and other wars. Since wars we must have. Or do have anyway. And since, having them, we must accept them. I have been doing this for myself, for my own fun, if you could call it that, and as a cure for that curious malady the war jitters. But if it may be valuable to others, I cannot see why it shouldn’t be shared. Furthermore, if there is any truth at all in the old saw about knowledge being power, then the more we know about these things, the more fitted we’ll be to fight the good fight and to make philosophically what sacrifices we must make. (“People Must Be Sick of War”)

Ricketts saw his projected book as a means to share the knowledge he gained about the region through his research. Among his unpublished papers is a draft titled “Prefatory Remarks. An Apologia,” one of the first documents to address his proposed Mandated Islands book. In it, Ricketts explains his intent: My interest was first aroused obliquely. I was vaguely familiar, as a marine biologist, with the fact that the Japanese government maintained a marine biological station somewhere down there. When we were preparing for the trip that resulted in the Steinbeck-Ricketts “Sea of Cortez,” I read up on this somewhat similar area pretty intensively. The Palao Tropical Biological Station is at Korror, capital of the Mandated Islands, and Japanese scientists working there published many papers (fortunately in English) on the oceanography, geography, flora, and fauna. After Pearl Harbor, it appeared that our own officials were interested in information of this sort, with the result that I investigated even more extensively, from zoology went further and further afield, until this resulted: a genial though not necessarily unscholarly handbook. The approach is limited necessarily to what could be got through the “library eye” and the “laboratory eye.” For “field eye” confirmation, most of us wait War’s End—at least this war’s end.

By 1944 he had composed outlines, proposals, and hand-traced maps detailing the scope of a book he believed would help Americans better understand the Mandated Islands region, which became pivotal as the war unfolded. In his “Outline and Conspectus,” Ricketts renders his most complete plan, outlining chapters about various aspects of life

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in the Mandated Islands, including geography, history, native culture, and foreign missionaries. The document consists of a two-paragraph introduction followed by a ten-part outline describing his proposed subjects, including physical aspects, history, the natives, present (Japanese) landlords, and the history and effect of missionaries in the region. Though quite detailed— which is evidence of his extensive research—most sections of the “Outline and Conspectus” are primarily short phrases and sentence fragments instead of his typically dense and elliptical prose, as if written with a sense of urgency. Ricketts’s desire in 1944 to “fill a need” for information about a little-known region six thousand miles away was akin to his impulse to document the Pacific coastline in the 1930s. An inveterate explorer, he took pleasure in bringing uncharted territory to scholars and lay readers, and he recognized that this area of the South Pacific outback was just such a region. Ricketts approached his Mandated Islands book with the same objectives he had held when writing Between Pacific Tides and Sea of Cortez, believing that through a non-teleological perspective he might reach a holistic understanding of the bigger picture— in this case, humans at war. Although his studies of the Japanese Mandated Islands did not culminate in the published book he had hoped to produce, they brought him insights about nationalism and human nature. He was fascinated and concerned with turbulence in the human tide pool—a massive disruption in the ecosystem—and his writings from this period reveal his struggle to come to terms with conflict itself and specifically the country at war. “And in his studies of the mandated islands,” Astro notes, “in his research on the nationalistic mind-sets of the German and Japanese character, and through his experiences as a member of the medical wing of the Monterey Reception Center Service Command Unit 1930, Ricketts broke through to view even war and military life as parts of the deep thing” (145). That is, he came to see armed conflict between humans not as an aberration but as part of the larger cycle governing all species communities, whether they lay shallow in the Monterey Bay intertidal zone or deep in the Pacific Mariana Trench. Yet it would be a mistake to say that Ricketts was not angered and frustrated by the war—in fact the opposite was true. In particular, he was outraged over the local ramifications of the internment of the Japanese he witnessed on the Monterey Peninsula, as evidenced in his April 26, 1945, letter to the editor of the Monterey Peninsula Herald:

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During World War II, as was typical throughout his life, Ricketts sought to understand the “bigger picture,” and saw his Mandated Islands book as an opportunity to contribute in a positive way. The project occupied a great deal of his time, and he wrote to Steinbeck’s agents at McIntosh and Otis on February 22, 1944, about the possibility of finding a publisher: “Would there be any market for a short popular book on the Mandated Islands. . . . Already it’s apparent to me that much of the newspaper stuff is based on misconceptions.” On March 7, 1944, Elizabeth Otis wrote back, “The book idea sounds good, but we think it would have a limited market. Mrs. Abbot has already queried W. W. Norton who say they have projects started which will cover the subject as far as they are concerned.” By mid-1944, discouraged by a lack of editorial interest, Ricketts abandoned his studies of Japan and the Mandated Islands, turning his full attention instead to more familiar western territories, the intertidal zone along the outer shores of Vancouver and southeastern Alaska.

III. The Outer Shores and Beyond, 1945–1948 On November 15, 1944, Ed Ricketts wrote to his son, stationed in New Guinea, “I gave up work on the Mandated Islands book. Figured I’d clear it up only if I could get contract for publication, and none has been forthcoming.” Though disappointed the project had stalled, he continued his scientific survey of the North American Pacific coast, proposing “The Outer Shores,” the third, northernmost installment of his trilogy,

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of which Between Pacific Tides and Sea of Cortez were a part. He knew there were virtually no ecological studies of the British Columbia region, so he began extensive plans for a series of summer collecting trips to Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands, which would form the basis of his new book. In the meantime, life was changing on Cannery Row. Ed Ricketts Jr. was overseas in the army, leaving Ricketts, Toni, and Kay to make up the family unit for a time. Toni—vibrant and often outspoken—wrote articles and reviews for the local magazine What’s Doing and accompanied Ricketts on most of his collecting forays. The lab had flagged commercially, and from the time of his army discharge in July 1943 until his death five years later, Ricketts worked as a chemist in the cannery of the California Packing Corporation, primarily analyzing vitamin content of shark liver oil and studying the fluctuating sardine population. The job provided him access to all of the available scientific data about sardines, and he devoted a significant amount of time and energy to analyzing population fluctuations, an issue that had fascinated him since his arrival on the Monterey Peninsula in 1923. Monterey’s cannery business was in the midst of a wartime boom, and more than 237,000 tons of sardines were caught and canned in the 1944–45 season, one of the industry’s best years (Hemp, 102). Like Pacific Biological Laboratories, other local businesses also waned, as Ricketts relates in a September 23, 1944, letter to Joseph Campbell: “The lovely nice sporting house, Flora Woods, was a war casualty.” John Steinbeck spent a highly traumatic four-month stint in Europe (June–October 1943) as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, and he returned to New York deeply shaken by his experiences, nostalgic for Monterey and times past. In 1944, living in New York City with his second wife, Gwyn (pregnant with their first child), he drafted Cannery Row, an episodic novella that chronicled the people and events he knew from living in Pacific Grove in the 1930s. “I don’t know whether it is effective or not,” he wrote to his friend Carlton “Dook” Sheffield on September 27, 1944. “It’s written on four levels and people can take what they can receive out of it. One thing—it never mentions the war—not once. . . . The crap I wrote over seas had a profoundly nauseating effect on me. Among other unpleasant things modern war is the most dishonest thing imaginable” (Life in Letters, 272–74). The biographer Jackson J. Benson aptly notes that, despite Cannery Row’s periodic humor and antics, “It is, although it doesn’t mention war, Steinbeck’s war novel” (555), depicting characters rav-

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aged by loss and loneliness, an expression of the writer’s own sense of displacement. Within three months, Steinbeck’s homesickness led him back to California and life on Cannery Row. In October 1944, John Steinbeck, Gwyn, and their newborn son, Thom, returned to the Pacific Coast, first to Pacific Grove and later to Monterey. The writer purchased a house known locally as “the de Soto adobe,” not far from Pacific Biological Laboratories, and he and Ricketts quickly reestablished their old routine. “[Steinbeck] made it his habit, as in the old days,” notes Benson, “to stop by the lab in the afternoons, and he and Ed spent a lot of time together, drinking and talking” (560). Soon after he arrived, Steinbeck gave Ricketts the typescript of Cannery Row to read, “wanting to make sure he wouldn’t resent being fictionalized” (560). The scientist approved of his friend’s portrait, as he notes in an October 23 letter to Ed Jr., who was serving in the Pacific: “It’s very funny, exceedingly funny, sort of Tortilla Flatish but has a better architecture and an undertone of sadness and loneliness. It’s mostly about me, and the “Western Biological” and Wing Chongs (Lee Chongs) and Flora Woods (Dora Floods) and the bums. Because I occurred in it so obviously and so frequently, Jn wanted me to OK it, and tho it makes me out to be a very romantic figure, and I’ll practically have to leave town after publication until things quiet down, still it’s a fine job and I approved thoroughly.” The book was released in January of 1945, and Ricketts was suddenly known nationally as “Doc.” But he did not complain about his loss of privacy, and few of his letters speak of the intrusions and frustrations he must have suffered in the wake of Cannery Row’s success. In a well-known letter to Steinbeck written a year later, however, he describes “the only really bad Cannery Row experience to date.” A man entered the lab on a Sunday morning “said he wanted to see Doc, that his wife dared him to come in.” Ricketts, “with some actual pushing,” removed the unwelcome visitor, concluding, “Well, I didn’t get angry, never did feel even actually unkind. But it proves something or other alright. His last words were: ‘Wait a minute, [I] want you to tell me what you did with all those frogs, those tom cats; bothered by a lot of people coming in you ought to charge admission.’ The others have been good people—very much moved by their own inward, most kind projections onto what they think I am. And they certainly merit gentleness. But this guy was what you call unsavory at least” (April 9, 1946). With the exception of this letter, there is no record of further comment about the aftermath of fame from Cannery Row.

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Within a short time of his return to Monterey, Steinbeck felt alienated from friends and a community whom he felt were resentful of his wealth and reputation. He “thought he could just ignore fame when he chose, and lead his life as he had before” (Benson, 558), but soon realized things were irrecoverably changed. Years later, when he returned with his dog, Charley, to visit, he wisely observed, “There was a great man named Thomas Wolfe, and he wrote a book called You Can’t Go Home Again. And that is true” (156). But in 1945, Steinbeck came to this realization with reluctance and frustration. The town seemed to close against him and his portrait of Monterey and its characters. Businesspeople were loath to rent him office space, forcing him to convert his woodshed into a writing room. Only his friendship with Ricketts seemed unchanged. The men renewed their rambling philosophical discussions, starting a dialogue about nostalgia, a topic that would engage both over the next few years. The war and memories of earlier, “simpler” times affected both men deeply and fueled their mutual interest in nostalgia. As in his other philosophical pursuits, Ricketts struggled to articulate his thoughts through writing. He planned to compose an essay on the power of nostalgia but never did, leaving his clearest statements as fragments in notes and letters. One of the most significant of these was written to Steinbeck on August 12, 1946: I guess you’ll have to bear with my tirade on use and nostalgia. A common word with you, one of the few who know its power. . . . The world’s most powerful motivation. It relates to the thing, not to its use, but to the powerful emotion. I guess of security, anyway of beauty, that gets associated with it. No one knows that. Well, you know it. Thomas Wolfe certainly did. Power and profit and love and hate are the motivating forces. Who realizes the power of nostalgia. You can examine art, business as a system of power, government—especially government, religion. Science a hundred years from now. Right now it’s too vigorous, no one’s powerful enough to hold it now to nostalgic dreaming. Or bureaucracy best of all. In any institution, socialist or profit making, no difference. At the base there’s that great pyramid of the way things used to be, in the good days, the good old days.

Although Ricketts’s early writings include a few enticing references to nostalgia—in “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry,” for instance, he describes poems by Shelley and Yeats as “nostalgic pastoral”—it was a concept that emerged fully for him only as World War II was waged and won. In late 1944 and early 1945, he and Steinbeck talked seriously about collaborating on another book, and Ricketts was enthusiastic about his

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friend’s interest in “The Outer Shores,” envisioning an expedition and a book similar to Sea of Cortez that would once again integrate science and philosophy. They discussed a future trip together—one that would have to wait, however, as Steinbeck departed in April 1945 to work on a film version of The Pearl in Mexico. But Ricketts decided to go to Vancouver Island that summer anyway to continue the preliminary surveys of the “outer shores” that he had begun in 1942, to lay the groundwork for the expedition he hoped he and Steinbeck would take. Ultimately, he made two surveys of the region in the mid-1940s without Steinbeck—in 1945 and 1946—traveling to Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Pacific Northwest was rugged and relatively unknown scientifically. Though the region had, in fact, been explored—most notably by Captain James Cook in 1778—Ricketts found little published information about the coastline and virtually no documentation of the marine life in the intertidal zone prior to his trips. Much like his journey to the Sea of Cortez years before, the outer shores expeditions were ventures into untouched territories, and his accounts of these trips are likely some of the first and most comprehensive accounts of the region. Ricketts kept copious notes on both trips in his “New Series Note Books” numbers three and four, which he later compiled into a typescript for Steinbeck, much as he did with his notes after the Sea of Cortez trip. The “Outer Shores Transcript” details all aspects of Ricketts’s 1945 and 1946 trips, from scientific data about collecting stops to personal encounters with locals and, significantly, some of the most explicit statements he ever made about ecology. The document remained unpublished during Ricketts’s lifetime, and when it appeared in Hedgpeth’s The Outer Shores in 1978, approximately four thousand words had been edited out. In the version included in the present volume, I have restored those deleted passages, and the complete “Outer Shores Transcript” now appears in print for the first time. Unlike his notes and logs from other collecting trips, the document does not include lists of specimens separate from prose passages, but instead interweaves scientific information with general observations into a colloquial narrative that reads more like a travelogue than any of his other scientific documents. Ed Ricketts Jr. remembers that his father worked leisurely on the typescript (interview, July 15, 2004), taking ample time to develop his ideas and construct a cohesive account of all aspects of his trips, including people, landscapes, and anecdotes. Like the “Verbatim Transcription” made from his notes on the Sea of Cortez

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journey, the “Outer Shores Transcript” is a working document, and in it Ricketts sometimes refers to his “New Series” notebooks, indicating that both he and Steinbeck might find in them additional information and scientific data. Ricketts also makes a number of personal comments to his friend, often suggesting how certain portions of the typescript might be used in “The Outer Shores,” and at times the draft becomes a sort of dialogue with his absent partner. For instance, after an extended description of the Nootka region, Ricketts writes: “Jn, I’m putting lots of stuff in here of no interest to you, and of no value to the book. It’s not only that this way the account will be a lot more complete and detailed, giving you greater leeway of selection and giving you a more detailed picture, but I have for myself a great deal of data concentrated here, for which I won’t ever need to refer back to my original notes.” On May 31, 1945, Ricketts and Toni Jackson departed Monterey, traveling first to Seattle by train and then to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. From there, they boarded the Princess Norah and began their journey along the island’s western shoreline. In his “Outer Shores Transcript,” Ricketts later wrote, “Altho very few people ever go there, the west coast of Vancouver Island is fairly accessible.” They spent the next five weeks studying that portion of the island, pushing as far north as Port Alice, a “company town” built around the Whalen Pulp and Paper Mill (Tamm, 118). As with most of his scientific investigations, Ricketts was interested in the most common marine animals, or “horizon markers,” as he called them, and was anxious to compare their populations on the northern Pacific coastline with their mid–Pacific coast counterparts. He looked closely at the ecological factors, especially wave shock, type of substrate, and tidal exposure, that shaped where specimens were found, and he often compared new locales to familiar sites in California. Of a deep fjord called Barclay Sound, for instance, he notes in his typescript: “The environment was similar to the little cove at Pt. Lobos [south] of Carmel, except more sheltered; fine clear oceanic water. Perhaps 2/3 of the animals are recorded from California also, but they occur somewhat differently.” As with his previous expeditions, Ricketts worked with a sense of the larger picture, and he was conscious of how his findings on the coast of Vancouver Island were significant to an overall understanding of the entire North American Pacific coastline. He was careful to document new and unfamiliar animals, noting where and when he encountered them. After each of his expeditions and

Map 2. Vancouver Island. By Joel W. Hedgpeth; previously published in The Outer Shores. Reprinted with permission of Joel W. and Warren Hedgpeth.

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throughout his career, Ricketts relied on the help of specialists to identify specimens he could not recognize. His letters and notebooks reference hundreds of instances in which he sent samples to experts—some of them outside U.S. borders—for identification, and his “Outer Shores Transcript” likewise tracks such incidents, often citing a particular specialist to whom he had sent a specimen. Hedgpeth, Libbie H. Hyman, and significantly, W. K. Fisher himself were among those whom Ricketts relied on most often for identifications in the 1940s. But this could be a tedious process, and he was sometimes frustrated by his colleagues’ delayed responses. “This whole business of the specialist is the greatest fly in my ointment,” he writes in the typescript. “I have to spend a large bit of energy and develop tact the like of which was never seen on sea or land in order to get anywhere near complete lists of determinations.” His persistence was rewarded when he discovered a new species. Ricketts was a remarkable collector, with keen eyes and fast, careful hands, often returning from the shore with rare, sometimes unknown, specimens, and his major expeditions consistently yielded impressive results. Regarding the 550 species collected on their Sea of Cortez expedition, for example, he and Steinbeck stated that “almost 10% of these will prove to have been undescribed at the time of capture” (Sea of Cortez, 304). In the “Outer Shores Transcript,” Ricketts notes one such occasion in this passage about a shrimp he collected on Stubbs Island in 1945: More of the new species of Spirontocaris. I feel very good about this. When I first took it, I ran it down in Schmitt, the only reference of the sort I had along, and decided that, if not a new species, at least it was one that didn’t live in California and which therefore wouldn’t be treated in his work. So I sent it on to Schmitt with a note to the effect it didn’t seem to me cited in his Marine Decapod Crustacea of California.9 When the identification came thru a year or so later, it was Sp. brevirostris, which does occur in California, and which is listed in Schmitt. But since then they advise me that it is in fact a new species (and that therefore it couldn’t have been treated in Schmitt); so from feeling slightly like a silly fool, I blow myself up again.

A year later, in his 1946 Guggenheim Fellowship application, Ricketts estimates he discovered twenty new species on his 1946 outer shores trip alone and “a hundred or more” over the previous decade. Despite his success as a collector, Ricketts was always conscious of the dangers of contributing to depletion. His first explicit comments about conservation were expressed in the foreword to his 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories catalog, and more than two decades later Ed

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Ricketts remained vigilant in his warnings about the dangers of overcollecting, as seen in a passage from the 1945 portion of his “Outer Shores Transcript”: “It’s very desirable for a person to keep accurate records when he first collects over a new region. In any case, whether true or not, this is a likely explanation that fits the observable facts. Since I have been in Monterey, some south-ranging brittle stars, which were among the rarest finds originally (and in the literature), have disappeared, and I think even that slight bit of collecting, of myself and of specialists, is the answer.” By the 1940s, Ricketts’s concern about depletion extended to the regional and global levels. During both of his outer shores trips, he also spent time reflecting on his own scientific perspectives and methods. From the 1920s forward, as I note throughout this text, he consistently extolled, both overtly and more subtly, an ecological worldview. By the 1940s he was more expressive about what ecology was and how his own work explicitly embodied (and fell short of) standards and modes of the field. At the end of the 1945 section of the typescript, for example, he writes: Ecology is the science of relationships. Of living relationships. There are 3 or 4 approaches. The first is the most superficial. But it’s also the most primitive. And it’s more or less what I’m doing now: cataloguing the beasts of a given region, but doing it quantitatively with regard to the environmental rather than the taxonomic aspects. Thus it’s not only important what occurs (tho that has to be known first) but where it occurs physiographically as well as geographically, in what quantities, and, so far as can be determined with our poor present methods, with what other animals. In such a method, the region is the large unit, and the type of shore, tidal level, etc., the immediate unit.

John Pearse, a marine and evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, gave the 2004 Ed Ricketts Memorial Lecture, an honor conferred by the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. In an interview he noted that the “superficial” work Ricketts describes is some of the most essential research that must be conducted in ecological surveys: “The first thing you do when you go into a system is look at habitat. But it’s not what ecologists, professional ecologists, do anymore. . . . One of the things that has some of us upset is that often it’s skipped by ecologists today. . . . And people who are doing marine ecology today need to have the kind of information, knowledge, or appreciation . . . that Ricketts laid down” (Pearse, interview). Ricketts and Jackson returned to Monterey from the outer shores in early July 1945, pleased but faced by the overwhelming task of process-

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ing the thousands of specimens they had collected. On October 5, in a letter to his son, Ricketts described his achievements and noted the importance of scientific record-keeping for future use: I had a most successful trip up North. Made a fairly decent survey of animals and plan now on going back there, and to the Queen Charlottes next year, to finish up. Then another gap will be closed. I am devising some printed forms for uniform records so that 50 or 100 years from now my work can be checked if desirable. Trouble with so many pioneer workers in biology is that they keep things pretty much in their own minds, and later on, when methods become more precise and delicate, more detailed workers can’t check the earlier results because there’s no documentation. I’d like to see all my work backed up by the specimens themselves. If that can’t be, because of limitations of suitable space, I want the records and the literature to be there.

Ricketts did, in fact, create forms that he subsequently used on his return trip to the outer shores region in 1946—noting date, time, location, weather conditions, collector (some forms indicate Jackson and Ed Jr. as collectors), and a description of the specimen. He also began an extensive index-card database, much like a card catalogue, in which information about individual marine animals was efficiently organized and cross-referenced. Much of this catalogue is presently housed at Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. Ricketts and Jackson suffered a blow on returning to Monterey that would prove devastating to their close-knit family. Kay Jackson, Toni’s ten-year-old daughter, who had stayed behind with relatives while they were gone, was diagnosed with brain cancer and would fight the disease for the next two years, until she died in late 1947. Her illness became Toni’s focus, and Ricketts’s personal letters reveal his own pain and concern about her condition. In his October 5 letter to Ed Jr., he describes the onset of her illness and protocol for her treatment: “She had been having headaches etc. but nothing apparently serious. We came back from up north to find her eye wandering and some central nervous symptoms otherwise. . . . There was an outright diagnosis of malignant brain tumor, in other words cancer of the brain. In order to save her from immediate blindness and disastrous pressure symptoms and pain, a very delicate operation was decided upon, unanimously.” Kay experienced a rare remission, however, and her surgery was cancelled. She soon left the lab to live for a time with a relative in Berkeley, and her health improved, bringing relief, if only temporary, to the family. Ed Ricketts Jr. was discharged from the army and returned home to Mon-

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terey in December 1945, and he, his father, and Toni fell into a comfortable routine at the lab, their extended family reasonably intact. By spring 1946, Ricketts was making extensive plans for his next outer shores trip, which would include both Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands farther north. He wrote often to Steinbeck during this time,10 and his letters indicate excitement about the expedition and about projects he had “in the offing.” He notes in particular his aim to apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship “to straighten out the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Aleutian, Kamchatka situation,” suggesting his intent to include in his studies of the Pacific some areas even farther north (April 9, 1946). In letters and journals Ricketts began outlining an “ultimate manual” about Pacific marine invertebrates that he called “Contributions towards a Natural History of the Pacific Coast.” Among his notes, in a typescript titled “Pacific Coast Biology,” he describes the format of the proposed two-volume work. The first, a “manual of marine biology,” would describe and illustrate “the 600 to 1,500 commonest littoral, sublittoral, pelagic, and parasitic microscopic and macroscopic protozoa, invertebrates, vertebrates, algae, lichens, and seed plants.” A revised and expanded edition of Between Pacific Tides would constitute the second part, and he planned to cross-reference species between the two volumes. Ed Ricketts saw this future book as his magnum opus. On May 22, 1946, Ricketts, Jackson, and Ed Jr. departed for first Victoria and then the Queen Charlotte Islands. The journey was familiar and welcoming for Ricketts and Jackson, and Ed Jr. brought energy and a fresh perspective to the trip. The younger Ricketts was also a competent collector, and his father’s records and typescript show that they worked closely together in the tide pools. In his “Outer Shores Transcript,” Ricketts includes a number of anecdotes about his son, noting, for instance, that Ed Jr. played jazz on the radio some evenings and, toward the end of their journey, met a young woman: “Ed Jr. had found him a gal friend, nurse in Vancouver Hospital, and elected to stay aboard and come back then by the slow way (he didn’t at all, but met us at the dock in Victoria about ten days later as broke as I’ve ever seen a man).” On June 17, Ricketts, Ed Jr., and Jackson began the four-to-five-day journey from Vancouver Island to the Queen Charlottes, traveling first by train and then boat. Located just south of the Alaskan border, the islands were in areas that even the local inhabitants considered to be remote, and Ricketts notes with humor that the ticket seller for the

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steamer company “asked me first why in heaven’s name we wanted to go to such a place, then if we knew anyone there, and end[ed] up by saying, ‘Well, all I can do is to sell you the tickets.’” Ricketts was fascinated with the sparsely populated seaside communities he came across, and with the endurance displayed by the handful of locals in adapting to the harsh climate and isolated environment. In his description of Masset, for instance, Ricketts writes: “Masset is a community of perhaps fifty, seventy-five, even a hundred houses, several hundred people, a couple of miles south of the Indian village of Old Masset, which is just inside Masset Inlet. There is a post office and general store, and another co-op store. There are several small dieselelectric or gasoline-electric plants; otherwise there is no central power, there’s no waterworks, no sewage. The community has no doctor, no dentist, no baker, no shoe repairman, no barber. There is a small hotel, a community hall, a school. The community isn’t incorporated; apparently it just runs itself.” He also writes at length about the indigenous people and cultures he encountered, at times comparing them to those he met in the Gulf of California in 1940. But the northern Pacific Indians seem to have affected him even more deeply, and his “Outer Shores Transcript” includes a number of passages revealing an intense admiration for them, as well as his concern with the decline of their culture—as seen in his notes on the Haida tribe: Most of the totems are down and no one bothers with them. They’re rotting on the ground. You can’t cart them away; that’s forbidden by law, but no one does anything about them, even the Indian agent who mourns but has no action. And they’re the finest totems certainly in the whole world. They were real, not for tourist show. At Yan, a deserted village across the sound (and it might as well be across the world: in this region of heavy tidal currents, across the inlet is across the ocean), you can see it from the steamer but no one goes there. The forest of totems is a shambles of windfalls now.

Ricketts was impressed and fascinated by the human communities he encountered, both native and nonnative, and paid particular attention to how they interacted. His typescript includes passages, such as the one above, that speak of his sense of the growing disconnect between the native and modern societies cohabiting in the outer shores region—a familiar situation, similar to the one he observed during the filming of Steinbeck’s The Forgotten Village in Mexico during 1940, and which motivated him to write his antiscript. Though Ricketts’s “Outer Shores

Map 3. Graham Island, part of the Queen Charlotte Islands. By Joel W. Hedgpeth; previously published in The Outer Shores. Reprinted with permission of Joel W. and Warren Hedgpeth.

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Transcript” is not as overtly critical of modernity as is the antiscript, the passage above and others like it indicate his continued frustration with the decline of community and spirituality in a rapidly encroaching technological world. Ricketts’s interactions with remote locales and native people, along with quiet days of travel, gave him time to ruminate philosophically. As I noted earlier, he and Steinbeck were engaged by the concept of nostalgia throughout the mid-1940s, and Ricketts reflected further on the subject while traveling to the Queen Charlottes. In a meandering passage, he works out some connections between nostalgia and human progress, which ultimately lead to observations about his own relationship with Jackson: I felt wonderful today during the lovely train ride and after the lovely small boat trip yesterday. I suddenly saw a specific type of relation between nostalgia and lack of progress. Because I liked that old fashioned train, I was reminded of similar things when I was a child, knowing those things were good things—the hammocks and the old fashioned non-progressive ways— and wanting them perpetuated to the exclusion of the more modern improvements. Discussing it with Toni, I mentioned it perhaps too exuberantly or sentimentally, and she pulled me down quickly, saying, “Oh you’ve often talked about that, you discovered that a long time ago.” As it worked out, I had previously discovered only another ramification of that thing: the relation between nostalgia and conservatism, in this case as it resulted in the bitter conflict between representationalism and abstract art. I felt deflated, that it wasn’t so consequential after all, that I hadn’t in fact discovered much of anything. Then I thought that some women have almost a pure genius for deflating a person, and maybe it’s OK. Salt.

He found a direct correlation between nostalgia and conservatism, and while the links between these two notions and art are not drawn explicitly in his typescript, it illustrates his omnipresent desire to integrate seemingly disparate concepts within some sort of unified field hypothesis. Jackson’s response to Ricketts in the passage above is telling in retrospect, reflecting the breach that was growing between them in 1946. Understandably preoccupied by her daughter’s illness, Jackson became emotionally withdrawn from Ricketts, and his letters and journals disclose his periodic feelings of insecurity about their relationship. He sometimes felt that Jackson “rubbed salt” in the rawness of these insecurities, and there are a few other references in his journals to her “salt.” The couple grew distant as Kay worsened, and Ricketts’s writings reveal a man seeking refuge in increasingly pensive reflections on

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human relationships. Open and charismatic, he was also often a guarded man emotionally, and, with this exception, his “Outer Shores Transcript” conveys little else about their relationship during the 1945 and 1946 trips. As in the 1945 portion of the typescript, in Ricketts’s notes from 1946 he included lengthy passages about ecology as he attempted to fully explore the concept. Writing about the Clayoquot wharf region in British Columbia, for instance, he notes the significance of adaptation in studies of zoology: “The greatest quantity [of] beasts are usually the specialized ones that exactly fit their environment and so exclude others. How to get across the idea that in zoological distribution it isn’t so much the factors of physical environment, so much the seawater temperature, etc., as it is the social factor that keeps the exotic beasts out?” His interest in animal interactions clearly stems from his early studies with Allee, which, as I noted earlier, informed his work from the start, but his attention in the 1940s to species competition and ecological niches was evidence of Ricketts’s growth as a biologist and intellectual, as were his continual evaluations of the similarities between animal and human communities in the aftermath of World War II. Pages later, he resumes his discussion, writing: “The question of ecology isn’t so much animals versus environment as it is animals versus other animals. They’re pretty wise things; they can overcome pretty nearly any environmental hazard (vide hot springs, bitter salt pools in Death Valley); [the]only thing they can’t do is to overcome environmental hazards in the face of other animals who got there first and who fight every inch of the newcomer. Which is why Gislen wisely refers to this subject as marine sociology.” When they returned to Monterey on August 24, Ricketts immediately began sending specimens to experts for identification. “I got the materials which I collected up there whipped into good shape quickly this time,” he wrote to Betty Farmer, owner of the hotel in Clayoquot at which he had stayed, “and reports are beginning to come in.” He continues: “A number of new species already. I anticipate that, from 1945 and this summer, I will have turned out 20 or 30 new species. Although that wasn’t what I was after. I was simply trying to find out what occurs there” (August 19, 1946). He soon realized that, with additional resources and funding, he could return to the outer shores at least twice over the next few years, traveling even farther north to gather data for his projected “Natural History of the Pacific Coast.” In a letter to his daughter Nancy Jane on September 13, 1946, he states, “I am going to

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apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship, and this time I think I have a good chance of getting it. Then I can continue on the summer biological surveys up north. Queen Charlottes again next year, I hope, and then on to the Gulf of Alaska. Eventually the Aleutians.” The Guggenheim Fellowship committee itself had encouraged Ricketts to apply in the spring of 1946, and he had every reason to be optimistic. His excitement was curbed, however, by Kay’s deteriorating health and his increasing domestic difficulties with Toni. He found a positive outlet in the process of completing the fellowship application, however, and devoted much time to outlining his project. Steinbeck was an integral part of the application process from the start, gathering support for Ricketts from powerful colleagues, such as his contacts at Viking Press, and writing his own endorsement later that fall. Ricketts also had letters of recommendation from some of the top scientists in the world, and his references included Allee of the University of Chicago, S. F. Light of the University of California, W. K. Fisher of Stanford University, Enrique Rioja of the University of Mexico, Karl Schmidt of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, C. McLean Fraser of the University of British Columbia, and G. E. MacGinitie of the California Institute of Technology. Such a list is a testament to Ricketts’s reputation as a scientist; he had garnered the respect of his most esteemed colleagues, even those—like W. K. Fisher— who were critical of his early work. Encouraged and confident, he submitted his application on October 15, 1946, and began planning his next extensive trip to the outer shores. During 1946 Ricketts worked on yet another project, an essay about the sardine, in which he indicated more research would be needed to fully understand the multifaceted problem of species depletion. “The sardine is acknowledgely underresearched,” he writes, “chiefly because it takes time.” He concludes, “Whatever else, it cannot be said that the Division [of Fish and Game] failed to warn the industry again and again of what may even now be happening—of drastic depletion. . . . It backed up that warning with facts and figures, and . . . it recommended curative treatment in the form of curtailment. Instead of heeding these symptoms so laboriously diagnosed, the industry increased itself still further, pressed the Division for added privileges, and has continued so to press them right into the present season.” Months later, in October 1946, Ricketts wrote a detailed letter to his friend Ritchie Lovejoy about his own investigation of the sardine “situation” in which he discusses the effects of plankton populations, migra-

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tion patterns, and breeding habits as additional factors contributing to the decline. He conveys his belief, however, that the sardine was not in danger of species extinction, but that its end as a commercial crop was likely: That’s what I think has happened to date. Of course in the long run it won’t do much harm in any case. And this time I think they’ll come back, starting a little next year. But even if there is commercial depletion, it’ll be only temporary, two years, five, ten, fifteen at the most; good thing for the sardines, they’d probably build back up to strength again good as ever. But it needn’t be; there needn’t have been anything worse than a trough in the chart for a couple of years if we’d got to know something about the beasts, planned things out a little. . . . But in the long run, the sardine perhaps won’t be hurt. Our policy of insisting on taking everything at the moment, free enterprise at its freest, hurts only us. (October 22, 2946)

M. Kathryn Davis, author of the forthcoming Creating Scarcity: An Environmental History of the California Sardine Industry, 1905–1955, notes in a journal article, “In the end, Ricketts thought perhaps that human weakness and greed would ultimately save the sardine. The industry would collapse under the weight of its own bloat and thereby save the sardine from extinction. Prophet, he was. This is pretty much what happened a few years later” (“Man of Science,” 19). A few months later, to his shock and dismay, Ricketts was turned down for the Guggenheim Fellowship, and he expressed his disappointment in a letter to Joseph Campbell: “I did not get the Guggenheim. A pity. I was counting on it rather, since they suggested I apply. That’ll make this summer different. I had figured on going again to the Queen Charlottes, then taking that three year’s work as basis for a book, ‘The Outer Shores.’ Now it’ll have to be deferred a year, perhaps indefinitely” (April 11, 1947). Without the funding, he could not return to the coast of British Columbia that summer as planned. Yet he remained hopeful that he could complete “The Outer Shores” with Steinbeck’s help, noting in letters that the project was delayed, but not discarded. Ricketts spent much of 1947 revising Between Pacific Tides, making minor corrections and working on an essay about plankton levels in the Monterey Bay for the book. His interest in plankton likely began in the late 1920s, and by the mid-1930s he was actively collecting data about their populations and importance as the major food source for sardines. By 1947 he had compiled hundreds of pages of notes and data about plankton, recognizing in its decline one of the most significant factors in the collapse of the sardine population, the regional fishing economy,

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and the special fortunes of Cannery Row. He wrote a chapter, “Marine Plankton of the Pacific Coast,” which was included in the 1948 edition of Between Pacific Tides (later removed in the revised third edition), in which he says, “Most tide-pool life depends ultimately on plankton, the most primitive foodstuff in the ocean. Marine plankton is basic, the first link in the food chains which culminate in whales, fish, starfish, and humans. . . . The term plankton is used to include all the living organisms, plant or animal, usually minute, that swim weakly or drift about on or in the water. Large and active free-swimmers such as fish, squid, seals, and whales are never included within the term” (255). That same year he also wrote an essay, “Science Studies the Sardine,” for the Monterey Peninsula Herald’s annual Sardine Edition, in which he further examined the effect of plankton levels on the sardine population. For decades, California scientists had observed cycles of upwelling—wind and water currents bringing colder, plankton- and nutrient-rich waters to the ocean’s surface—and plankton production. Ricketts was years ahead of his time in asserting that the decrease in the sardine population could have been foreseen, and possibly avoided, had those studies been heeded and steps been taken to regulate fishing. “The answer to the question ‘Where are the sardines?’” he writes, “becomes quite obvious in this light. They’re in cans.” His pleas for moderation fell on deaf ears, however, and the commercial fishing companies and cannery owners began the 1947–48 season hoping for a turnaround. Yet by the end of that season, Tom Mangelsdorf notes, “even the most optimistic observers were convinced there was something happening that could not be reversed. People were afraid—afraid for their livelihoods, families, friends, and futures” (184). Ricketts’s studies of the boom-and-bust sardine population and industry were extensive, and he saw them as significant not merely to the local cannery industry in Monterey but also to the emerging global discourse on the chain of influences, both human and nonhuman, that supported immense fish populations and destroyed them when balance was disrupted. His notes include references to work conducted in Alaska, Mexico, and Chile, and he knew his own research in California would be of value to others. Among his papers is a typed memo titled “The California Sardine: An Ecological Picture,” in which he outlines plans for a series of articles directed at a range of audiences: “A popular resume for Monterey Herald; a popular local article, well illustrated, as for What’s Doing; a popular national article, well illustrated, as for National Geographic; plankton and oceanographic data abstracted for

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new [edition of Between Pacific Tides]; Perhaps a trade account as in Pacific Fisherman.” Ricketts knew the sardine collapse had had an effect on many individuals and groups, and his notes reveal his desire to address the concerns of all—businesspeople, cannery workers, commercial fishing companies, and scientists. He was well aware of the human and public policy implications of his scientific work. The end of 1947 was marked by a series of deeply traumatic emotional events. In the fall, Kay succumbed to brain cancer, and soon afterward Toni Jackson left Ricketts and Monterey, seeking comfort in a relationship with her friend (and later, her husband) Ben Volcani, a marine biologist in southern California. Writing to a friend, Bryant Fitch, on November 18, Ricketts relates, “If in my lifetime I come out of all the confusions I’ve got into, it’ll be remarkable. Still, there are some clarities, altho not often when they involve obscure relationships. Toni’s child, Kay, 12–13 years old, just died of [a] brain tumor, and Toni, confused on this and other scores, is living now away from me in LA; hard to say how it’ll all come out, but I feel alright.” Ricketts characteristically rebounded, and his letters and notebooks reveal that, within two months of Kay’s death, he had met a young woman named Alice Campbell, who almost immediately moved into the lab. Ricketts’s interpersonal relationships with women were often tangled, and never more so than when—months after her departure from Monterey—Jackson returned to the lab hoping to reestablish their relationship. Ricketts recalls their meeting in a November 25, 1947, letter to Steinbeck: Toni returned to PG [Pacific Grove] on only 24 hour notice (22 of which had been stolen by the negligent telegraph company!). I told her that I preferred to live with someone else. And I told her I loved her (Toni)—the extent of which even I hadn’t known before. This left her with no alternative but to clear out. I guess I hadn’t figured on such great drasticness, or at least not so quickly. Because it had meant now a complete and permanent uprooting. Terrible jolt on Toni; in two months she lost her only child, her husband, her home, her name, even a physical storage place, even a mailing address. In a wonderfully deep and real sense, Toni cannot ever walk alone anymore than Ed Jr. can, than Tal [Lovejoy] can, because I do deeply love her and support her and walk with her. But that’s remote help in a shock like this.

Rebuffed, Jackson left Monterey for New York, where she worked as Steinbeck’s secretary for a short time, later moving to Palestine with Ben Volcani.

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On January 2, 1948, Ed Ricketts and Alice Campbell married in Las Vegas. She was a twenty-five-year-old philosophy and music major at the University of California, Berkeley, and he had turned fifty in May of the previous year. In Ricketts’s “New Series Note Book #4,” he summarizes the trip, making of list of “the high lights, aside from getting married.” His somewhat cryptic notes indicate he planned to devote even more attention to human ecology, a term he does not fully define. He also lists his desire to explore “the idea of an ecological picture,” by which he likely meant a worldview based largely on those ecological principles he had been studying over the course of his career. Ricketts called this worldview a toto picture, “a dynamic ecology in which the direction, the length, and the importance of the strength of the line of relationship between animal and food and enemy and shelter and environment, etc. will be considered mathem[atically]. In terms of vectors, tensions (for species changes, social adaptations, etc.). The relation between the individual and the species in the society of its fellows, and the total associational society, will also be considered” (219). These notes, like his then-recent studies of the interdependence of plankton and sardines, indicate Ricketts’s increased interest in relationships, from individual relationships between couples to international relations in human society, ultimately all within a macroecosystem. Eric Enno Tamm, in his detailed study of Ricketts’s work in the northern Pacific, Beyond the Outer Shores, notes, “Through his own observation, experimentation and speculation, Ricketts was starting to move away from a concept of nature as a series of organic wholes or animal aggregations. He was beginning to conceive of nature as an ecosystem” (255, emphasis Tamm’s). Tamm stresses that the word ecosystem never appears in any of Ricketts’s writings, suggesting he was unfamiliar with the term coined by the ecologist A. G. Tansley in 1935. Whether Ricketts had come across the concept of ecosystems—or any number of other contemporary discoveries, for that matter—is uncertain (some of his notebooks remain unaccounted for), but his inclination toward embracing the concept is clear. And as with any new idea he was pondering, Ricketts’s early notes about ecological relationships are comparatively fragmented, and, had he lived, they would likely have been fully articulated in time. In his “New Series Note Book #4,” he indicates an interest in describing “the specific situations in which these ideas emerged,” which would have undoubtedly given us further insights. His studies of plankton and the sardine mark an early stage in a new trajectory of his ecological perspective—one that may be seen as a

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precursor of what would become known as deep ecology—but that final stage was cut short when he died suddenly and tragically. In early 1948, Ricketts published another article in the Monterey Peninsula Herald about the declining sardine population, “Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage,” in which he elaborated on the combination of human and natural causes responsible for the phenomenon. He depicts the modest sardine as representative of many species families, part of a larger, worldwide oceanic “cycle of drought and plenty.” He stressed the delicate equilibrium of this cycle and the importance of recognizing that “an upset balance . . . in one region easily may relate to a compensatory imbalance before or after that time in the same region, or in some other part of this great and unified world.” As his interest in ecology intensified throughout the final years of his life, Ricketts looked increasingly at the balance of cycles and relationships in nature, and in his studies of the sardine he widened the scope of his gaze to consider the role and effect of humans, ultimately concluding that the depletion of the sardine was caused by “a combination of natural causes and overfishing” (“Investigator Blames Industry”). Some wrongly attributed the decline to an epidemic disease, citing the possible occurrence of a red tide, but Ricketts knew better. “He saw,” notes Davis, “the intimacy of the relationship between fish and fisher, between human industry and non-human natural resource, between the vagaries of nature and human hubris” (“Man of Science,” 16). As in his 1925 foreword to the first Pacific Biological Laboratories catalog, Ricketts returns to the issue of conservation in his 1948 sardine article—his last piece of formal writing. In 1925, when he cautioned that overcollecting could affect Monterey’s tide pools, his focus was on the local or microcosmic level. But by 1948, almost twenty-five years after arriving on the shores of the Monterey Bay, and after countless studies and expeditions, he saw the global, macrocosmic ramifications and was certain that overfishing and the interruption of the food supply threatened the entire global marine ecosystem. Despite his disappointment about the Guggenheim Fellowship, and despite the pressure of his constantly shaky economic fortunes, he remained committed to his outer shores project and was enthusiastic about Steinbeck’s avowed interest in collaborating. Throughout early 1948 Ricketts made arrangements for their trip, noting in letters that his wife, Alice, and Gwyn Steinbeck would accompany them. In a letter written weeks before his death, he detailed his plans to Joseph Campbell:

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Figure 7. Ricketts sitting on rocks by Hopkins Marine Station, Pacific Grove, 1948. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr. We’ll be going again to the Queen Charlottes end of May. John is coming up there for part of July. I have turned over to him verbatim transcriptions of my two summers’ notes; then he’ll have his own and mine for the coming trip. Should be able to construct quite a book out of them; he’ll have his journal done I fear far before my scientific part’s complete. It should be a smaller Sea of Cortez. “The Outer Shores.” I’ll send you one. The II edition [of] BP Tides still isn’t rolling. Galley proof two months back. There’ll be a separate of the plankton essay, which I’ll send. I think it’s very good. (April 26, 1948)

This was one of Ed Ricketts’s last letters, and in the face of personal and professional setbacks, he remained optimistic about the future, giving every indication that his worldview would continue to develop along a trajectory toward ecological holism. A brief but startling passage in his last notebook reveals that, had he lived, his scientific interests may have moved in a very different direction—away from the ocean and into the desert. In his “New Series Note Book #4,” he notes “the need for future desert trips, into Death Valley, into the wonderful plain south of the Death Valley junction,” indicating, perhaps, an intention to begin a study of California deserts after

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completing his survey of the Pacific coastline. His library inventory also shows he bought a number of books about the geology and mythic power of the desert, including Sir Archibald Geikie’s Geology (1892), Edmund C. Jaeger’s The California Deserts (1933), and Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain (1903), all suggestive of a fascinating new turn in the career of a lifelong marine biologist who seemed wedded to the Pacific Coast. On the evening of April 8, 1948, Ed Ricketts left some friends who were visiting the lab to go into Monterey to buy provisions for dinner. While crossing the railroad tracks at Drake Street, his car was struck by the Del Monte Express, a train en route from San Francisco. He survived the crash and was taken to the Monterey Hospital, where an initial optimistic diagnosis was made. It soon became apparent, however, that he had sustained massive internal injuries, and was immediately taken into surgery. Ricketts’s family and friends kept an anxious vigil at the hospital, donating blood, comforting one another, and waiting for news about the operation. Three days later, on April 11, he died. Shock and disbelief set in on Cannery Row. Steinbeck, in New York City, having left immediately when he received the news about Ricketts’s accident, arrived too late to say good-bye to his close friend. Like so many, the writer was angry and confused, and he later remembered, “Everyone who knew him turned inward. It was a strange thing—quiet and strange. We were lost and could not find ourselves. . . . No one who knew him will deny the force and influence of Ed Ricketts. Everyone near him was influenced by him, deeply and permanently” (“About Ed Ricketts,” 227–28). •

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As I suggest in an earlier work, Edward Ricketts was a true renaissance man. Self-taught and self-made, he was a California and American original. He came to Monterey when it was still a sleepy fishing village of a few hundred souls surrounded by miles of even sleepier crop fields, armed with the most rudimentary scientific education and a determination to open a lab to provision high school biology classes with frogs and starfish as dissection specimens. But by the time he died suddenly and prematurely in 1948, he had become a respected marine biologist, a prominent proto-ecologist, and one of that rare breed of scientists who breach the walls between what C. P. Snow called “the two cultures,” the sciences and the humanities. Ricketts was a complex man, at once charismatic and magnetic, an admired friend and peer of artists, writers, an-

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thropologists, and a bevy of prominent biological scientists of his time— yet solitary, possessed of an almost melancholy distance that colored him romantic, made him attractive to ordinary men and beautiful women alike. He saw the world as a tide pool, and from backbreaking work in exploring and cataloging such microcosms, he extrapolated a sense of interconnected ecological macrocosms, holisms that subsumed the entire North American Pacific Coast, the Pacific Rim, and finally the great Pacific global community itself. He saw a concord between Buddhism and Taoism and classic Western taxonomic science, and, sadly, a Darwinian parallel between sardines feeding on fields of plankton and great countries at war. His legacy of ideas and achievement is great, and only now, more than a half century after his death, are the major essays, travelogues, and journals of Ed Ricketts receiving accolades long overdue.

Notes 1. All of Ricketts’s letters are cited from Ricketts, Renaissance Man of Cannery Row: The Life and Letters of Edward F. Ricketts, unless otherwise indicated. 2. An account of their honeymoon trip was published as “Nakwasina Goes North” in the July 1933 National Geographic. 3. A heavily edited version of “Notes and Observations” was published in Joel W. Hedgpeth’s The Outer Shores, vol. 1, as “Alaska’s Inland Passage.” 4. In his A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, for instance, Henry David Thoreau writes, “I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too” (55). 5. Ed Ricketts Jr. notes that he never actually built the bookcase. 6. Tony Berry kept a ship’s log from March 14 through April 18, documenting stops, distances traveled, and weather conditions, which Steinbeck may have also referred to. Berry’s log was published in part 2 of Hedgpeth’s The Outer Shores (1978). 7. Albert Szent-Gyorgi, a Hungarian chemist and the winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize in medicine, stated, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” 8. All historical information here about Japan’s Mandated Islands comes from Tanaihara, Pacific Islands under Japanese Mandate. 9. W. L. Schmitt, The Marine Decapod Crustacea of California, University of California Publications in Zoology no. 23 (Berkeley: University of California, 1921). 10. Though only a handful of their letters survive, references in them to additional letters suggest Steinbeck and Ricketts’s correspondence was frequent throughout the 1940s.

chapter 1

Foreword to the 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories Catalog

The 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories catalog that Ed Ricketts produced was his first major scientific publication. A twenty-five-page, letter-size volume, it is bound in a dark brown paper cover and includes photographs and line drawings of many specimens available from his company, along with information about the size of the specimens, packaging, and cost. The catalog’s primary purpose was to advertise, but it was likely the first handbook of some of the common intertidal species of the Monterey Bay area. (Not all specimens in the catalog were regional. Ricketts collected and sold various marine animals common to the entire western U.S. Pacific coastline, some of which he included in the catalog.) Though it is far from comprehensive, the catalog evidences Ricketts’s growing knowledge about the region and its marine life. The catalog’s brief foreword is especially significant, for it features his earliest statements about his work as a collector and his views on conservation and ecology. An early “big picture” scientist, Ricketts had already extended the scope of his work far beyond the Monterey Bay to include Mexico, Canada, and Alaska, and he had begun his first articulations of a holistic worldview grounded in the belief that the natural whole constituted more than the sum of its human and nonhuman parts. Here, in the first advertisement for his laboratory business, Ricketts describes his early practice as a marine biologist. We see threads of the themes that mark his career as an ecologist and visionary whose work linked the sentient 80

Figure 8. Contents page from the 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories catalog. Courtesy of the Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University.

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and insentient worlds, the sciences and the arts, the individual and the group, and the external world and the interior mind, all components of a single whole. •

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Monterey Bay is the fusion point of faunas from the North and South, and the ranges of a number of characteristic species of both regions overlap in these waters. Here we have the 1000 fathom line swinging close to shore on the open coast, with plenty of shallow water in the bay proper. One can find almost any combination of rocky coast, sand beach, or mud flat within a few miles. Rich pelagic hordes approach the shore and enter Monterey Harbor, where a large fishing fleet finds shelter. A short distance to the north, the still water, estuary conditions of Elkhorn Slough are encountered. The local boat bottom and piling fauna is very rich. Located in such a region, it is rather in the order of things that the Pacific Biological Laboratories should be unsurpassed for western marine specimens. In addition, however, the rapidly growing organization has built up something of a clearing house for supplies of an excellent quality that cannot be produced locally, and some of our microscopic slides, fresh water and terrestrial specimens, and lantern slides are pretty well on the way to becoming standard. As mentioned on the attached insert, special discounts will be allowed on preserved materials. After this discount has been deducted, it will be found that our prices are usually lower, and never higher, than those of other houses in the field, without considering the uniformly superior quality of our specialties and of most of our products in general, and without considering our free delivery clause, mentioned below. As a producing house, it is no more than natural that our products should be economically priced. The PBL arose as a supply house for other dealers, and that phase of the business is still a large one. In fact, it is safe to say that a great number of the typically western specimens sold anywhere in this country were originally produced here. It will be understood that many forms not herein listed can be supplied on special order. This does not mean that we can supply any known animal—an obvious impossibility. However, it does mean that we have been successful in securing on special order, on a number of occasions, forms that instructors have been trying for years to obtain elsewhere.

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A high percentage of the materials listed herein are kept constantly at hand. Pelagic specimens—Ctenophores and Siphonphores—are rather uncertain, nor can we hope to maintain permanent stocks of all the parasitic slides. It should be borne in mind, (and this applies especially to local marine forms), that we must, above all else, avoid depleting the region by over collecting. One or more formerly rich regions, according to reliable authorities, already afford instances of the ease with which depletion is brought about. Monterey Bay is probably richer in individuals and species than any other region of like size in the United States, and it would be unfortunate if such a situation were to arise here.

chapter 2

“Zoological Introduction” to Between Pacific Tides

Ricketts revised the original draft of Between Pacific Tides throughout the early 1930s, resubmitting it to Stanford University Press in 1936. To this draft he appended his four-page “Zoological Introduction,” in which he defended the book’s ecological arrangement as “a natural history in every sense of the word.” In this introduction, he notes that arranging Between Pacific Tides according to shore habitats “necessitated a great amount of field work, most of which could have been obviated if the traditional treatment had been used.” But he was committed to the book’s form and to an ecological method and perspective focused on the intricate relationships found in intertidal community systems. For much of his career, Ricketts struggled to find a place for his views in scientific circles that dismissed the potential and far-reaching implications of such progressive, nontraditional thinking. Despite the establishment of academic thinking against which he worked, Between Pacific Tides is Ricketts’s most recognized scientific achievement. In print for over sixty-five years and now in its fifth edition, the book is revered as a classic and pioneering text in marine biology. Today, handbooks organized by habitat are abundant, and modern marine biology has, in fact, adopted Ricketts’s early and then-unpopular views. His “Zoological Introduction” is a defense not only of Between Pacific Tides but also of an entire legacy of ecological texts following his groundbreaking example. •

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Revising again this laborious and long-continued work, now after more than three years, the writers realize more keenly than ever how great a task has been undertaken. The ecological arrangement (in part after Verrill and Smith’s pioneering 1872 report—a natural history in every sense of the word) has entailed not only considerable clerical difficulty but has necessitated a great amount of field work, most of which could have been obviated if the traditional treatment had been used. Probably the zoologist familiar with Pacific invertebrates will find this account less accessible as a manual and reference, possibly even more cumbersome and inexact, than if we had built it according to the usual scheme. The tyro, however, and the armchair general reader will find it surely more convenient and a lot more interesting. Advantages to classes in marine biology and to the visiting zoologist will be apparent also. And the professional worker can realize, extenuatingly, that inexactness and inconsistency are the prerogatives also (and more particularly) of the animals themselves—as though they were conspiring against one’s attempt to catalog them neatly! ([This is] the reality of natural things as contrasted with our intellectual need for realizing all phenomena in discrete states.) The attempt throughout has been to construct an account interesting to the lay reader and useful alike to the zoologist. Probably we shall have succeeded only partially in traveling that knife edge without leaning on the one side toward technicalities, which must bewilder the layman, or on the other toward inaneness, to which in popular writings the biologist will be sensitive. Since its first draft several years back, the manuscript has been used in actual practice up and down the coast. Some of its deficiencies have been corrected. Some are just now being realized. Others probably we have not even yet discovered. But in the meantime, ecological accounts published elsewhere have lent validity to some of the key ideas. In this work, the distribution of Pacific littoral invertebrates within a given region is seen in the light of competition and interrelation between the animals themselves and the limiting aspects of the following factors: (a) wave shock, (b) tidal level, [and] (c) type of bottom, along with a good many others of lesser importance, such as temperature, stagnation, silting, etc., all pretty well intermingled and interdependent. Occasionally distribution can be indexed by some of the lesser factors, salinity ([as in] Puget Sound barnacles), insolation (protection from or exposure to sun, as in British limpets), etc. But there are hundreds—probably the majority of our seashore animals—whose primary factor is almost surely

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referable to one of the above fundamentals or to an integration of all three. These important three mold the environment and thereby influence the communities, which in turn act on each other. Interrelation seems to be pretty much the keynote of modern holistic concepts, wherein the whole consists of the animal or the community in its environment, the notion of relation being significant. Ercegovic [A. Ercegovic, “Wellengang und Lithophytenzone an der Ostadriatischen Küste,” Acta Adriatica 3 (1934): 1–20] rates wave activities in the larger sense (including the tidal wave) as “primary oceanographic factors, on which other life-factors of the coast are dependent. . . . Further considerations moreover will show how waveaction is that oceanographic factor which postulates the differentiation of the various biological zones of the coast, and through which the development of these zones maybe brought about” (literal translation of p. 1). A forthcoming paper by one of us (Ricketts) on the marine ecology of southeastern Alaska indicates also the significance of the wave shock factor, basically used herein for our major arrangement. There is also a tide-level paper, in advanced preparation, which evaluates the considerable efficacy of this second factor [“The Tide as an Environmental Factor Chiefly with Reference to Ecological Zonation on the California Coast”]. The significance of the third primary factor, type of bottom, has been amply demonstrated by the investigations of Allee 1923 and several others. Fischer (1928, see Biol. Abstracts, Oct. 1931, #22734) further confirms the possibility of scientific zoning in his report on certain areas of the French coast uncomplicated by surf: “Various littoral organisms have limits more or less close to the high-tide mark, or to the low-tide mark. . . . Ecological subdivisions may be established in the tidal zone, corresponding to the successive upper limits of distribution of the various supp.” (quoted from abstract). The definiteness demonstrated in Colman’s work (1933) is another case in point. Stephen (1930, Biol. Abstracts, Oct. 1931, #22768) also emphasizes this distinctness: “These were distributed in a definite series of zones, their range of distribution or area of maximum density following in a definite sequence. The largest specimens were found at some particular part of the range” (quoted from abstract). On the whole, it will probably be granted by most field zoologists that competent observers might even now construct fairly accurate zonal graphs in which the tide-level stations of many of the commoner forms could be plotted, based on the means of many counts and measurements over widespread areas. Obviously, we

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cannot make even a pretense of having done this in the tentative and approximate arrangement which follows, but which, nevertheless, may prove both stimulating and suggestive. The limitations of any tool will become apparent sooner or later, and we should emphasize at the start that it would be inadvisable for the collector to attempt to identify his catch accurately solely by means of this classification. This despite the Cabrera 1932 law of ecological incompatibility, whereby “in the same locality[,] . . . directly related animal forms always occupy different habitats or ecological stations. . . . Related animal forms are ecologically incompatible, and the incompatibility is the more profound the more directly they are related” (Biol. Abstracts, March 1935, #4488). But despite that probably sound generalization, ecological arrangements cannot yet, possibly cannot ever, achieve the finality so characteristic of the taxonomic order. There, an animal belongs irrevocably in the one place finally assigned to it, however much that position may have been shifted about by pioneer workers. Any ecological classification will be inexact, suggestive rather than definitive; a given animal may occur in several environments, and even its primary assignment to one may not be certain until documented by quantitative methods. However, ecological arrangements ought not to be discarded because of these inadequacies; they ought rather to be used guardedly and for what they are worth, with due regard for their limitations. Only the less obvious exceptions will be found confusing. The extreme exceptions are obvious. Deepwater crinoids or scaphopods, for instance, seldom will be found alongshore, altho no doubt such things will have happened. But the confusing anomalies, which the persistent collector is sure to turn out sooner or later, will be more subtle: isolated individuals and sometimes whole colonies well out of their “normal” environment; others ecologically so variable that no definite statement can be made as to their environmental optimum. In taxonomy, even at its worst, the lines of demarcation are definite; however fine, the entities are fixed. But ecological “quanta” are vague, definable only within loose limits. Authority for interesting or radical statements may sometimes offer difficulties to the zoologist-reader. We attempt to show major citations in the systematic index following the name of the animal in question, but necessarily many references have been omitted. And we have furthermore drawn freely on that fund of information, known in most cases to be reliable, which every worker builds up in his chosen field, the sources hidden or forgotten. If errors have resulted, thus or otherwise,

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Figure 9. Ricketts collecting in southeast Alaska, circa 1932. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

we shall be glad to hear of them. A reissue may be forthcoming, since books of this sort very frequently run out of print before their usefulness is done, and such errors may then be corrected. No keys have been provided for the obvious reasons that (a) satisfactory ones can be constructed at present for only a few of the groups on this coast due to the lack of correlated information on taxonomy, distribution, and/or quantitative natural history, even where the group is known; (b) many of the local invertebrates, even some of the common forms, are still undescribed or in a chaotic state taxonomically; and (c), even where they could be constructed, comprehensive keys, unless very fully annotated and explained, would be useless to the beginner.

chapter 3

“The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through’”

Ricketts drafted and revised this essay throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, often after discussions and correspondence with friends such as John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell. The version included here is from a typescript marked “Revised July 1940, Mexico City,” composed of fifteen double-spaced pages, and it reflects a number of suggestions Campbell made in a 1939 letter. Ricketts’s notion of breaking through derived largely from his readings of the Tao Teh Ching, T. D. Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism, and Jeffers’s Roan Stallion, but as with most of his ideas, he integrated concepts from many sources and disciplines. He worked hard on the essay’s structure and diction, struggling at times to find adequate words for an abstract and personal concept. Indeed, the very nature of mystical transcendence renders it beyond language, and his efforts to reduce it to a sentence often frustrated him, as indicated by his many revisions; in places he fumbles with language, employing terms in imprecise ways that may prove difficult for readers. It is unusual that Ricketts, a marine biologist in the 1930s, drew on the work and thought of Steinbeck (the era’s most significant novelist), Jeffers (a major visionary poet), and Campbell (the foremost specialist on myth in the twentieth century) to develop his theories about transcendence. “The Philosophy of ‘Breaking Through’” remains one of the most thoughtful and detailed documents he produced. •

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Revised July 1940, Mexico City A personal interpretation of some modern tendencies, approached from an inductive standpoint. Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them. Whitman, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”

This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Acts of the Apostles 4:11

I I remember it first when we children were living in a squalid district in Chicago. One winter night, the combined home and saloon of some Bohemian neighbors caught fire and burned to the ground quickly before much could be saved. I guess we knew them only slightly. Father bought beer there every night (this was referred to as “composition” in our presence; I used to notice how remarkably it smelt like beer), but they traded almost not at all at our grocery. On the whole, an observer would have seen that they were beneath us. I have no doubt but that my parents knew them as people; but a feeling of kinship with these foreigners-saloon-keepers, furthermore—whose children were even allowed to draw beer for customers—wasn’t in any way communicated to us. We probably scorned the Huska kids. I remember the boys were very bow-legged. This was presumably due to the fact that as babies they had been allowed to walk too soon, a preventable situation, and another indication of the family’s inferiority. And of our superiority, since all of us were straight-legged. The father, Steve, was said to be fond of children, and I frequently saw him dandling the baby. It must have seemed quite impossible to me, if I had stopped to consider: how could such people exhibit traits like ours, really human traits! Obviously we were snooty people; we children were, at least: in the slums, but, to our notions, not of them. Any intimate mixings into our surroundings, furthermore, must have been frowned upon by our parents. Anyway, on this occasion, something happened. The fire flared up suddenly. Suddenly we were all out in the street, watching our first close fire. But not only as observers. The Huska kids were probably crying,

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scared, not understanding their so-well-known father now strangely numbed at seeing his frugally built security vanishing. All at once I, of our remote family probably the most remote and cold, found myself suggesting, and intensely meaning it, that Father should make sure Stefan Huska and his family had a place to stay. I, of all people, was asking him to bring these dirty (presumably; foreign anyway) bow-legged children, stocky, sturdy, in all ways the opposite of delicate us, to our house. More surprisingly, I seemed to express a notion we all felt flowing through us with a suprapersonal beauty for which we were only vehicles. We must give, something, anything. And what we had to give, the sanctuary and former superiority of our home, seemed suddenly not enough. Nothing could be enough; there wasn’t such a thing as enough. There could be no expression adequate to that glowing feeling of kinship with all things and all people. For the first time, and in the glow of that supposedly destructive fire, we children had become more than ourselves. For those few minutes, we were really living, we were “beyond,” things had a new meaning, so that the former values must have seemed dwarfed and strange if we had stopped to think of them. There were many lesser things of that sort. Years later, in the woods at Pacific Grove, our old landlord fell off the roof he was repairing, knocked unconscious with a fractured skull so that we thought he was dying. His wife was grand; not hysterical. Supposing also he had to die, she accepted it not as a frenzy. She kept saying “dear boy.” Suddenly I found myself living the whole picture. I was seeing her in a flood of feelings that must have been as inundating as surf, recalling the early values of their relation, the old days—maybe not thought of for years—their struggles and good times together, related to their youth, and as charged as Conrad’s “Youth.” She may have led the sexually frustrated life we associate with English people of Victorian heritage; all that became instantly of little importance. She kept stroking his head and saying “dear boy.” To herself, I suppose, because he could neither hear nor feel. Anyway, the physical manifestations were in themselves important only as something the churched used to call the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace—vehicles on which something beyond was integrally riding. Of the larger picture, they were no more than surface stirrings. I thought of myself (and was otherwise somewhat scandalized at the sacrilege) as beating time to music that was part of the scene and which was flowing also through me. There is a similar picture in Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heaven; the woman who comforted her husband after the loss of his financial-illusion, and again in Marie’s last (as it turns

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out) good-bye to her murderer husband in Hemingway’s To Have and to Have Not. It was the same when I first heard Madame Butterfly, my first opera: like the fantasy of an opera seven stories down and on a toylike stage far out in front, suddenly more real than anything in life. There was the same quiet realization that no sacrifice (a poor word: privilege is nearer) would be great enough if one could only share that girl’s sorrow. There was no mistaking, the thing was sounded quietly and convincingly. As “the mind knows, grown adult,” recognition was sure (Jeffers, “Sea Fog”). I had a flash of the same thing in considering the time my wife left, distraught, to go to San Francisco. Finally, all that hectic time of trouble and doubt seemed beside the point. There was a time when the sudden changes and fits of temper seemed consumingly important—the change from companionable glow to nothing or worse: hatred, and the remark that all the rest had been acting. Then I realized fleetingly the actual unimportance of all that diversion. It was away from a more essential reality. Even whether or not there was any love between us seemed not immediately significant. But it was important for us to realize that it’s the tenderness that counts, however little or infrequent, [and] that one walks along with one’s wife, quiet above the hatred that often consumes both. Then, after clearly realizing [this], whether or not one is physically bereaved is seen not to be vitally important. Another example occurs to me, whether imagined, dreamed, or reported as an actuality, I don’t recall. There was a mine disaster. Some of the men were entombed by a cave-in: one already dead, others wounded. But one, unhurt, had access to a mine telephone whereby he could talk throughout the night while rescue work went on feverishly, with his wife, who had stayed at the mouth of the shaft since the first report of the accident. Now, some person—a relative, say—could come and stay there from a sense of duty; or a nurse, so as to be ready for contingencies; or a mine official, because he belonged. But I imagine this woman was there because she horribly wanted to be. When the rescue finally was effected, and her shocked and emaciated husband was hauled out of the shaft, dirty, unkempt and unshaven, she broke through into illumination. For years she had been repelled by his untidiness. She had blunted herself and him by nagging reform. Now, suddenly, all that seemed not very important. The fault was still there. If she paused to look, she could realize it now more clearly than ever before. She was actually less blind than at the time [before this moment] in her life, only now she saw things in their re-

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lation to a far larger picture, a more deeply significant whole. She genuinely liked him, she realized now, neither in spite of nor because of it; it was sufficient simply to face the fact that that trait was his whom she loved. She had accepted fully and without evasion the burden of anxiety, and something new was born again out of the ashes of struggle. His grime now became a symbol of her glory, associationally, therefore she loved it and him more; not because of, but through, it, all hate and recriminations washed away. That new thing, the Christ-child, was deeper magic than anything she could have anticipated, as a child, from a fairy godmother.

II It’s all part of one pattern, the burned saloon, the broken head, the departing wife, and the entombed miner; Cio-Cio-San [from Madame Butterfly], singing her grief and the world moving with it. I suspect now that the pattern is universal, that we fail to see the transcending simplicity of it only because of obstacles on our inward horizons. If it weren’t for self-imposed or racially erected defenses, it would flow in on us from everywhere, we would be it and it we. In “Natural Music,” Jeffers says: So I believe if we were strong enough to listen without Divisions of desire and terror To the storm of the sick nations, the rage of the hunger-smitten cities These voices also would be found Clean as a child’s . . .

No doubt some few wise people know this merely through living. But many of us can achieve at least a clearer and more easily conveyed conscious expression of it through the spiritual motifs underlying literature, especially in poetry. In determining how clearly this unnamed quality might be expressed in modern writings, I have been going over in my mind the teachers and authors, not all recent, whom I personally class as moderns: Keats (“Ode to a Nightingale”), Emerson (“Compensation,” “The Oversoul”), Walt Whitman, surely and in many poems, Francis Thompson (“[The] Hound of Heaven”), even some of Stevenson (Will o’ the Mill, A Lodging for the Night), Nietzsche; later, Reymont; now Jung, Hemingway, Faulkner (“Ad Astra”), Krishnamurti, Steinbeck (To a God Unknown). Sensing it dimly in Conrad’s “Youth,” I had also the feeling that in Heart of Darkness some great thing nearly broke through the surface. In Kipling’s “Without Benefit of Clergy,”

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they knew that glory above the commonplace, although probably [were] not conscious of the knowledge. Pegeen found for her own [in] The Playboy of the Western World and then bitterly lost that “vision that fools him out of his limits,” but both must remember all their lives what Emerson calls the “depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.” The son and the daughter, possibly even the mother, in Riders to the Sea were integral with that thing. Lacking deep consciousness and adequate articulateness, they couldn’t know it, although they were it. Even Synge himself may not have realized it consciously; nevertheless, he has them speaking out of it. But in some of Jeffers’s poems, the thing is stated clearly, with full conscious recognition, and with that exact economy of words which we associate with scientific statements: Humanity is the mold to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire . . . The atom to be split. Tragedy that breaks a man’s face and a white fire flies out of it; vision that fools him Out of his limits, desire that fools him out of his limits, ... These break, these pierce, these deify . . . (from Roan Stallion)

and again: . . . discovery’s The way to walk in. Only remains to invent a language to tell it. Match ends of burnt experience Human enough to be understood, . . . . . . feed on peace While the crust holds: to each of you at length a little Desolation; a pinch of lust or a drop of terror: Then the lions hunt in the brains of the dying: storm is good, storm is good, good creature, Kind violence, throbbing throat aches with pity. (Prelude to “The Women at Point Sur”)

No one before, to my knowledge, at least no Westerner other than some such mystic as Blake, ever announced that particular theme so boldly or entered into the use of that motif with such full consciousness. With reference to this trait, it is as though in the others, Emerson and Whitman and Nietzsche, we have been hearing the build-up as of a

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Brahms’s First, and now suddenly, as in the third movement, here it is— announced simply, but with no screen of subtlety or reticence. All along, we have been hearing that coming echo. The memory of the music bears its clarifying expression as a natural sequence. And as a result of the explicit statement in Jeffers’s early poems, I have come to call this thing “breaking through” and to regard the cognitive considerations of it as “the philosophy of breaking through.” These ideas use words only as a vehicle. But however unsuited to word expression, such a thing objectively seems to exist, even collectively, and it characterizes, is influenced by, and influences or at least indexes a trend reflected philosophically in holism—that the whole is more than the sum of its parts; that the integration or relation of the parts is other than the separate sum of the parts. Recently, I have been inclining toward the belief that the conscious recognition of this “breaking through” quality may be an essential of modern soul movements, and that the degree of its recognition comprises an earmark of whatever abiding quality modern (particularly nonabstract) art may possess: not dirt for dirt’s sake, or grief merely for the sake of grief, but dirt and grief wholly accepted if necessary as struggle vehicles of an emergent joy—achieving things which are not transient by means of things which are.

III I have been reviewing this situation also with reference to world movements in labor and in the class struggle, in economics, in science, as well as in personality problems—subjects as charged now with life as a religion used to be. Consider, for instance, the wisdom of a point blank refusal to arbitrate for the sake of arbitration in labor difficulties, insofar as arbitration represents a “milk and water” attitude, which it often does. Depending of course somewhat on motive, the refusal symbolizes wholeness, unity, the strong man unafraid in action; the other, humanism in its selectic [selective] and necessarily divided aspects, with the inevitable concessions. Then consider the meeting of honest representatives of both sides, neither willing to sell out, neither willing to concede, but both open-mindedly honest. Both will get to know each other; they will surely respect each other for those qualities, at least. They will learn new things, especially inwardly where strength and origins lie; to some degree at least, they will achieve the light of appreciating each other’s problems, no small step in itself. So proceeding, they may automatically

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break through into a new whole, not composed of concessions, but built in a rooty sense on a deep and sympathetic understanding of both sides. Starting only with honesty and a determination to avoid concession and compromise, the deep understanding may come over them “as the wind bloweth,” as the miner’s wife achieved the new thing, as the boy in [the] Chicago slums got a glimpse of the all-love that makes distant things kin, as the good wife and husband together work miracles greater than the sum of their separate wisdoms and possibilities. There may have been originally not even the intention of settlement—that would amount to bias. They may have had only the feeling that here was something worth fighting for, and that the battle was noble and just. But so long as there was equally no biased intent against settlement, the new thing might arise. The steps would be something like this: a. The agony of an intolerable situation

. . . trouble

b. A brave and nonconceding attitude on both sides in facing, even embracing, it and in honestly presenting the main theses, however controversial

. . . discussion, rather than the angry argumentation which indicates bias

c. The new situation, accompanied by joy, or at least by the release of energy formerly tied up

. . . the possible solution

Struggle, especially, seems to be a necessary prerequisite of the beyond quality, and the greater the struggle, the greater the possible breaking through. That phase, at least, was recognized in early times: Socrates ([and] Plato [in] Theaetetus) speaks of the labor pains of his midwifery. These pains, moreover, may be so patently devastating that the average observer in his natural concern with the more obvious aspects may overlook the emergent issue entirely, especially if, once the Sturm und Drang has passed, it should be announced without fanfare. So the indictments: “There’s only horror and degradation in so-and-so’s works,” “nothing but coldness and destruction,” or, at best, “I sense dimly something beyond the obvious evil picture.” This was said of Nietzsche and Wagner, in the past, later of D. H. Lawrence, then of Stravinsky and T. E. Lawrence, now of Hemingway, Farrell, Steinbeck, Javlensky, [and] George Grosz. And, in this light, Jeffers is seen to emerge as quite other than severe and difficult, pessimistic in thought and treatment, as often portrayed still, although less now than formerly. But of his many readers, even today how few glimpse the “white fire”

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through and beyond the tragedy with which they are chiefly engrossed! In justice, that grief should be recognized as merely a vehicle (however necessary), incident to the rare breakings through. Or to the more frequent regressions in those who fall by the wayside, tested beyond their strength: “many are called but few are chosen.” Although it will be granted that intense struggle is one of the commonest concomitants to a great emergent, the presence of the former is no invariable index of the latter. Where there is refusal to accept the hazards of grief and tragedy, as occurs more frequently than not, I should expect to see the struggle belittle, rather than deify, since whatever is has to be taken and accepted in order for development to proceed. Discrimination and will provide means of determining whether a thing is inevitable or not, and of accepting it if it is; but once it has been determined to be inevitable, only evasion would tend to project it vicariously, thus refusing to face it. Projected grief or trouble obviously isn’t accepted, and certainly isn’t embraced, and the issue not clearly defined and faced cannot ever give over to the vigor of living growth. It exists then merely as a block on the horizon, an unresolved problem that contaminates what it touches. The struggle is between opposing forces, each honest in its own right and without evasion but limited in scope or vision. Obviously, any conflict is evidence of error on both sides because, due to the catholic nature of truth, there can be no conflict if either achieves this illumination, the illumination itself being the “answer.” Between error and error, there is conflict; between truth and error, none—plenty of work in ironing things out and lining them up in the new light, but no real conflict. All-embracing truth includes all apropos reality, and an error stated, even believed in, is a relatively real thing. Thus, in conflicts, the least speck of truth comprises the start of the new thing, the emergent. Honestly pursued and developed, it may resolve into one flowing line all former conflict with reference to that particular set of relations. The happy mother, for instance, doesn’t dislike to change her baby’s diapers, because “they’re his, and he’s sweet,” although the same woman may object strongly to cleaning up the cat’s mess, which is objectively no worse. The intuitive understanding implied in her reason exists on a level above any conflict into which the less happy or less wise parent may get involved. The common conflicts are between individual and society, persona and anima. Such challenges, honestly met, may give over into the new thing. Confused, not recognized honestly, or pushed aside, they result

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invariably in stalemate. Recognized and accomplished, the result is symbolized by the loving tolerance of the parent for his child’s foibles (sometimes the other way around: our children may be lovingly tolerant of us; they aren’t fooled!), by the gentleness of some doctors who understand their parents far more deeply than in a merely physical sense, best of all by the dear insight through which the good wife understands the shortcomings of her husband. She doesn’t blind herself to them or refuse to face them; no one knows them more clearly than she and, because of that clear knowledge, none can help and love more than she. Examples of this duality and trinity are many and traditional. A concomitant of haphazard growth without conscious consideration for other possibly conflicting growths: the duality is literally everywhere. Less frequent, the unexpected or at least previously unknown solution through the new thing completes the trinity. The new whole is built on the old opposites, without concession, through “magic” growth; the third person partakes of the others only in a rooty sense—obviously a function of conscious and disciplined work, which is less common than happenstance. Possibly the most obvious example is embodied in a trite and somewhat sentimental poem of Kipling’s which I dislike quoting here, but which is, after all, an excellent example of what has been discussed. Observer A remarks: “Well, you know I always say, with Kipling, who certainly knew, about these hybrid marriages, ‘East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.’” Mr. B., who is less superficial, corrects him: “There is more to it than that, a larger view which almost contradicts your statement, and it is said further along in the same poem by the very man you quote: ‘But there is neither east nor west, border, breed nor birth, when two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.’” The statement “there is neither”— there isn’t such a thing, there is none—implies that there is, however, something “beyond,” which he neither names nor specifies. To digress a moment, that idea sums up very well the negation aspects (“night,” “death,” “quiet”) which in mysticism are so often considered quietistic by laymen. Those symbols are merely ways of indicating the deep thing, the path of no path (vide Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, No. 14) which is and must be nameless. It cannot be said. It can be hinted, conveyed, symbolized, but never explicitized, else it ceases to be itself and you have to go on from that new step, seeking it again. See also Jeffers’s “Night,” Novalis’s Hymns to the Night, Whitman’s figure of death in “Out of the Cradle” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and Francis

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Thompson’s “Their sound is but their stir, they speak in silences” [from “The Hound of Heaven”]. The traditional religious concept of father, son, and holy ghost is another example of this trinity, but one which is no longer living and which is therefore rarely understood. The following, although possibly a trifle obscure, are more apropos to these times: (1) environment and times, (2) a leader: the cause (1) water, (2) waves: the sea In literature: (1) tradition, (2) desire: the Roan Stallion In medicine and in human relations: (1) hyperthyroidism, (2) neurosis: irritability (1) tenderness, (2) technique: sexual relations in marriage In modern physics of light: (1) particle, (2) wave: the Fitzgerald contraction to zero dimension in the direction of travel and the expansion to infinite mass at the speed of light, as in the photoelectric effect The solution doesn’t always come—statistically, its appearance is actually rare; the struggle may be so intense as to result in failure and regression. But it never comes without birth struggle, and its most common vehicle is something with which we have [an] association of fear or evil. Less commonly, it may derive through the embracing of joy, as in love affairs, works of art, but even these involve a struggle, the severity of which is directly proportional to the intensity and newness of joy. So there is the familiar legend of the distressed medieval woman who, forced to embrace a dragon, finds it changed to an attractive young knight. And so Shelley significantly remarks, “Welcome joy and welcome sorrow.” Thus relative to this quality, there is not only the necessity for struggle but [also] an equal necessity for accepting it when, but only when, it arises inevitably in the natural flow of events. The successful person (the growing person; success as often used implies compromise to the point of smugness or stultification, mistaking the earmarks of success for success itself, as with material wealth, fame, or acquisitions in general) welcomes the struggle as a vehicle. The fetus

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wins through birth. The child plays at being a man [and] finally achieves manhood actually after many struggles and despite regressive tendencies so common as to be universal, such as the wish to remain a child (a temptation strong enough to cause stasis, however only in psychopathic conditions). Greater struggles are met with increased growth, up to the greatest test possible in this physical life, the one from which in due course no successful person shrinks. And Bach sings, “Komm süsser Tod,” so that my daughter used to say, “Daddy, that doesn’t sound to me like death.” Nor to me. More like “Tod und Verklärung,” I think. And there is further not only the necessity for struggle and for eager acceptance, but there is [also] deep wisdom in not seeking the test, actually in avoiding it except where inevitable. Grief or love aren’t [sic] to be brought on, they’re to be taken when they come. No one can make the wind blow; the wise person will realize it must blow sooner or later of its own accord, and will be correspondingly prepared. It will come inevitably in its time: “Feed on peace while the crust holds.” Maeterlinck remarks somewhat flowerily, “Let us wait till the hour of sacrifice sounds; till then, each man to his work. The hour will sound at last; but let us not waste all our time seeking it on the dial of life” (Wisdom and Destiny) following apropos preceding considerations. I am reminded also of Hemingway’s remarks (Esquire, April 1936) on the eventual certainty of danger at sea in offshore fishing, and on the wisdom of attempts on the part of even the most adventurous sportsmen toward avoiding rather than rushing into it deliberately. Sacrifice or emergency inspire one almost magically; in fact they are lucky who are so exposed—it’s the deadly desultory which makes demands of courage—but deliberately to seek unnecessary struggle is another subtle evasion, cutting into the living body of time. As a hypothetical example, suppose a very intellectual but unbalanced youth who had led a cloistered life were to determine by scrupulous observation that maturity and characteral integration followed only in the path of pain and struggle, [and] were to say, “Well, what I need is pain,” and were to put his hand deliberately into a flame. The unlikely maturity achieved that way would be ridiculously roundabout, might easily defeat its own purpose. The time must come inevitably, and frequently to people who live amply, when the great gift of sacrifice cannot honestly be withheld and, parallelically, when the struggle must be met, at which time the resources of strength and growth which may have been developed during the more quiet times of acquiring or enjoying can be drawn upon.

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Note in this connection also the often-mentioned correlation between physical insecurity and the flowering of painting before and during the Renaissance. Plague during that time was no respecter of persons: whole populations might be suddenly decimated by it. Machiavellism and wholesale graft such as I doubt the world knows even in these times also meant danger to nonexpedient truth-seekers such as artists, scientists, and thinkers. Yet Giotto, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Galileo, whose very lives must have been insecure to a degree we can scarcely conceive, tower as giants clear to this day. From these and other equally obvious considerations, it would seem that an insecurity, either outer or inner, may be actually an important motivating force for the significant-truth-seeker in any field, and that, having accepted this insecurity to the point of achieving a “breaking through” even a few times, he is cast forever beyond continuous peace and rest as we ordinarily conceive the term. He cannot ever, except at recurrent necessary periods (comparable to sleep and repair in the physical realm), honestly enjoy any peace other than the active joy of effort, which is not only the antithesis of quietism but also the opposite of what we usually think of as rest and peace. That insecurity well may be only a symbol of the eternal struggle to which he is irrevocably pledged—pledged until he starts crystallizing or diminishing as a result of failing or evading one of the tests. (The logarithmic immanence of these tests is expressed by a drawing I recall—it may have been a mural or the reproduction of a mural in a life insurance lobby, wherein death shoots with increasing accuracy at people of increasing age. At the youth, he aims clumsily with a bow and arrow; the young man is only slightly threatened with an old-fashioned blunderbuss; the mature man with a shotgun. The elderly man must run the considerable hazard of being fired upon by a high-powered rifle. Finally, those who have come to senescence unscathed are slain unerringly with a machine gun.) Until then, he cannot ever know any peace other than that; he will always be working toward a clearer and larger merging with it.

IV A In the inward growth of an individual, it will be granted that integrity is the most important thing in the world. But there are levels and emer-

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gents even of integrity. There are, conceivably, individuals so integrated and great that they are willing to contribute that most priceless gift of all—integrity—to something “beyond.” If their really honest destiny lies that way, they must follow that star, however perilous, making sure only that that is in fact the only way. And the determination as to whether or not their destiny lies that way is a matter for their own deep and personal scrutiny, fraught more than is anything else in the world with the hazards of evasion, since there is the great difficulty of making sure that the very adventurousness or difficulties of martyrdom of that way isn’t itself an evasion by which a personal neurosis is conciliated rather than faced. The hairline is difficult. That “beyond” is nameless. No classifications mark or constrict it, nor can they do so, else it ceases to be itself. “The Tao that can be tao-ed can not be the ultimate Tao” (Goddard translation of Lao Tsu [Laotzu’s Tao and Wu Wei, trans. Dwight Goddard (New York: Brentano’s Publishers, 1919)], p. 27). Its most common vehicle is love, love of a cause, of people, of a person. And whether or not the greater integrity lies in saving or in giving up integrity, or in some remoteness not even glimpsed by the masses, depends on the “way” of the involved individual. This is free ground, beyond any rule, as the Lao Tsu statement emphasizes. And hence derives the correctness of the notion that no valid a priori ultimate-evaluation can be put on anything. It can only be said that, at a given time, this or that evaluation is “comparatively more ultimate” than others—a contradiction in terms—and that the human mind has a sense of truth which, although varying with the individual, seems to be cultivatable through vision and effort and honesty—“the high and fine intuition of the wise”—and so can wisely be heeded in borderline cases. Suicide and masturbation are 99 percent evasion, but on some remote occasions, conceivably, they may be the very vehicles of salvation under a given set of circumstances hard to imagine, just as life and normal sexual relations may occasionally be “bad” as representing evasions. Granting the validity of these considerations, it would appear that anyone who very honestly and fervently espouses anything, however erroneous, up to the limit of his ability and discrimination at the time, must have a life more full and more aware than the average. Even such a man as Clarence True Wilson, if as single-minded, if as willing as he seems to have been to do anything, even to sacrificing personal honor, to his suprapersonal objective—the Anti-Saloon League—must have had a singularly luminous life. He will have had the not inconsiderable joy of being “Dr. Wilson-right,” although he may not have had the joy

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of being also “world-right” by being more nearly in line with the “absolute” truth. If there is a growing antipathy toward humanism, as witnessed by the increase in totalitarian states, it may easily be accounted for. On the present majority level, the bland humanists have had their day, the time of eclecticism is past. We embrace now wholly, without reservation, and the belief that something else may be just as “good,” or the suspicion that some part elsewhere may be even “better,” is thought now, holistically, to amount only to bias, an inhibition that prevents the full light from entering [sic]. B In speaking of acquaintances, my wife and I once evolved a classification which seems to be widely valid. Children and probably peasants, maybe old-fashioned farmers and laborers also, are unawakened, unconscious, live unknowingly in the flow of life, naïve. The much larger conscious group includes a huge sophisticated majority either seeking, puzzled, bitter, or resigned and a small mellow minority who, usually later in life, are luminously adjusted to their lot, whatever it may be. Although development may stop anyway, these three growth stages provide a normal progression. In occasional naturally wise people (these are rare), the mellow seems to proceed directly from the naïve. Usually, however, there is a time of intervening struggle, with search, bitterness, or bewilderment. The path to home is difficult. Once away in the first place (and the adolescent must have the experience of leaving home), the way back is long and uncertain, but the journey deeply enriches the recovered home to those who achieve it. This applies not only to the large pattern of lives but [also] to separate specific problems, such as the brotherhood of man, now to some extent re-living in the hearts of occasional sincere communists. And in the religious belief situation, the pattern is similar. There is the original naïve, childlike, or savage belief in a personal deity. This is ordinarily followed, soon after the function of intellectual cognition develops and is put honestly to work on the problem, by a period of loss, bitterness, and atheistic insistence: the sophisticated stage. Then, by breaking through as a result of acceptance of struggle, with its challenge of work in attempting a deeper understanding, some feeling for the symbolism of religion—knowledge of the “deep thing beyond the name,” of “magic,” and of the “dog within”— ultimately may illuminate the whole scene. The attempt toward con-

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scious understanding of what formerly was accepted naïvely and as a matter of traditional course apparently imposes a struggle from which only the breakers-through emerge into the mellow group. C I am recalling how interestingly all this is tied up with the religious ideas of the trinity, with the old sturdy ideas of Hegel, and with the new ideas of holism and of the ecologists and the Jungians and the mathematical physicists: the issue of the union of two struggling opposites, each honest in its own right but in scope limited, as a “new thing” which completely transcends the old, which is part of it in a rooty sense only; which uses the old forms of duality—form and function, matter and energy, material and spiritual—only as emergence vehicles toward an integrated growth. Beyond the naïve man, Adam in the garden; beyond the sophisticated one, the apple eaten, by strife driven from the Garden; there is the yet greater possible heaven of gain or probable hell of loss— the crust broken through, the mellow man, Krishnamurti’s awareness, Nietzsche’s superman, Jung’s individuation. None entirely possible on this earth, where perfection exists only symbolically in man’s mind but is often glimpsed hearteningly. As though there were a forced tropism toward a decision which, in terms of religious symbology, either achieves the grace, not of the father, not of the son, but of the holy ghost, or else descends into utter oblivion.

chapter 4

“A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry”

The shortest of Ricketts’s three philosophical essays—the 1939 version reproduced here is a fourteen-page typescript—”A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry” represents an attempt to “work out” his notions about breaking through and non-teleological thinking “in an actual, practical way in life” (“New Series Notebook No. 1,” 9). Though classifying poets according their ability to convey or to trigger transcendence is undoubtedly subjective, it can be seen as an exercise, an experiment in how to implement Ricketts’s philosophical modus operandi. The essay itself—particularly his discussion of the four “growth stages” of poets—is the most detailed analysis of literature he ever wrote and reveals his scientific impulse to group and categorize objects in a world before his gaze, from intertidal specimens to poets. Indeed, the significance of a scientist venturing a detailed discussion of poetry becomes apparent when “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry” is placed in the context of Ricketts’s body of major writings: he sought to heal the breach between the seemingly disjointed worlds of the sciences and the humanities—as C. P. Snow did later with in his seminal The Two Cultures—championing instead a more integrated viewpoint. •

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Figure 10. Ricketts, circa 1933. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

This draft typed July 1939.

I This near contradiction in terms is as close as I have been able to come in working toward the one-phrase abstract which all good titles comprise. Considered evaluations of the spirit of poetry are, so far as I know, entirely lacking—at least rare—although there have been many analyses of form. These terms may be contrasted as follows: “Spirit” is the difficult-

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to-define essence or breath, used in this case largely as a phase of content and as opposed to the more physical aspects of “form.” Verse form, style of presentation (ponderous, tender, facetious, etc.), diction, even the separate words themselves, are thought of merely as vehicles or as a vehicle, however lovely, of content. What is conveyed, relates to content; how it is conveyed, to form. Spirit content is similarly considered as something which motivates or enlightens a given work, or as the motivating aspect of that which is poured into a given vehicle. A related picture is suggested by the archaic Latin origins of the word spirit, literally “a wind,” so a form receives or is acted upon by a breath of life, the spirit. Although how is commonly considered at the expense of what, poetic content as the expression of a metaphysical (more frequently implied than stated explicitly) seems to me one of the fine features of fine poetry. Content which is conceptually significant, or which transcends concept, may be unlovely in architecture and diction—although the converse is far more likely to be true. But usually, great rates great, and thought, moving “as the wind bloweth,” more frequently is clothed well and carefully, even inspiredly. In any case, most of the examples chosen seem to me world-great both in form and spirit, and they usually, furthermore, either hint toward, or actually work out, definite symbolic or concrete thought patterns.

II A Since the emphasis is on content, form, as comprising the following, will be considered only in outline: A. Architecture—the structural pattern by which the work is built. In any consideration of work as a whole, the architectural plan necessarily is intricately interwoven with content also, as the purpose for which the building is intended, for instance, but ideas relating to style, and words such as sonnet, epic, lyric, etc. suggest a superficial architecture of form. B. Diction—the choice of words and the manner of putting them together. C. Beat—conventional rhythm where present (many studies of poetry are devoted exclusively to this) or the subtle beat of Whitman. D. Rhyme, if present.

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E. Alliteration, if present—the sound alliteration of Poe, etc. Alliteration of Hebrew poetry is, partly at least, one of content. Nonwestern poetry may have additional qualities, such as the Chinese tonal patterns (see Encyclopedia [Britannica], 13th ed., 6:223, for scansion diagram which can be intoned wordlessly with no knowledge of Chinese), their probably automatic and half-conscious analysis of the pictograph origins of the written characters, even when the poem is read aloud, and their alliterative pattern whereby corresponding words in consecutive lines have related meanings, as in the following modification of an example quoted by Giles (p. 222): Bright sun completes-course behind mountains Yellow river flows-away into sea

The remote but compelling qualities of content can be considered analytically most easily by reference to architecture. Consider, for instance, the inward crescendos and climaxes experienced by the sensitive reader in poems such as Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven,” with the climax-thunder of such lines as “That Voice is round me like a bursting sea.” There are inner coherences both of feeling and of thought content which lead the reader quickly into deep participation, although this is more apt to occur in connection with sudden vignettes such as the wenhan-ch’u example quoted further along. [Although] not easy to indicate here, I find Chinese poetry full of such subtle frameworks. The poem at first may seem to consist only of disconnected scenes, however gemlike, but, with deeper familiarity, it fans suddenly into coherence, “flowing as water, blowing as on the wind” (Ayscough, Tu Fu [(New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1929)], p. 20), the integrating wind of spirit comparable, in tying together these apparently unrelated pictures, to the flow of water in a varying streambed, with sand, weeds, riffles, and fallen leaves all streaming away in conformity to the current, or to the wind that patterns a blustery day. The following probably inadequate translation from Book of Odes compiled twenty-five hundred years ago by Confucius from poems then already old, achieves a holistic tenderness sounded inevitably by that striking last line: The morning glory climbs above my head, Pale flowers of white and purple, blue and red. I am disquieted.

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Down in the withered grasses something stirred; I thought it was his footfall that I heard. Then a grasshopper chirred. I climbed the hill just as the new moon showed. I saw him coming on the southern road. My heart lays down its load. ([translated by] Helen Waddell [An Anthology of World Poetry, ed. Mark Van Doren (New York: W. W. Norton, 1934)])

Reading this, I feel tenderly related to some unnamed, half-articulated girl back in the remote past, glad that she felt finally at home that night so long ago, and happy that her resolved loneliness should be inspiring still unimpededly through all these years, all physical traces gone even of the town she lived in, only that memory of beauty remaining. That deep thing, nameless, is near immortality; it passes outside of time, into another culture, race, and language. The best example I can recall immediately of a picture that induces participation is from a Tu Fu poem (literal translation by Ayscough, op. cit., p. 74–75) of which she [Ayscough] says: “The three characters in line eleven—wen, to hear; han, cold; ch’u, a baton—which in translation I have been obliged to expand—are often used in conjunction and convey, to the Chinese reader, a perfectly definite autumnal picture: the picture of women by a stream, in their hands batons rather like those our policemen use, and folded on stones before them, thick cotton clothing, which, in preparation for winter use, they beat and rinse, rinse and beat again.” In order to render even partially this content and to carry the picture, Ayscough transposes the position of han and ch’u and translates the three characters: wen (hear) Hear pounding

ch’u (baton) han (cold) of cold weather garments beaten and rinsed.

Now imagine the wealth conveyed in this poem (all of which should be read in this connection) by those three monosyllabic characters. Sensitive Chinese natives reading this anywhere anytime would be led at once into deep participation in this picture: two good friends, waiting for audience in the courtyard of the official who is to decide their separationdestiny, hearing from the near stream a sound that for generations has meant the coming of winter and the corresponding cessation of travel by which separated friends might communicate by visits or even by letters. There are other occasional or almost inscrutable qualities, possibly more imagined than real, such as the quality which I have been thinking

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of as an “echo,” which follows certain lines. In reading the next-to-thelast stanza of Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” I fancy it can be heard in the pause which, for this purpose, should follow: . . . when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

The next lines, read too quickly, shatter this “spiritual echo.” There are other examples: in the last stanza of Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” To my ear, this sounds still more strongly at the end of “Once I Pass’d through a Populous City,” and I was interested later to discover in this connection that the poem originally included two additional terminal lines since deleted by the author (Halloway, Whitman [(New York:) Knopf, 1926], p. 66), which to some extent carry the music which I fancied could be heard echoing. But perhaps most obviously of all, it may be heard throughout, and especially after the last line of, Shelley’s “Music, When Soft Voices Die,” which exactly describes the situation in so many words. There may be still another, the most subtle of all content-phrases, which I cannot be sure is real; it may be subjective projection. In occasional mediocre or even inadequate poems, I have sometimes supposed that I was sensing or hearing the movement which the author tried unsuccessfully to reveal. I feel it surging up in memory and needing such expression as one gets by reading over haunting lines. But when I look up the verses to which the feeling apparently relates, they seem not satisfying; it just isn’t said right. I have wondered if it may not be that I was feeling the very Anlage which the poet sensed but expressed inadequately, and which of course I, however reactivated I may be by it, cannot express at all except through reading lines which fail to carry it other than hintedly.

III However, most of the significant qualities which come under content are related to what I have been considering as a spiritual morphology, thought to embrace four possible growth stages. A The first step is expressed by naïve poets and, in its most primitive phase, extols pastoral beauty. Their poetry involves a simple and fresh

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statement of the joy of existence, in the love of landscape, God, home, wife, country, friend; extols some quality such as courage; praises or supplicates for help in [an] inward crisis, some loved object. Figuratively, they derive through the Garden of Eden before consciousness wells up over the threshold in the guise of eating the apple. Their only philosophy is the unconscious one embodied in expressions of joy; their only consciousness is in the joy of singing. These poets unreasoningly know that this thing or that thing is “right,” the “good” is right. There’s no question, no thought of doubt; the separateness of “right” and “wrong” is axiomatic. Most Western poetry falls in this group, all the pastorals, prayers, hymns, love songs, songs of patriotism or heroism, drinking songs, most of the ballads and simple tales. The following poems seem to me to be good examples. They are incidentally superb poems; whoever reads them again will be repaid amply, however worn they seem at first thought; I have just reread them with the original moving beauty enhanced by my own intervening years; as apropos subject matter, I wish they could be included in full: Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd”: pastoral, love Shakespeare, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”: love Johnson, “Drink to me only with thine eyes”: chivalry, love [“To Celia”] Blake, “To Spring”: pastoral Wordsworth, “Earth has not anything to show more fair”: pastoral [“Upon Westminster Bridge”] Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” Shelley, “Tonight”: nostalgic pastoral Cardinal Newman, “Lead, Kindly Light”: prayer Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”: nostalgic pastoral Stephens, “Deirdre”: nostalgia for another time and many poems quoted elsewhere in this consideration: even the beauty of sorrow (not the beauty through sorrow) is treated poignantly in Lamb’s “The Old Familiar Faces,” and of (not through) brave acceptance, in Douglas Hyde’s translation of “I Am Raferty.” Beyond simple eulogy, and above the more descriptive statement of joy, many of the quoted examples furthermore achieve an emergent (Joe

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[Campbell] suggests, “Discuss emergent. This is an important element in your thesis, and the reader should not be left to work out the meaning for himself.”) of thought or feeling quite different from the lessons which the less significant poets are always drawing from their subject matter. In this connection, compare the slightly inane moral of the elsewhere-moving “To a Waterfowl” of Bryant with the truly emergent last lines of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness” transcends in such a way, its significance deriving not through complaint but from an acceptance of facts as they are. And Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” possibly his best lyric, ascends toward something “not unbecoming men that strove with gods.” To the typical poet of this category, all loved things are beautiful (but uncritically so), even the sadness of nostalgia; he has no need of offering anything in the way of remedy or suggestion; his honest expression is to extol. He doesn’t know about clay feet; the bitterness of grief isn’t a subject for his poetry—the beauty of grief, possibly, but not ever the beauty through grief. The more sophisticated poets—Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, Baudelaire, etc.—are, on the contrary, conscious particularly of the clay feet, and each reacts characteristically with honest expressions of regret, resignation, repudiation, or substitution. Sensitive men of wide perceptive and intellectual ability, they can see only grief, failure, or evasion in all situations to which they apply their best functions. Lacking the dogmatic clarity of the naïve person who can accept unthinkingly the tradition to which he is born and for whom, therefore, the difficulty doesn’t exist, they are much confused by the problem of right and wrong. In their experience, unmitigated joy is possible only to souls unconscious. But they have eaten the apple, and the flaming sword has driven them out—so recently that they can consider nothing beyond the lost pleasures of the garden. Examples of this are common among the more searching poetic intellects of Victorian times, but Keats, many years before, complains magnificently in the “Ode to a Nightingale.” Arnold, despite occasional suggested palliatives, examines and finds wanting incident after incident: And they see, for a moment, Stretching out, like the Desert In its weary, unprofitable length, Their faded, ignoble lives. (“The Youth of Man”)

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[He reacts] often with the calm and lovely submission of a really great character faced with inevitable tragedy, but sometimes with world [sorrow] and not ignoble repudiation as in “Dover Beach.” Heine is filled with a gentle feeling of failure, expressed over and over again in his short lyrics. Baudelaire and Poe often embrace the very terriblenesses they protest. Another group insists on the substitution of a romantic and untried pattern: the fairy realm of Yeats’s “Land of Heart’s Desire” and to some extent of Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”; Swinburne’s mythology and anti-Christianity; Arnold’s classicism. But all are united in realizing and bewailing the ubiquitous clay feet.

B These poets are minutely conscious in an individual sense; they are, however, still not conscious of the blinding beauty of possible succeeding stages, although they catch glimpses. Swinburne alone occasionally comes through this test of fire, as will be considered later. Even stricken Arnold, in the rather spotty “Youth of Man,” hints that . . . fruit Grows from sorrow such as theirs.

But on the whole, their only apperception of anything beyond what the naïve poets see is in a negative sense. The naïve understandings are their postulates—the things that “set them off” on their journey of frustration. The scarcity of fine poets in this stage may be attributed to its crucial and transitory character. Most of the truly great men who achieve the need for critical introspection either cannot pass the test, and so are destroyed by it without having created any lasting expression, or go through it to come out on the other side with Whitman and to some extent Jeffers—since the assimilation of all experience, however bitter, bears fruit which expresses every significant trait of the sufferer, now illuminated. In any case, these poets know only that “it’s all wrong,” although they have nothing to offer beyond romantic substitutions which seem to me fundamentally evasive. Nevertheless, as honest and articulate artists needing expression, they must state their convictions in the form of honest regrets or complaints.

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C Through specific vehicles of pain and tragedy, a comparatively few mellow poets, also banished from the garden but by now acclimated to their lot, catch glimpses of a new promised land, a heaven far greater than the Eden which is all its inhabitants can know. In [sophisticated poets’] heightened consciousness, the realization of a “beyond” quality has arisen particularly through the assimilation of the very clay feet of bitter grief, war, and death, which the sophisticated poets excoriated or morbidly embraced. Their “right” derives chiefly through what is conventionally “wrong”; they have gone through the “right-wrong” confusion of the sophisticated level and have come to accept as holy the very traits rejected by tradition—the stone which the builders refuse thus has become in such a way the cornerstone of the new structure. As indicated in a previous essay, it seems to be easier for individuals to achieve [progress] toward “The Tower beyond Tragedy” under the sting of grief than in the ordinary placid course of life. Primitive people know this out of unconscious knowledge and accept freely whatever “is”; folklore has its proverbs referring to the essentiality of the test of fire. Poets in this group are led (sometimes falling over themselves awkwardly in the zeal of their discovery) to extol the traditionally terrible “come sweet death” vehicle, as in Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Jeffers pays homage symbolically to silence and darkness in “Night,” and entirely relinquishes human life at its ordinary level, in his explicit statement starting “What is humanity in this cosmos” (Roan Stallion), but in favor of a very real, although undefinable, “beyond” quality, as contrasted to the romantic substitutions of the sophisticated group. Swinburne, although rarely belonging here, seems to get through pretty definitely in “Hertha” and comes very close in the “Hymn to Proserpine.” I suspect Baudelaire of having occasionally glimpsed this place, but he makes few entirely conscious statements, and one can only infer it from such lines as . . . Always, behind the tedium Of finite semblances, beyond the accustomed zone Of time and space, I see distinctly another world— (“The Voice,” translated by Dillon-Millay [Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, trans. George Dillon and Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936)], p. 71)

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Thou who upon the scaffold dost give that calm and proud Demeanour to the felon, which condemns the crowd, (“The Litanies of Satan,” p. 117, do [sic])

. . . Harlots and Hunted have pleasures of their own to give, The vulgar herd can never understand. (Epilogue, [Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal,] translated by Arthur Symons [London: Casanova Society, 1925])

Most Chinese poetry speaks from this plane—the enforced separation of friends being the common vehicle (Li Po, Tu Fu, and some of the older poets in translations by Waley, Lowell [and] Ayscough, Hart, Obata, Ezra Pound, and Powys Mather). The theme of a most deep sexual love, heightened by separation and imminent death, of the Sanskrit “Black Marigolds,” is a fine example not well known—actually one of the greatest poetic expressions, even in translation, that I have ever encountered. But, most consciously of all, Jeffers expresses it again and again in the “humanity is the start of the race” theme of Roan Stallion and “The Women at Point Sur,” and as symbolized in the flight of the eagle in “Cawdor.” The typical poet of this group extols ugliness, tragedy, even the clay feet, not for themselves but because they are vehicles of that beyond quality, the significance of which they have come to realize, but which Jeffers alone specifically mentions as such. These poets “know it’s wrong” but they have something to offer and, although they may be unable to state what it is, even at their best (maybe no one can express this conceptually or articulately), it’s just “beyond.” D The all-vehicle mellow poet, not yet emerged, at least in this culture, would be in, and speaking out of, the heaven glimpsed by his predecessors, the heaven-beyond-the-world-beyond-the-garden. No great poetic mind has yet spoken from this plane, partly because of the elimination barriers (“Many are called but few are chosen”) which weed out great percentages at each progress step, and chiefly at this greatest-of-allsteps, because of inherent difficulties. Because of the barriers, which, for instance, no one, without being in it at the moment, could write, except inferentially and through [the] recognition of which makes men leave what they have, to go searching on—through tragedy or beauty or

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death, whatever vehicle it occupies for them—which may induce them to repudiate all life for what is beyond life, will be seen to be equally everywhere [sic]. That quality will sound in their quickened ears with “the quietness of thunder,” from their starting point—the very place they left to start out on the search, at “the start of the race”—as well as at the goal. “I am he whom thou seekest” (Francis Thompson[, “The Hound of Heaven”]). “When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt” (Emerson, “Brahma”). “Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I” (Swinburne[, “Hertha”]). As a side glance: repudiation actually hurts one’s relation to the thing in favor of which the repudiation is made. “Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me” (Thompson[, “The Hound of Heaven”]). Compare, for instance, these two attitudes: discovering the inadequacy and error of childish fancies and hence repudiating and discarding them with the feeling that one has been “taken in,” as against making all that (lovely) childhood belief the foundation on which a still more sturdy structure is erected. As also: one loves war not as war but as a concomitant of people and of one’s self (as soiled diapers are concomitants of infants) and as a vehicle for breaking through if that may be; who hates war furthers its cause, since it works through individual hate as an expression of the collective hatred which characterizes all wars; if hatred isn’t present or cannot be manufactured, there can be no war worthy of the name. “The darkness of the cave itself turns into enlightenment when a torch of spiritual insight burns. It is not that a thing called darkness is first taken out and another thing known by the name of enlightenment is carried in later, but that enlightenment and darkness are substantially one and the same thing from the very beginning, the change from one to the other has taken place only inwardly or subjectively” ([Daisetz Teitaro] Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series [London: Luzac and Company, 1927]p. 13). There is another concise statement from the same source: “Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are mountains, and waters are waters; after he gets an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, mountains to him are not mountains and waters are not waters; but after this, when he attains to the abode of bliss, mountains are once more mountains and waters are waters” (p. 12). Although no great poet has yet stated this clearly and consciously, there have been hints. Blake, rarely a great poet although frequently a

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great mystic, came near when he said, in “Visions of the Daughters of Albion,” “All that lives is holy.” He could have said, more deeply, “All that is, is holy.” Whitman trembled on the brink when he said, “Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them” (“Out of the Cradle”), and Whitman is a very great poet. But consider most of all Jeffers’s “Signpost,” the most conscious statement I know of yet from this emergent country: . . . At length you will look back along the stars’ rays and see that even The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven. . . . but now you are free, even to become human, But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.

Compare [it] with his previous “what is humanity in this cosmos” idea. It can be said of the hypothetical poet in this class: he praises all things. These poets would know “it’s right, it’s alright”; the “good,” the “bad,” whatever is. Whatever is necessary is so, so long only as it is, and that includes all things, even errors and illusions.

IV Poetry is a discipline of sensitivity and articulateness, the necessary expression of which is a rhythmed diction. Since the fruits of deep participation are what we have come to expect of poets, inclusion in that society presupposes utter honesty in abandonment to their art in what they honestly sense. Poets of the type we have been considering are ready, and have the courage, to face with their utmost capacity whatever “is” (for them, and this of course includes any errors into which they may have been caught, until, if ever, they come clear). There can be no evasion, nothing can be held back. They must “go along-with” whatever they discover, even if it leads through or to disappointment, despair, intellectual or emotional loneliness, social ostracism—unlikely contingencies, however, if they can achieve “world-rightness,” the aim of all published work, while at the same time being true to themselves. And they must express whatever they find equally honestly, with whatever directness they can command. Naïve poets have only to work out their best possible statements of pure unconscious joy in extolling the particular vehicle—love, religious ecstasy, nostalgia, etc.—which transported them over into their certainty of beauty. To them, there is no “tragedy,” everything is “beauty,”

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“right” is right. Those sophisticated [poets] have the sad task of expressing courageously the statement of regret, complaint, noble repudiation, or submission which they consider necessary with reference to the clay feet they particularly find or espouse, sometimes suggesting a romantic substitution. To them, everything is “tragedy,” there is no real beauty, “right” is surely wrong. But in these very clay feet, poets of the next emergent-plane find a vehicle to something “beyond.” They recognize and extol these often horrible things, but only as vehicles. But in doing so, they achieve a reputation for being gloomy or morbid psychopaths, muckrakers, evaders, or quietists (which they are only insomuch as they fail in their work or in its expression) [in the eyes of] readers who miss their deep message but who are open to their beauty of word and power of thought. To them, only “tragedy” is not tragedy, the only real beauty is in “tragedy,” “wrong” is right. But to the fourth group, there is no “tragedy” at all; all is beauty, everything, including “wrong” and “right,” is right. So that, finally, an idea not yet expressed in world-great poetry, the truly mellow ones must find that all things, “good” as well as “bad,” are vehicles: coming back after long journeys, enriched and experienced, beyond Whitman’s “All things please the soul, but these things please the soul well,” past Blake’s “All that lives is holy,” to the “latter silences” of the second birth, all the former beauty still below, part of the rooty foundation on which they stand. My robe is all worn out after so many years’ usage, And parts of it in shreds loosely hanging have been blown away to the clouds. [Bokuju]

chapter 5

“Essay on Non-teleological Thinking”

Ricketts developed this essay during the early years of his friendship with John Steinbeck, a period also marked by collaborations with Joseph Campbell, Henry Miller, and other friends and colleagues. At the heart of Ricketts’s desire to articulate non-teleological thinking is his struggle to put into language that which by its very nature eludes definition. Deeply philosophical, Ricketts’s essay is at times convoluted, but the significance of non-teleological thinking is of primary importance to his unified field hypothesis—as he says in the essay, it is the “modus operandi” through which he interprets life. Through “is thinking,” Ricketts believes, an individual may better accept and understand the world and ultimately “break through” or transcend. As I note in the introduction to this book, Ricketts and Steinbeck’s 1940 expedition to the Gulf of California was inspired in part by their desire to integrate scientific inquiry with non-teleological thinking, and Steinbeck later included a revision of the “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” in Sea of Cortez. The seventeen-page version included here, marked “Typed by Toni, March 1941, original to John,” is likely the draft the latter worked from while writing Sea of Cortez. •

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Typed by Toni, March 1941, original to John. Non-teleological, rational, or “is” thinking, as contrasted to the more usual cause-effect methods. An inductive presentation (“How does a 119

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hen know the size of an egg cup when she lays her egg?” [Heard on the Chase & Sanborn Hour, October 1, 1939]). During the 1931 depression, we lived close to a destitute and rather thriftless family. My wife used to remark that they looked to the county authorities for support because they were shiftless and negligent, that “if they’d perk up and be somebody, they’d be alright.” Her viewpoint was undoubtedly correct enough so far as it went. But I used to wonder what would happen, assuming that people of this sort could and would change their habits, to those with whom they would exchange in the large pattern—those whose jobs would be usurped, since at that time there was work for, say, only 70 percent of the total population, leaving the remainder as government wards. My attitude had no bearing on what might be, or was to be in the future, or could be if so-and-so came about; it merely considered conditions “as is.” No matter what the situation might be with regard to the ability or aggressiveness of the separate units, at that time there were great numbers necessarily out of work, and the fact that those numbers comprised the incompetent or maladjusted or unlucky units is in one sense beside the point. No causality is involved in that; collectively, it’s just “so.” The units may be blamed as individuals, but as members of society they cannot be blamed. Any given individual very possibly may transfer from the underprivileged into the more fortunate group by better luck or by improved aggressiveness or competence, but all cannot be so benefited whatever their strivings, and the large population will be unaffected. The 70–30 ratio will remain, merely with a reassortment of the units. And no blame, at least no social fault, imputes to these people; they (or some similar units) are where they are “because” natural conditions are what they are. And so far as we selfishly are concerned, we can rejoice that they, rather than we, represent the low extreme, since there must be one.

I So, if I am very aggressive, I should be able to obtain a position even under the most depressed economic conditions, but only because there are others, less aggressive than I, who serve in my stead as potential government wards. In the same way, the sight of a half-wit need never depress me, since his extreme, and the extreme of his kind, so effects the mean standard of sanity that I, hatless, coatless, often bewhiskered, thereby will be re-

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garded only as a little odd. And similarly, I cannot enthuse over the success manuals that tell our high school graduates how to obtain employment, there being jobs only for half of them! This type of thinking unfortunately annoys many people; it may especially arouse the anger of women, who regard it as cold, even brutal, although actually it would seem to be more tender and understanding, and certainly less blaming, than the more conventional methods of consideration. And the value of it as a tool in increased understanding cannot be denied. As a more extreme example, consider the sea hare, Tethys, a shellless flabby sea slug or snail faintly resembling a rabbit crouched over, which may be seen crawling about occasionally in tidal estuaries. A California biologist determined that more than 478 million living eggs may be produced by a single animal in a single breeding season; and the adults may occur by the hundred. Obviously, all these eggs cannot mature, all this potential cannot become reality, else the ocean would soon be occupied exclusively by sea hares. In a few generations, they would overflow the earth; there would be nothing for the rest of us to eat, and nothing for them unless they turned cannibal. On the average, probably no more than the biblical one or two can attain full maturity. Somewhere along the way, all the rest will have been eaten by predators whose life cycle is postulated upon the presence of abundant larvae of sea hares and other forms as food. Now, picture the combination mother-father hare (the animals are hermaphroditic, with the usual cross-fertilization) parentally blessing its offspring with these words: “Work hard and be aggressive, so you can grow into a nice husky Tethys like your ten-pound parent.” Imagine it, the hypocrite, the Pollyanna, the genial liar, saying that, en masse, to its millions of eggs, with the dice loaded at such a ratio! [A full] 99.999 percent are destined inevitably to fall by the wayside. Any given individual has almost no chance at all. Nevertheless, the race survives, and there is a semblance of truth in the parent sea hare’s advice, since even here, with this almost infinitesimal percentage, the race is still to the swift and/or the lucky. Teleological thinking, as exemplified by my wife’s notions about our improvident neighbors—correct enough in itself, but now seen to be only part of the picture—is associated with the evaluating of causes and effects. It considers changes and “cures,” what “should be,” the presumed bettering of present conditions (often, unfortunately, without achieving more than a most superficial understanding of those conditions).

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Non-teleological ideas derive through “is” thinking associated with natural selection as Darwin understood it. They consider events as outgrowths and expressions, rather than as results, [and] conscious acceptance as a desideratum and certainly as a prerequisite to all else. In their intolerant refusal to face things, teleological notions frequently substitute a fierce and sometimes hopeless attempt to change conditions which are assumed to be undesirable, in place of the understanding acceptance which would pave the way for a more sensible attempt at change if that still seemed desirable. Non-teleological thinking concerns itself not primarily with what should be or could be or might be, but rather with what actually “is,” attempting at most to answer the questions what or how, instead of why—a task in itself rigorously difficult. An interesting parallel to these two types of thinking is afforded by the microcosm, with its freedom or indeterminacy, as contrasted to the morphologically inviolable pattern of the macrocosm. Statistically, the electron is free to go where it will. But the destiny pattern of any aggregate, comprising uncountable billions of these same units (as for example, the eventual disintegration of a stick of wood or a piece of iron through the departure of the comparatively immortal electrons), is fixed and certain, however much that inevitability may be delayed by much deferring of the operation of the second law of thermodynamics as is conferred by painting and rust-proofing.

II Examples sometimes clarify an issue better than explanations or definitions. Here are three situations considered contrastedly by the two methods. a. why are some men taller than others? Teleological “answer”: because of the underfunctioning of the growthregulating ductless glands. This seems simple enough. But the simplicity is merely a function of inadequacy and incompleteness. The finality is only apparent. A child, being wise and direct, would ask immediately, if given this answer, “Well, why do the glands underfunction?” hinting instantly toward non-teleological methods or indicating the rapidity with which teleological thinking gets over into the stalemate aspects of first causes.

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There can be no “answer” in the non-teleological sense. There can be only pictures which become larger and more significant as one’s horizon increases. In this given situation, the steps might be something like this: 1. Variation is a universal and truly primitive trait. It occurs in any group of entities, [whether] razor blades, measuring rods, rocks, trees, horses, matches, or men. 2. In this case, the apropos variations will be toward shortness or tallness from a mean standard: the height of adult men as determined by the statistics of measurements or by commonsense observation. 3. In men varying toward tallness, there seems to be a constant relation with an underfunctioning of the growth-regulating ductless glands, of the sort that one can be regarded as an index of the other. 4. There are other known relations consistent with tallness, such as compensatory adjustments along the whole chain of endocrine organs. There may even be other factors, separately not important, or not yet discovered, which in the aggregate may be significant. 5. The men in question are taller because they fall in a group within which there are the above-mentioned relations. In other words, “They’re tall because they’re tall.” This is the statistical or “is” picture to date, more complex than the teleological “answer”—which is really no answer at all—but complex only in the sense that reality is complex, actually simple inasmuch as the simplicity of the word is can be comprehended. Understandings of this sort can be reduced to this deep and significant summary: “It’s so because it’s so.” But exactly the same words can also express the hasty or superficial attitude. There seems to be no explicit method for differentiating the deep and participating understanding—the “all-truth” which admits infinite expansion or change as added relations become apparent—from the shallow dismissal and implied lack of further interest which may be couched in the very same words. b. why are some matches larger than others? Examine similarly a group of matches. At first, they seem all to be of the same size. But to turn up differences, one needs only to measure them

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carefully with calipers or to weigh them with an analytical balance. Suppose the extreme comprises only a .001 percent departure from the mean (it will be actually much more): even so slight a differential we know can be highly significant, as with the sea hares. The differences will group into plus-minus variations from a hypothetical mean to which not one single example will be found exactly to conform. Now the ridiculousness of the question becomes apparent. There is no particular reason. It’s just so. There may be in the situation some factor or factors more important than the others. Due to the universality of variation, even in the factors themselves that “cause” variation, there surely will be; some maybe predominantly so. But the question as put is seen to be beside the point. The good answer is “It’s just in the nature of the beast,” and this needn’t imply belittlement; to have understood the “nature” of a thing is in itself a considerable achievement. But if the size variations should happen to be quite obvious, and especially if uniformity were to be a desideratum, then there may be a particularly predominant “causative” factor which could be searched out. Or if a person must have a stated “cause”—and many people must, in order possibly to get an emotional understanding (really a sense of relation of the situation) and to give a name to the thing so it can be “settled” so as not to bother them any more—he can examine the automatic machinery which fabricates the products and discover in it the variability that results in variation in the matches. But in doing so, he will get involved with a larger principle or pattern, the universality of variation, which has little to do with causality as we think of it. c. leadership Teleological notion: that those in the forefront are leaders in a given movement and actually direct and consciously lead the masses, in the sense that an army corporal says “Forward march” and the squad marches ahead. One speaks in such a way of church leaders, of political leaders, and of leaders in scientific thought, and of course there is some limited justification for such an idea. Non-teleological notion: that the people we call leaders are simply those who, at the given moment, are moving in the direction behind which will be found the greatest weight and which represents a future mass movement. For a more vivid picture of this state of affairs, consider the movements of an amoeba under the microscope. Fingerlike processes, the pseudopodia, extend at various places beyond the confines of the chief

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mass. Locomotion takes place by means of the animal flowing into one or into several adjacent pseudopodia. Suppose hypothetically that molecules which “happened” to be situationed [sic] in the forefront of the pseudopodium through which the animal is progressing, or into which it will have flowed subsequently, should be endowed with consciousness and should say to themselves and their fellows: “We are directly leading this great procession; our leadership ‘causes’ all the rest of the population to move this way; the mass follows in the path we blaze.” This would be equivalent to the attitude with which we commonly regard leadership.

III As a matter of fact, there are three distinct types of thinking, two of them teleological. Physical teleology, the type we have been considering, is by far, the commonest today. Spiritual teleology is rare. Formerly predominant, now it occurs metaphysically—and in most religions especially as they are popularly understood, but not, I suspect, as they were originally enunciated or as they are still known by the truly adept. Occasionally, the three types may be contrasted in a single problem. Here are a couple of examples: A. Van Gogh’s Feverish Hurrying in the Arles Epoch, Culminating in Epilepsy and Suicide Teleological “answer”: Improper care of his health during times of tremendous activity, and exposure to sun and weather, brought on his epilepsy and death. Spiritual teleology: He hurried because he innately foresaw his imminent death and wanted first to express as much of his essentiality as possible. Non-teleological picture: Both the above, along with a good many other symptoms and expressions (some of which could probably be inferred from his letters), were part of the same underlying pattern, perhaps his “lust for life.” B. The Thyroid-Neurosis Situation Teleological “answer”: Overactivity of the thyroid gland irritates and overstimulates the patient to the point of nervous breakdown.

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Spiritual teleology: The neurosis is causative. Something psychically wrong drives the patient on to excess mental irritation, which harries and upsets the glandular balance, especially the thyroid, through shockresonance in the autonomic system, in the sense that a purely psychic shock may spoil one’s appetite or may even result in violent illness. In this connection, note the army’s acceptance of extreme homesickness as a reason for disability discharge. Non-teleological picture: Both are discrete segments of a vicious circle, which may also include other factors as additional, more or less discrete, segments, symbols of an underlying but non-teleological pattern which comprises them and many others, the ramifications of which are n and which has to do with causality only reflectedly.

IV Teleological thinking may even be highly fallacious. Consider the situation with reference to dynamiting in a quarry. Before a charge is set off, the foreman toots warningly on a characteristic whistle. People living in the neighborhood come to associate the one with the other, since the whistle is almost invariably followed within a few seconds by the shock and sound of an explosion for which one automatically gets ready. Having experienced this many times without any closer contact, a very naïve and unthinking person might justly conclude not only that there was a cause-effect relation but [also] that the whistle actually caused the explosion. A slightly wiser person would insist that the explosion caused the whistle, but would be hard put to explain the minus-t element. The normal adult would realize that neither the whistle caused the explosion nor the explosion caused the whistle, but that both were parts of a larger pattern out of which a “why” could be stipulated for both, but more immediately and particularly for the whistle. Determined to chase the thing down in a cause-effect sense, an observer would have to be very wise indeed who could follow the intricacies of cause through more fundamental cause to primary cause, even in this largely man-made series, about which we presumably know most of the motives, causes, and ramifications. He would finally end up in a welter of thoughts on production, and ownership of the means of production, and economic whys and wherefores about which there is little agreement. The example I have quoted is the most obvious and simple I can recall. Most things are far more subtle than that and have many of their

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relations and most of their origins far back in things more difficult of access than the tooting of a whistle calculated to warn bystanders away from an explosion. We know little enough even of a man-made series like this—how much less of purely natural phenomena about which also there is apt to be teleological pontificating! Usually it seems to be true that, when even the most definitely apparent cause-effect situations are examined in the light of wider knowledge, the cause-effect aspect comes to be seen as less, rather than more, significant, and the statistical or relational aspects assume larger importance. It seems safe to assume that non-teleological is more “ultimate” than teleological reasoning. Hence the latter may prove to be limiting and constricting except when used provisionally. But while it is true that the former is more open, for that very reason its employment necessitates greater discipline and care in order to offset the dangers of inadequate control and looseness. Frequently, however, a truly definitive answer seems to arise through teleological methods. Part of this is due to a wish fulfillment delusion. When a person asks “Why?” in anything, he usually deeply expects, and in any case receives, only a relational answer in place of the definitive “Because” which he thinks he wants. But he customarily accepts the actually relational answer (it couldn’t be anything else unless it comprised the whole, which is unknowable except by “living-into”), as a definitive “because.” Wishful thinking probably fosters that error, since everyone continually searches for absolutisms (hence the value placed on diamonds, the most permanent physical things in the world) and imagines continually that he finds them. More justly, the relational picture should be regarded only as a glimpse, a challenge to consider also the rest of the relations as they are available, to envision the whole picture as well as can be done with present abilities and data. But one accepts it instead as a real “because,” considers it settled having named it, loses interest, and goes on to something novel. Chiefly, however, we seem to arrive occasionally at definitive answers through the workings of another primitive principle: the universality of quanta. No one thing ever merges gradually into anything else: the steps are discontinuous but often so very minute as to seem truly continuous. If the investigation is carried deep enough, the factor in question, instead of being graphable as a continuous process, will be seen to function by discrete quanta, with gaps or synapses between, as quanta of energy, undulations of light. The apparently definitive answer occurs when cause and effects both arise on the same large plateau which is

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bounded a great way off by the steep rise which announces the next plateau. If the investigation is extended sufficiently, that distant rise, however, will inevitably be encountered, the answer which formerly seemed definitive now will be seen to be inadequate, and the picture will have to be enlarged so as to include the next ripple further out. Everything impinges everything else, often into radically different systems, although in such cases faintly. I doubt very much if there are any teleologies, or between the two teleologies [sic]. But there can be no conflict between any of these and the non-teleological picture. For instance, in the condition called hyperthyroidism, the treatments advised by believers in the psychic or neurosis etiology very possibly may conflict with those arising out of a belief in the purely physical cause. Or even within the physical teleology group, there may be conflicts between those who believe the condition [to be] due to a strictly thyroid upset, and those who consider causation [to be] derived through a general imbalance of the ductless glands. But there can be no conflict between any or all of these factors and the non-teleological picture, because the latter includes them—evaluates them relationally or at least attempts to do so, or maybe only accepts them as time-place truths. Teleological “answers” necessarily must be included in the non-teleological method—since they are part of the picture—even if only restrictedly true, and as soon as their qualities of relatedness are recognized. Even erroneous beliefs are real things and have to be considered proportional to their spread or intensity. “All-truth” must embrace all extant apropos errors also, and know them as such by relation to the whole, and allow for their effects.

V The criterion of validity in the handling of data seems to me to be this: that the summary shall say, significantly and understandingly, in substance: “It’s so because it’s so.” Unfortunately, the very same words might equally derive through a most superficial glance, as any child could learn to repeat from memory the most abstruse of Dirac’s equations. But to know a thing emergently and significantly is something yet again, even though the understanding may be expressed in the self-same words which were used superficially. In the below example (abstracted from the article on ecology by Elton, Encyclopedia [Britannica], 14th ed., 7:916), note the deep significance of the emergent as contrasted to the presumably satisfactory but actually incorrect original naïve under-

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standing. In Norway, an important game bird, the willow grouse, was becoming scarce, so that protective regulations were required and a bounty was placed on its chief enemy, a hawk which was known to feed heavily on them [sic]. Quantities of the hawks were exterminated, but despite these drastic measures, the grouse disappeared more rapidly than ever. The naïvely applied usual remedies failed, but instead of becoming discouraged and quietistically letting this bird become extinct, the authorities enlarged the scope of their investigations, with the result that the anomaly was explained. An ecological analysis into the relational aspects of the situation disclosed that a parasitic disease, coccidiosis, was endemic among the grouse which, in its first stages, so reduced the speed of their flight that they became easy prey for the hawks. Thus, the hawks, in living largely off the slightly ill birds, prevented them from developing the disease in its full intensity and so spreading it more widely and quickly to otherwise healthy fowl. The enemies of the grouse population, by checking the epidemic aspects of this disease, were in this case actually friends in disguise. In summarizing the above situation, the measure of validity wouldn’t be to assume that, even in this well-understood factor (coccidiosis), we have the real “cause,” but to say, rather, that in this phase we have a highly significant and probably preponderantly important relational aspect of that specific picture. However, many people are unwilling to chance the sometimes ruthless appearing notions which may arise through non-teleological methods. They fear even to use them in that they may be left dangling out in space, deprived of such emotional support as had been afforded them by their unthinking belief in the institutions of tradition: religion, science, the security of the home or the family, or a comfortable bank account. But for that matter, emancipations in general are apt to be held in terror by those who have not yet achieved them, but whose thresholds toward them are becoming significantly low. Think of the horror, or at best tolerance, with which little girls regard their brothers who have dispensed with the Santa Claus belief, or the devout young churchman, his university senior who has grown away from depending on the security of religion. As a matter of fact, in employing this type of thinking with other than a few close friends, I have been referred to as detached, hardhearted, or even cruel. Quite the opposite seems to me to be true. Nonteleological methods, more than any other, seem to me capable of great tenderness, of an all-embracingness. Consider, for instance, the fact

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that, once a given situation is deeply understood, no apologies are required. There are ample difficulties even to understanding conditions as “is.” Once that has been accomplished, the “why” of it (seen now to be simply a relation, although probably a near and important one) seems no longer to be preponderantly important; it needn’t be condoned or extenuated, it just “is”; it is seen relatedly merely as part of a more or less dim whole-picture. As an example: a woman near us in the Carmel woods was upset when her dog was poisoned—frightened at the thought of passing the night alone after years of companionship with the animal. She phoned to ask if, with our windows on that side of the house close, we could hear her ringing a dinner bell as a signal, during the night, that marauders had cut her phone wire preparatory to robbing her. Of course that was, in fact, a ridiculous and improbable contingency to be provided against; a man would call it a foolish fear, neurotic. And so it was. But my wife said kindly, “We can hear the bell quite clearly, but if desirable, we can adjust our sleeping arrangements so as to be able to come over there instantly in case you need us,” without even stopping to consider whether or not the fear was foolish, or to be concerned about it if it were, correctly regarding all that as secondary. And if the woman had said, apologetically (as she may have done, I forget), “Oh, you must forgive me; I know my fears are foolish, but I am so upset!” the wise reply would have been: “Dear person, nothing to forgive. If you have fears, they are, they are real things and to be considered. Whether or not they’re foolish is beside the point. What they are is unimportant alongside the fact that they are.” In other words, the “badness” or “goodness,” the teleology of the fears, was decidedly secondary. The whole notion is conveyed by a smile or by a pleasant intonation more readily than by the words themselves. Teleological treatment, which I should have been tempted to employ under the circumstances, especially if I didn’t like the woman, would first have stressed the fact that the fear was foolish. [Applying teleological treatment, I would] say, with a great show of objective justice: “Well, there’s no use in our doing anything; the fault is that your fear is foolish and improbable. Get over that; then if there’s anything sensible we can do, we’ll see,” with smug blame implied in every word. Or, more kindly, [I] would try to reason with the woman in an attempt to help her get over it—the “business” of propaganda directed toward change even before the situation is fully understood (maybe as a lazy substitute for understanding, which is a difficult thing). Or, still more kindly, the teleological method would try to understand the fear causally. But with the

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non-teleological treatment, there is only the love and understanding of instant acceptance; after that fundamental [step] may have been achieved, the next step, if any should be necessary, more sensibly can be considered. Strictly, the term non-teleological “thinking” ought not to be applied to what I have in mind. Because it involves more than thinking, that term is inadequate. Modus operandi might be better—a method of handling data of any sort. The example quoted just above concerns feeling more than thinking. The method extends beyond thinking, even to living itself; in fact, by inferred definition, it transcends the realm of thinking possibilities: it postulates “living into.” In the destitute neighbor illustration ([in section] I), thinking, as being chiefly concerned, was the point of departure, “the crust to break through.” There, my wife handled the situation in the inadequate teleological manner, I in the non-teleological, which also included her viewpoint as correct but limited. But when it came to the feeling aspects of a human relation situation, my wife probably ameliorated the woman’s fears in a loving, truly mellow and adequate fashion, whereas I would have tended to employ a more sophisticated teleological method. Incidentally, there is in this connection a remarkable etiological similarity to be noted between cause in thinking and blame in feeling. One feels that one’s neighbors are to be blamed for their hate or anger or fear. One thinks that poor pavements are “caused” by politics. The nonteleological picture in either case is the larger one that goes beyond blame or cause. And the noncausal or nonblaming viewpoint seems to me to represent very often relatively the “new thing,” the Hegelian “Christ-child” which arises emergently from the union of two opposing viewpoints, such as those of physical and spiritual teleologies, especially if there is conflict as to causation between the two or within either. The new viewpoint very frequently sheds light over a larger picture, providing a key which may unlock levels not accessible to either of the teleological viewpoints. There are interesting parallels here: to the triangle, to the Christian ideas of trinity, to Hegel’s dialect, and to Swedenborg’s metaphysic of divine love (feeling) and divine wisdom (thinking).

VI The factors we have been considering as “answers” seem to me to be merely symbols or indices, relational aspects of things or of a thing (of

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which they are integral parts), not in itself to be considered in terms of causes and effects. The truest reason for anything being so is that it is. This is actually and truly a reason, more valid and clean than all the other separate reasons, or than any group of them short of the whole. Anything less than the whole forms part of the picture only, and the infinite whole is unknowable unless by “being” it, by living into it. A thing may be so “because” of a thousand and one reasons of greater or lesser importance, such as the man oversized because of glandular insufficiency. The integration of these many reasons, which are in the nature of relations rather than reasons, is that he is. The separate reasons, no matter how valid, are only fragmentary parts of the picture. And the whole necessarily includes all that it impinges [on] as object and subject, in ripples fading with distance and intensity-decrease. The frequent allusions, in this discussion, to an underlying pattern, have no implication of mysticism, except inasmuch as a pattern which comprises infinity in factors and symbols might be called mystic. But infinity as used here also occurs in the mathematical aspects of physiology and physics, both far away from mysticism as the term is ordinarily employed. Actually, the underlying pattern is probably nothing more than an integration of just such symbols and indices and mutual reference points as are already known, except that its power is n. Such an integration might include nothing more spectacular than what we already know. But equally, it could include anything, even events and entities as different from those already known as the tensors and spinors and the ideas of electrical charges in mathematical physics differ from the mechanical-model world of the Victorian scientists. In such a pattern, causality would be merely a name for something that exists only in our partial and biased mental reconstructings. The pattern which it indexes, however, would be real but not intellectually apperceivable in its entirety, because it goes everywhere and is everything and cannot be encompassed by finite mind or by anything short of life, which it is. The psychic or spiritual residua remaining after the most careful physical analysis, or the physical remnants obvious particularly to us of the twentieth century in the most honest and disciplined spiritual considerations of medieval philosophers, all bespeak such a pattern. Those residua, those most minute differentials, the .001 percentages which suffice to maintain the races of sea animals, are seen finally to be the most important things in the world because they are everywhere. The differential is the true universal, the true catalyst, the cosmic solvent.

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Any investigation carried far enough will bring to light these residua, or rather, will leave them still unassailable as Emerson remarked a hundred years ago in “The Oversoul”—will run into the brick wall of the impossibility of perfection while at the same time insisting on the validity of perfection. Anomalies especially testify to that framework; they are the commonest intellectual vehicles for breaking through; all are solvable in the sense that any one is understandable, but they lead with the power n to still more and deeper anomalies. This deep underlying pattern inferred by non-teleological thinking crops up everywhere—a relational thing surely, relating opposing factors on different levels, as reality and potential are related. But it may not be considered as causative: it just exists, it is, things are merely expressions of it. And they are it, also. As Swinburne, extolling Hertha, makes her say “Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I,” so all things which are that equally can be extolled. It materializes everywhere in the sense that Eddington finds the noninteger “number” appearing everywhere, in the background of all fundamental equations ([Arthur S. Eddington,] The Nature of the Physical World [New York: Macmillan, 1928], pp. 208–10), in the sense that the speed of light, constant despite compoundings or subtractions, seemed at one time almost to be conspiring against investigation. The whole is necessarily everything, the whole world of fact and fancy, body and psyche, physical fact and spiritual truth, individual and collective, life and death, macrocosm and microcosm (the greatest quanta here, the greatest synapse between these two), conscious and unconscious, subject and object. The whole picture is portrayed by is, the deepest word of deep ultimate reality, not shallow or partial as reasons are, but deeper and participating, possibly encompassing the oriental concept of “being.”

chapter 6

“Verbatim Transcription of Notes of Gulf of California Trip, March–April 1940”

This collection of notes consists of forty-six, single-spaced typed pages documenting the Sea of Cortez expedition, as well a two-page addendum called “Statement of Collecting Stations in the Spring 1940” that lists coordinates and topographical information for each collecting stop. The “Verbatim Transcription” details every aspect of the trip; passages describe incidents and locations and list the specimens collected and weather conditions. The typescript also presents Ricketts’s personal observations and reflections about everything from scientific work, including his remarks on collecting methods and wildlife; to local culture, including in particular his observations about the friendliness of Mexicans they encountered; to interpersonal relationships among the crew, including humorous incidents involving mishaps on board their boat, the Western Flyer. But most significantly, the record of the trip itself is both a scientific log documenting the more than four thousand miles they traversed and the twenty-five collecting stations they investigated, and an extended philosophical essay on Ricketts’s and Steinbeck’s musings about holism and transcendence. The two were immensely proud of their trip, and their study is still regarded as being among the most comprehensive scientific studies of the region. But the transcript’s greater significance exceeds scientific accomplishment: a work blending storytelling and science, it details their combined ecological and philosophical perspective, a venture unique in its time and exemplary today. It sets aside the artifi134

Figure 11. First entry of Ricketts’s Sea of Cortez log, in his “Post Fire Notebook VII.” Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

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cial boundaries between categories of knowledge (taxonomy, for example) and includes observations about how we humans live and perceive as part of a much larger whole. •

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Mch. 11: Tony Berry, captain. Tex Travis, engineer. Sparky Enea, seaman and cook. Tiny Colletto, seaman. Purse seiner, Western Flyer, 76′, 25′ beam, 165 horsepower Atlas Imperial diesel engine, direct reversible; 20′ skiff, 10′ skiff. John, Carol, Toby [Webster Street] to San Diego only, myself. Out into fair weather but sufficiently pitchy and rolly so that Carol was sick until well into the night and Tony was tired. Jon was OK and I miraculously stayed with it. First night, a few porpoises. Many schools of fish off San Luis Obispo. A few sardines. But mostly bait fish, as proven by spotlight. Mch. 12: Following am, smooth to the point of oiliness, running thru Santa Barbara Channel. Many porpoises. Boys were very tired and ragged, only scanty and few hours sleep, especially Tony. Last night, I was talking with Tony about how funny it was that waves off a headland were always higher than elsewhere, even tho we might be several miles off; thus:

Figure 12. Original sketch from the “Verbatim Transcription” illustrating the idea that “the point draws the waves.” Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

He said, “The point draws the waves.” I thought it a good primitive statement of the relation between receiver and giver. The relation is through waves a—a—a—a, etc., each of which is connected by torsion to its inshore fellow and touches it enough, although it has gone before, to be affected by its torsion, and so on and on into shore, the last wave of all actually touching and breaking upon the shore.

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I was thinking also that steering a boat is an objectification of what I have waveringly and at last come to know of ways of living. Steering a boat by compass in heavy seas is for me difficult, exacting, and, at first anyway, uncertain work. But the choice involves only two alternatives; that is, when you try to keep the needle steady—it swinging in a variable arc from 2 to 10˚—and when you forget which way to turn the wheel in order to make the compass card swing back where you want it, you can push the wheel only two ways, either left or right (there are only 2 alternatives, yet you can get mixed up even there, or rather I can!). The fact that there is a lag, and the boat may be swinging so rapidly in one direction that no matter how rapidly you push the wheel correctingly, the needle still continues to swing the wrong way, complicates things when you’re tired. I remember only, doggedly, that (going S), no matter how the boat and the compass card may be swinging, you push the wheel to the left to make the numbers decrease E, and to the right to increase them W. Old hands at that work, or people who learn rapidly, soon get a feeling for the relation between compass and steering so it’s natural and easy for them, but those things come to me slowly and thru hard work and thinking and acting thru thought. Also, in considering the wake, which is a posteriori—a finished path: if you steer well and carefully, the wake can be a straight line. But even if it may have been a true straight line immediately upon completion, currents and winds (of public opinion and understanding, I suppose) may swing it around so that it becomes actually wavering. There is a unified field hypothesis probably available in navigation as in all things. The internal factors are the boat, the controls, and the crew, but chiefly the will and intent of the master, who must be more or less a navigator. The external factors are the sea and the land, the current, the waves, the wind, and chiefly their effect in modifying the influence of the rudder in this or that position against the varying tensions of water. If you steer toward an objective, you cannot, exactly and perfectly and indefinitely, steer directly at it. You must steer to one side, else you will run it down. But there is one thing you can steer exactly by: a compass course: that doesn’t change; objects achieved are merely its fulfillment. In going toward a headland by direct vision steering, for instance, you can in the distance steer directly toward it, changing your course gradually and by degrees almost imperceptible, so as to pass outside it the necessary mile or miles, avoiding the shallow water about it or the rocks which comprise the actual point. The correct and efficient way to achieve this result is by steering a compass course. Knowing something

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about such things, and having a chart available, you plot a compass course in a straight line (or in a great circle line if the distance is great) from where you are to just outside your next objective (well outside, if you want to save fellow voyagers from sea sickness, because the point “draws the waves”) before changing course for the next compass path. Small boat navigation along the coast of California and Lower California is comparatively simple. From well outside Pt. Pinos, for instance, you set a compass course for offshore Pt. Sur (this is worked out in degrees on the C. and G. [Coast and Geodetic] Survey Charts and the course is already lined out), or you head toward it at first by direct vision, keeping well offshore as you round it. Then you veer slightly to set another straight-line course for Piedras Blancas Light[house]. Then a long course for [Pt.] Arguello, and another for Pt. Fermin, bypassing just outside Pt. Vicente. If you try to stay too close to land, as the tyro sailor might tend to do, uninstructed, you not only expend fuel and time unnecessarily, you may jeopardize the boat on shoals. The working out of the ideal into the real, a constant process, and the relationship between inward and outward, or microcosm and macrocosm, are all here, as they are everywhere, the compass representing the ideal, the headland the real. The navigator, however, has to set the course, and it is he who changes it; any experienced helmsman can steer. Object is to feel steering quickly, the new tendency [sic] (which affects the rudder), so as to respond quickly and so not to have to turn the wheel too far or too suddenly, because in the latter case you have to turn it back just as far, else the boat gets to oscillating without full forward progress. This eventually becomes automatic, I suppose, but when I’m tired I have to repeat a formula, and I think it was the same on Jack’s [Jack Calvin’s] boat when Joe [Campbell] and I stood wheel watch: to decrease the numbers on the compass cards, push the wheel left. Only, sometimes, to fulfill an oncoming rhythm, you do the reverse. Sometimes I have been able to get the “feeling” of the boat in its relations to the sea that way, avoiding seasickness. I may be able to understand, in a moment of enlightenment, and to formulate a unified field hypothesis, but to fulfill it is another thing. And to fulfill it constantly is an impossibility: that would be the perfect Tao that leads to or that is Nirvanah. Or for anyone else to use that formula is difficult, although it may be correct for me, and objectively correct,

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too. A child may not be able to use an algebraic theorem despite its objective correctness. In the development of navigation in the minds of men and in the mind of any learning man, think how often they or he must have wished for some constant point on the horizon to steer by. If the course, for instance, were 170˚, how simple it would be if there were a star in that exact position just above the horizon. Well, very often there is, on a clear night. And in the early misty development of navigation, how many people, uninstructed, must have been fooled by that. The first lesson is that the stars swing from east to west. Think how happy mankind must have been in discovering Stella Polaris. But it shifts too, very minutely in an arc, and its position is constant only relatively. And in the centuries it will have shifted and will shift again. It just happens that its position relative to the earth is subtended by a line drawn through the earth’s spinning axis—in other words, over the North Pole—and so to anyone in the Northern Hemisphere who observes such things, Stella Polaris has become the symbol of constancy. What you want is something on the horizon or just above it that doesn’t change. Except for something dead ahead, which you’ll run down if you steer into it directly, everything that you steer for (as a headland or lightship, for instance) must be sheered off from to the R or the L as you approach. That’s the reality, the time constant. But one thing doesn’t shift as you approach, because there’s no real approaching: the compass point 170˚; the abstract, Schiller’s and Goethe’s “Ideal, ee-day-ol,” to be worked out in terms of reality. So Beethoven writes a Ninth Symphony to Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” Someone said of the tide-pool area: “The world under a rock.” So it could be said of navigation: “The world within the horizon.” Of steering: the external influences to be compensated for are in the nature of oscillations—seiches. They are of short or of long period or both, of regular or irregular (currents, wind, rain) nature or of both. The mean levels of the extreme ups and down of these oscillations symbolize opposites in a Hegelian sense. No wonder that in physics i, the symbol of oscillation, the square root of minus one, is fundamental and primitive and ubiquitous, turning up in every equation! When, on dead center, an R bearing external influence (for instance) swings the boat off course and the compass card spins counterclockwise (all this applies to sailing S), you compensate by swinging the wheel left of dead center, holding it there until the compass card swings back

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clockwise to the course. But it doesn’t stop there, it tends to swing equally far to the left. Having experienced this often enough to get the feeling of it, you start to counterswing before the recovery has gone too far, and so anticipate the overrecovery tendency. Thank heavens the compass doesn’t have a periodicity of its own to complicate things! To Mch. 15: Into San Diego through beautifully quiet water. Saw the Mexican consul, got necessary papers [and] complimentary visa, cleared, signed on ourselves and the boys to articles, talked to a gang of reporters, succeeded in getting by without having pictures taken, got nets [and] a few supplies, saw Herb Kline and . . . Ford, had a good steak dinner with cocktails and brandy after having got rid of some relatives of John’s or Carol’s, who were most persistent (Herb really put the skids on them). I tried to get No Star Is Lost for Marge Lloyd, who may be able to understand—she certainly tries hard enough, kindly and willingly—and Zaca Venture to take along for ourselves, both without success. Papers from [the] Mexican Department of Marine [Industries] having been mislaid, I was delegated to go back to the consul and try to get [a] new set; hated to do it, but by the time the taxi had gotten there, I was all pepped up, smiling and relaxed and feeling genuinely good and friendly and could probably have done it, but in the meantime they had been found and someone from the boat had phoned the Mexican consul to that effect. So we all parted best of friends, the consul satisfied with having done his part wisely and competently, and we also. Toby and Herb both left us. Off Pt. Baja, Lower California. Water is brilliantly ultramarine blue, what the boys call “tuna water.” John saw two sea turtles. This is the Region of the Sea Turtle and the Flying Fish. An essay on life at sea would consider navigation, food, and living aboard small boats; all are special techniques. Mch. 16, Sat.: In oily quiet water, 2 pm, in slight fog, over 50 fm [fathom] bank N of Magdalena Bay. Tiny speared a sea turtle about 2-1/2′ long. Probably Eretmochelys imbricata, tortoise-shell turtle. There were a couple of barnacle bases on the shell, and many hydroids, which were preserved in 2 vials. There were 2 Planes minutus, pelagic crabs related to the Pacific Grove Pachygrapsus, male and female, together back of the tail under the flipper. We examined the intestinal tract for tapeworms. None obvious. From gullet to anus, the digestive tract was filled with a small lobster-like shrimp almost identical to the Mon-

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terey Bay and Puget Sound Minida, rock lobster (Pleuroncodes planipes Stimp.), of which a few near the gullet were whole enough to preserve. The gullet was lined with hard and sharp pointed spikes which apparently ground the shells of the lobsters. Fine adaptation to food supply by structure, or vice versa. So, in half an hour, we got to know in reality more about sea turtles than the average person hears in a lifetime. John saved the shell to cure for a playroom trophy. The boys during the night got 4 or 5 bonitas, Sarda chiliensis (Girard), fast, beautiful, clean-cut fish of the mackerel group. There’s a deep value to getting your own food as you go. Two more of the small northern flying fish?? Probably Cypselurus californicus (Cooper). Cf. Which reminds me of Sparky’s remark when he saw in my copy of Barnhart’s Marine Fishes of S C [Southern California] (incidentally a very useful work) a drawing of a lantern fish entitled “Monoceratias acanthias after Gilbert”: “What’s he after him for?” Group of [a] new kind of porpoise (we have seen none since leaving Central California), gray where the others were brownish, slimmer, and with paddle-shaped probosces. Very fast, in [a] great group, jumping in and out of the water the way porpoises characteristically do. Look like tuna. This discontinuous distribution is another indication of the possible correctness of Cabrera’s law of ecological incompatibility. They swim entirely by vertical movement of the laterally compressed tail. Blowhole opening and closing. Actually small whales. The abundance of life here gives me a sense of exuberance. I can’t get a full sense of enjoyment from the high Sierra because they’re so barren. But here the surface is teeming with life: sea turtles, flying fish, pelagic rock lobsters, bonita, now these porpoises. And the ocean bed underneath is likely equally rich. And microscopically the water itself will be teeming with plankton. Tuna water. The completeness of the turtle—Planes minutus—hydroid—barnacle—Pleuroncodes (which is what the pelagic “rock lobster” turned out to be; the Mexicans called them “langustina”) association is very pleasing. There was the whole thing laid out before us. The tremendous hordes of very hard-shelled little lobsters. The turtles with their gullets ideally adapted to using that type of food; grinding gullet starting a digestive tract filled clear to the anus; they must be storing food in the form of fat—excess energy—for a barren season. And the hydroids and barnacles perching on the nearest attachment site, which happened (at the time the floating larvae were being liberated) to be that turtle shell.

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5 pm above: About 70 miles No. of Pt. [San] Lazaro, hosts of brilliantly red (shrimp pink) Pleuroncodes planipes Stimpson [W. L. Schmitt, The Marine Decapod Crustacea of California, University of California Publications in Zoology, vol. 23 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1921), p. 163] looking very beautiful against the ultramarine of tuna water. In March 1869, it was thrown ashore in considerable numbers at Monterey, California (Stimpson). One of those queer years, probably, when ocean currents transported a lot of typically southern forms far northward. Mch. 17, Sunday: 2 am, passed Pt. San Lazaro on the 1 to 4 shift, which Tony and I had; 2nd lighthouse apparently never did show up. Another of the bad coastwise points where you change course. Like Cedros Island passage, where it’s always bad, even in good weather (or like Cape Horn), and when it’s bad it’s horrid. 5:30 am, awakened by motor idling; John was catching a great bunch of Pleuroncodes planipes again. Several female ovipositing. Said he started to see them as soon as it was light. One skip jack taken: Katsuwonus vagans (Lesson) [P. S. Barnhart, Marine Fishes of Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936), p. 36]. Two small dolphins, Coryphaena equisetis Linn., of the most startling, beautiful, and rapidly changing colors. Smaller was 3-1/4 hands long. This is another of the everywhere-appearing forms described many years back in Sweden by Linnaeus, father of modern zoology, Darwin’s godfather intellectually. Described some still-valid species of Lepas (goose barnacle) and (as I recall) Balanus (acorn barnacle) and some other ubiquitous forms that are known by zoologists everywhere. Arrived San Lucas Cove a little after midnight—that competent Tony, landing us at night in such a difficult-to-find spot; all the headlands and coves looked alike to me in the dark!—after putting in what seemed to me dangerously close to a sand-bank shore before reversing engines. The light station was amusing here; the pilot book said, “A light is shown on the end of the cannery wharf,” but we found none. In the morning, when the cannery started up and the generators were started for the cannery power plant, then the light went on! Mch. 18, Monday: Cape San Lucas. Rocks. S of the tuna cannery. Tide 12:07 pm San Diego time. 0.0′.

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Uppermost rocks with Sally Lightfoots, but almost uncapturable, with white littorines. Below that, barnacles and Purpura, crabs, limpets. Below that, serpulid worms. Below that, inshore, the multirayed starfish Heliaster kubiniji of [John] Xanthus (who was tidal observer here for the United States government in the 1950s or 1960s, and a very active man he was, in more ways than one). A few urchins. Outside, many urchins and rock oysters (Chama?) with limpet species No. 2. Lowest, inshore: gorgonians. Lowest, surf-swept: A gorgeous fauna of bryozoa, brachiopods, polyclad worms, flat crabs, large Cucumaria-type of holothurian, some anemones, many sponges of 3 types (a smooth encrusting purple, an erect white calcareous, and a slime sponge), many snails, including cones and Murex, 2 or 3 species of limpets, a nudibranch or shell-less tectibranch, hydroids, a few annelid worms, a red pentagonal starfish (probably Oreaster occidentalis, illustrated in the Bingham Report [this likely refers to L. Boone, “Echinoderms from the Gulf of California and the Perlas Islands,” Bulletin of the Bingham Oceanographic Collection 2, no. 6 (1928)], which we were subsequently to know as the third most common starfish of the region. Three most common starfish of the whole gulf to date, April 4, are the multirayed Heliaster kubiniji, the slim 5-rayed gray or purple Phataria unifascialis, and the red pentagonal Oreas. Thatched barnacles, about which Cornwall will be glad, and miscellaneous small crabs, including abundant brilliantly red hermits. Strangely enough, no chitons were apparent, although I should have imagined the region to be ideally adapted to them. A fantastic region of violent rocks. It seemed to me that life here is very fierce. The starfish and urchins here are more strongly attached to the rock even than those at Pacific Grove, Pt. Lobos, etc. But of course the surf must be fairly high here at times, even within this shelter, and outside the cove, just over the fringing rocks, it’s tremendous even now with a quiet sea. Lowe, who visited here in 1930 or 1931 spring, notes a most powerful surf outside. The big brilliantly colored Sally Lightfoots, which are almost literally everywhere, are so nimble as to be safe from capture. We got only 2 or 3. They are fast, alert, and they see well. They dodge magnificently, faster than a human being can grab. In the late afternoon and evening, we drove a mile or so through a fantastic and lovely landscape of cacti and shrubs to a funny primitive

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little cantina at the town of San Lucas. No ice, no lights other than gasoline lanterns. Lots of insects. (And lots of cockroaches in the little shack houses around the cannery. A population of some 200 cannery workers was last winter washed out of its housing by tropical storm and flood water; some drowned. Chris says the people were wet and cold, the children crying for something to eat, and there was no food and no way of cooking it even if there were.) English-speaking and very pleasant Chris, superintendent of the cannery, was most hospitable. The governor was to be here tonight to consider [the] housing problem. Sr. Ruiz, who is port captain (fees were $19.81), went with us. Got 2 cases Carta Blanca beer; we all got big hats, the sun is just plain poison and we all needed a portable shelter to keep heads out of it. Apparently only one car here, that of Sr. Ruiz. Chris says [the liqueur] Damiana is [an] aphrodisiac and it really works, but so do many other foods and drinks; someone should turn up an anaphrodisiac. Incident of the light over the grave of the guy who died on Monday. The Bluebird [recording label] record was D-3–216, “A Mia Nomas.” Mch. 19, Tuesday: El Pulmo Reef. Large fleshy gorgonian, via Jon climbing under the reef overhang after it. Sea fans, several. Gorgonians, purple, pendant, as yesterday. Porcupine fish: one of the puffers, Fam. Tetraodontidae, Diodon sp. (Barnhart, [Marine Fishes of Southern California,] 1936, p. 94). Nine fine starfish like Bingham illustra. of Nidorellia armata Gray, except not red in life. A cushion star. Several club spined urchins, Eucidaris thouarsii (Valentin), in their niches in the roof. Green-and-brown slim 5-rayed starfish, Phataria. Brown slim large 5-rayed starfish with plates bordering ambulacral grooves equals probably Phataria unifascialis Gray. One Orthasterias-like starfish, Mithrodia bradleyi. Sharp-spined urchins, like those seen at Cape San Lucas, studding the reef; reminds you very much of MB [Monterey Bay] Strongy. franciscanus, the red urchin, but is smaller and more purple.

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Another sharper spined regular urchin, spines sharp enough so that some of them went thru the side of my boot and into my foot. Barnacles. Several types of brittle stars. A magnificent murex, probably the Phyllonotus regius Wood illustr. in Bingham. A large hemispherical snail with domed surface camouflaged with corrallines and other algae so that it looked like a boulder or a knob on the reef. Many other snails. Chama and Ostraea, rock oysters and oysters. Limpets, sponges. Corals of possibly two types, one knobbed and green. Sipunculids, holothurians, and anemones, miscl. crabs, other crustacea, bryozoa, tunicates, bivalves, flatworms. The coral clusters have: Snapping shrimps that can be counted upon to sound off when put into fresh water for anaesthetization. Red smooth crabs that look like Lophopanopeus. A little fuzzy black-and-white mottled spider crab Several other crabs. Brittle stars probably of several types. Many worms, including especially the stinging worm Eurythoë, one of the commonest gulf forms. Autotomy in these crabs, shrimps, and ophiurans is very highly developed. Tiny saw an octopus but couldn’t get it. A dugout canoe came up with two men and a woman (she bundled up—malaria? and covering her face—from evil breath of white people?) with a few perlitas. Wanted to trade for cigarettes. Valued their pearls at $1.00 U.S. John gave them [a] carton of cigarettes, although not wanting pearls. Sorry I didn’t get more dope from them on native names of marine animals. Anchored for the night near Pescadero Point, preparatory to running into SE end of Espiritu Santo Island for tomorrow’s tide. Previously, the boys caught a skipjack with [a] stomach full of langustinas; we saw two giant rays.

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Mch. 20, Wed.: Left night anchorage at Pescadero Point shortly after 6 am PST, which is 7 am Mexican time (at the Cape San Lucas tuna cannery, Chris keeps astronomical time, which is still 1 hour different, in between). Many many manta rays showing, Manta birostris (Walbaum) (Barnhart, [Marine Fishes of Southern California,] 1936, p. 14, fig. 40). Two yellowfin tuna captured: Neothunnus macropterus (Schlegel) (Barnhart, [Marine Fishes of Southern California,] 1936, p. 37, fig. 130). Collected on bouldery reef S of Lobos Point, SE side of Espiritu Santo Island. Following were taken: Starfish: the red-and-green pentagonal Oreaster occidentalis, about 12. Heliaster kubiniji, 3. Astrometis sertulifera, 1. Phataria, many many. Phataria unifascialis, 3. Lg. Mithrodia bradleyi. Urchins: Eucidaris thouarsii, 8 or 10. Strongylocentrotus franciscanus-like urchins, several. Very sharp spined urchin, possibly Astropyga pulvinata (Lamarck) per Bingham illustr. A new type of coral, sort of a head coral, under which I found an octopus. At least 4 or 5 spp. of holothurians, including a specimen of the v vp [very, very prevalent] species, which had a fish commensal apparently exactly adapted to that environment, judging by the facility with which it darted in and out of the cloaca. About 10 spp. of crabs, plus one Sally Lightfoot (presumably, don’t recall exactly now). About 4 spp. of shrimps, including mantid and snapping shrimp. 1 sp. of hermit crab. Lots of anemones of several types. Hundreds of brittle stars in three or four species. Worms of several types including Eurythoë.

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Several species of nudibranchs and tectibranchs, in jar labeled “Nudibranchs.” Sipunculids of several species, some possibly are echiuroids. Moray eel. Chitons, keyhole limpets, Aletes or similar, clams including one pinna. Turbellarians, sponges, bryozoa, many snails. A good, kind Indian who adopted us was given a pair of pants by Tiny, and he gave him a note for the man who would accompany the pilot and the port captain when they boarded us at Point Prieta quarantine. This Indian, who was all smiles and good nature, came aboard with a pal who, however, stayed in his own canoe at the rail. Gave them wine. They talked, or rather the affable Indian talked until late. Had fun. Told us lots about the region. Barefoot, using spear. Incredibly poor, clothes patched and mended; asked us for empty cans whenever we started to throw one overboard. “Almazan muy fuerte,” with gesticulations and gestures. That became a byword with the boys, then Alberta adopted it, and last I heard, her sister and brother were using it, by then highly modified. Mch. 21, Thurs.: Entered La Paz, a beautiful town, lush, palm trees, white buildings with contrasting roofs, houses with inside gardens, kids everywhere to guide you—and you need a guide to get around that scattered maze. No wharf, discharge of freight is by lighters, of passengers by curious water taxis—dugout canoes from Nayarit. Carta Blanca beer put aboard the first thing. Collecting on a rocky flat being drowned in sand, 1/2 to 1 mile E of La Paz. It was said that there was fine collecting at the first point between La Paz and the lighthouse, but, since the outboard motor was temperamental (de Lawd bless Mistah Johnson [the Johnson Seahorse motor, dubbed the “Sea Cow” by Ricketts and Steinbeck]), we didn’t attempt such a distance. Tide said to be a las quatros, Mexican time. Heliaster kubiniji, plentiful. Pharia, many many. New starfish. Hachas, Pinna maura or rugosa, I don’t differentiate, should have Rogers’s Shell Book available [Julian Ellen Rogers, The Shell

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Book (New York: Doubleday, 1908)]. Pilsbry and Lowe 1932 say: sandy mud flats at La Paz “usually well populated with Pinna rugosa of all sizes; the larger ones are not often found as they are assiduously hunted for food” [H. A. Pilsbry and H. N. Lowe, “West Mexican and Central American Mollusks Collected by H. N. Lowe, 1929–31,” Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences 84 (1932): 35]. Very rarely a specimen of Pinna tuberculosa turns up, and is at once recognized by its “wide heavy shell and dark color.” But elsewhere, p. 140, they say P. maura is called hacha and used for food at Mazatlan, and rugosa is at La Paz, former “on mud banks in inner bays,” latter “on mud bars; the smaller ones living between the tides but the very large ones (sometimes reaching a length of 20″ or more) live in deeper water and are secured by the use of a pole with a hook on one end.” A type of mud-living mussel, occurring in clusters half-buried. Callianassa or Upogebia shrimp, pink color, called “langusta” locally, and snagged out of their holes by innumerable small boys for 16 centavos each. By hard work and cleverness, the boys search out populated burrows (the animals dig down quite a way in rock-strewn flats), get their small harpoon (every child has one here, as city kids have hoops and sticks) below them, and snake out the animals, in some cases alive and unhurt. If it weren’t for the kids, we shouldn’t have been successful in securing a single animal, lacking the patience, experience and street-Arab cleverness of these children. Corals. The larger and handsomer of the two slim asteroids: Phataria. Anemones of at least three types: the large soft varicolored, the smaller white soft, the buff hard type. Club urchin. Phyllonotus and other snails. Hydroids. Many of the exposed snails are so stationary and so masked with algae and other encrustations that you can’t differentiate them until you’ve kicked them loose. Aletes, the worm-like fixed gastropod, bivalves incl. boring clams, Eurythoë, nudibranchs, hermits, other crabs, mantids, flatworms, sipunculids, limpets.

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The profile was easy to get: holes with langusta; clusters of old coral with Eurythoë, anemones, brittle stars, sponges, small crabs, and beautiful purple polyclad flatworms in the interstices, and often an encrusting purple tunicate. Mch. 22, Fri.: La Paz. Sand to muddy sand to sandy mud at El Mogote, 1 mile N of La Paz. The important items were: Cerianthus, Dentalium, big sipunculid, and new cucumbers. When we returned, 40,000 kids were on the boat awaiting us with all sorts of animals: Keyhole limpet. Puffer fish, 2. Fiddler crab, many. Asterias-like starfish, 2. Cushion starfish (Nidorellia armata?), 1. Linckia, many. Clusters of compound tunicates, several. Clusters of hard anemones, several. Littoral pennatulids like Pennatula aculeata, from under wharf being constructed. Holothurians of several types. Callinectes or similar swimming crabs, many. Burrowing shrimp (rep. [sic] Upogebia?), many. Octopus, 1 Snails, many. Pelecypods, miscl., many. Hacha, one. Following are Spanish names of some of the animals: Langusta (at La Paz): burrowing shrimp (Upogebia?). Langusta (elsewhere): Panulirus, spiny lobster. Langustina: pelagic rock lobster. Mione: holothurian. Jayva or jaiva: large edible crabs such as Callinectes.

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Cangrejo: small crabs such as fiddlers. Camaron: shrimp. Four things today: Church, Good Friday—Viernas Santo—11 to 12, women in black widow’s clothing; smell of people and of perfume; some blondes; fine earnest priest, black eyes blazing, good voice; old Spanish chants like madrigals with quarter-tone wails; chorus of children’s voices singing loud and out of tune on the notes they know, coming in pretty strongly on some of the obvious or tuneful phrases. Then good, completely protected, sand flat collecting. Then talking to earnest good customs man aboard (at La Paz, a customs man is stationed aboard day and night, as a guard?), male counterpart of woman I drove last year from Tijuana to Ensenada. Then into town during the evening, and a little, fierce-eyed black boy (not the two or three regular guides who adopted us), maybe terribly scared, waiting a long time at the door of the saloon, then following us doggedly, not saying a word, then, at the last minute, as we were disembarking (we brought in our own boat to save a peso per person toll from the water taxi men, and miraculously the boat wasn’t this time brought back to the big boat tied up), desperately asking for cinco centavos. Poor, good, funny frightened child; I gave him twenty centavos. And such a feeling of relief and kindness from him then! When he had the money, and no service required! We felt good and happy and thankful; he tried to untie our boat and he was too small or too unskilled. So I helped him and I said, “Buenos noches,” and he went home—I hope and suspect—with a warm heart. So I say, “Bless him.” The Mexican fleas are quite fierce, and they like me as well as do the California fleas. The name of the aphrodisiacal cordial that Chris told us about is Damiana (cream de Damiana), available in La Paz at Casa Gomez. The English-speaking boy who worked at collecting so hard and well with us is Raul Velez, La Paz (or Raul Avelas, No. 83 Calif. St.). The one little boy (he said 13, 1 think, but surely he’s not so old) who was so kind, but not so efficient as the cold and business-like one, I loved very much. I gave him two pesos, more money, I imagine, than he had in a long time. The fat boy was very efficient. They carried our packages and guided us, tried to be the very most efficient personal servants, secretaries, and major domos, tried to anticipate our wishes and were fairly successful at it. Tremendously good-natured and tremendously loyal. La Paz has many poor people, kind and loving, but with

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no work and simply frantic for money, like shadows for money, but not thieves, not menacing, and never unkind. By being a little careless with tips, we have supported several families for several weeks by our twoor three-day stay here. The system of yacht brokerage is very efficient and very fine, a little expensive (not much, tho; our port fees, pilotage, cost of customs guards, etc. came only to some $23; the agent apparently charged no fee whatsoever; he devoted much time to us and squired Carol around town one whole afternoon), but absolutely necessary if [the] reputation of Mexican officialdom is true. The peso is 5-1/2 or 6 to 1 here. I bought swank-looking huaraches for one dollar and one peso (7 pesos) and a fine iguana belt for 2.50 pesos; Epsom salts at a clothing store, Casa Gomez, one peso per kilo. I liked the blonde daughter. The girl in the pharmacy, I found entirely charming. The people are wonderful here. Ice is cinco centavos per kilo; not very good ice, tho. A quarter liter of Carta Blanca beer is 30 centavos per bottle, about 10 pesos per case, with 2.50 peso bottle return. I got 3 cigars from Sr. Gomez from his personal stock for 60 centavos, twisted—not wonderful, but satisfactory—Vera Cruz tobacco. Botete is the poisonous puffer fish; [its] liver is said to be so poisonous that people use it to poison cats and flies. Cornuda is the hammerhead shark. Barco is the red snapper. Caracol (also Burrol) is the term for snails in general, particularly for the large conch for blowing like [a] horn. Erizo is urchins, both kinds. Abanico is sea fan, gorgonian. Broma is barnacle. Hacha is pinna, large clam. The Cerianthus are quite difficult to preserve expanded; MgSO4 overnight, menthol in the morning, killed at noon, still NG [no good]. Mch. 22, 1940: La Paz. Detailed list of EFR Jn [Ricketts and Steinbeck] trip El Mogote: Sponges (or tunicates) Stylatula elongata, 1 only

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Small anemones of 2 or 3 types Turbellarian worms of several species Stinging worms, Eurythoë “Worms” Sipunculus nudus Sipunculids or echiuroids Ologochet from mangrove root Sipunculid of still another type, or possibly holothurian Large new pepper-and-salt cucumbers Small elongate white burrowing cucumbers Small black cucumbers Heart urchins 2 species ordinary ophiuran 1 species burrowing ophiuran Barnacle Hermits from sand flats [Ditto] from mangrove roots Shrimps, small Shrimps like Betaeus Edible shrimp Dentalium Sand flat snails Bivalves Tunicate Plus the haul the boys brought, mostly from docks: Upogebia, from the muddy flats Uca sp. [ditto] Octopus Pennatula sp. Sea rabbit Mch. 23, Saturday: Fine wilderness anchorage along the west shore of San Jose Island at Amortajada Bay, about 1 mile N of [a] fantastic

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small islet with an inadvisable channel beyond. Collecting on a barrenlooking (and it was barren!) reef or islet, apparently Cayo Islet (Hydrographic Office Publication No. 84, p. 130 [other publication details unknown]). Iron rings in cliff; we got some old chain. Evidence of fires, shells of clams and conches, and turtle cooking on an island that has neither the firewood, the water, nor the animals. What would anyone want here? The animals didn’t like the rocks. Everything is wrong. We got there maybe 4:30 or 5, after outboard motor wouldn’t run and we had to row. There wasn’t much of any tide, and what there was, was already running in, although the tide tables reported San Lorenzo channel tides as 6:30 pm and -0.8′. Little biting insects—jijenes?—very bad. Also, I have a couple of pretty bad La Paz fleas. Now at midnight, while I’m writing up these notes, the boys are good-naturedly, even humorously, complaining about being unable to sleep, all bitten up. I sleep and awake bitten, but that’s better than not sleeping and being bitten. Gorgeous and fantastic region, high barren hills, vivid colors. The tidelands on Cayo Islet are “burned.” Barnacles, a few limpets, many anemones, some cucumbers, a few small Heliaster, some green things, maybe minute sea rabbits, or shell-less limpets. Many many Sally Lightfeet, 1 only taken, 1 small sipunculid—looks like Physcosoma. Aletes and serpulid worms, 2 or 3 types of snails, a few isopods and amphipods. Fine and abundant anemones. Mch. 24, 1940, Easter Sunday: From about 10 or 10:30 until 11:30 or 12, Tiny and I walked along the ridge between Amortajada Bay and the lagoon beyond. On the lagoon side of the ridge, there were thousands of burrows, presumably of a big land crab (since we saw what I took to be one, which, however, scuttled into his burrow in a hurry). Hopeless to dig out, lacking time, shovel, and man power. The shores of the lagoon were teeming with fiddler crabs and estuarine snails, of which we took representatives. Mangroves (the flowers may have caused the fine, fragrant, tropical hay-ey smell we noticed while coming into Cape San Lucas that midnight). A Salicornia-like shore plant. From where we were wading around in the lagoon, there was a fine picture of still water, with the green fringing trees against the burnt red-brown of the distant mountains, like something out of Conrad, or like some fantastic Doré engraving of heaven. When we were pulling out, we saw quite an extensive ranch, the only one maybe for miles around. Several houses, a scow, and seven boats.

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Easter Sunday, another time to be with your own family, not with your parents or your children’s family; I was alone except inwardly, and there all day I had a sense of presence. Gregorian chants; “spirit ditties of no tune.” Mch. 24: Collected on the afternoon tide on a southerly pile of boulders, a central reef, and a northerly pile of boulders just S of Narcial Point, which marks the southerly limit of Agua Verde Bay. The afternoon tide now is getting bad, or else I am hitting it wrong; should still be good according to tide book. Only a few polyclads (which here are high on the rocks), 2 large and many small chitons—the only place so far we have found them—or is it that we have not heretofore been forced to collect so high in the intertidal? Urchins abundant on the reef, but too far down. Larval shrimps in swarms. 10 pm at anchorage by light; pelagic isopods and mysids. Mch. 25: Same place, same day—or rather, early following morning— got up at 4:05 am by kitchen clock, left about 4:15, arrived ashore maybe 4:30, back on boat 6 am. We just about hit the tide, which was pretty fair, and which was starting to come in fairly well when we left. One of the highly colored spiny lobsters (apparently not Panulirus interruptus). We spotted him in a crevice on the reef by flashlight. I made careful preparations, then grabbed him suddenly, expecting the furor that spiny lobsters set up when detained forcibly. Not a kick, not a murmur. Many club-tentacled and sharp-spined urchins, in addition to the usual Strongylocentrotus-like forms. Aglaophenia. A few sea fans. Two Phataria. One apparently new starfish. Several Heliaster kubiniji. One flat holothurian-like cucumber. Three interesting things: (1) time of lower low tide established; (2) we saw brittle stars and puffer fish “out” and actively feeding during these dark hours; (3) we took lobster, sea fans, and desirable urchins. Detailed list of bottled stuff from both trips: 2 species of lg and 1 or more of small chitons, tunicates. Turbellarians (we rarely succeed in preserving these before they dissolve). Several species of brittle stars separated into lg and small in sep. jars, miscl. crabs, spider crabs, crabs, snapping shrimps. Astrometis sertulifera. Plumularian hydroids. Bivalves. Snails. Small echinoids. Worms. Hermit crabs. Sipunculids. Sponges. Pelagic larval shrimps. Pelagic isopods and mysids. The boys caught a skipjack, Katsuwonus vagans, and a Mexican sierra, Scomberomorus sierra, en route to Puerto Escondido.

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Figure 13. Original sketch from the “Verbatim Transcription” illustrating the entrance to the small gulf by Puerto Escondido. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

Outside [Puerto Escondido], the red snappers (not mentioned in Barnhart[, Marine Fishes of Southern California, 1936]), at 1:30 pm the boys caught one. The customs man who was here with [a] group from Loreto said, “Barco.” The hammerhead shark is Cornuda. In the afternoon, Jon and the boys went collecting in the mangrove reef a little outside the entrance (and gulfward) to Puerto Escondido, then a fisherman helped to get stuff (he was very good, brought in stuff for two days); then Carol and Tiny went out the following morning, when Jn and I were up on the mountain. In the mangrove cove, there was truly magnificent collecting, characterized by the craziest gigantic worms, like a tubeless Chaetopterus or maybe an apodous holothurian, that I’ve ever seen. Two new starfish. Gorgeous material in general. Many Cerianthus. The fisherman brought in what he called “abalon,” but which was really a gigantic fixed scallop, not an abalone at all—good for food; a pearl oyster; a small hacha; several giant conches; and much other stuff. Seining, the boys brought in several of the poisonous-liver Botete, Cheilichthys politus (Girard) (Barnhart, [Marine Fishes of Southern California,] 1936, p. 94, fig. 286), and some other fish which I preserved. Mch. 26, Tues.: Jon and I went up into the mountains on an overnight trip with the customs man and the school teacher from Loreto, two Indians, and the owner of a local ranch. The ranch had 3 good deep wells with irrigating pumps worked by mules and made in Guadalajara, several houses, mules, horses, a few cows, many goats, etc. Ranch started 1-1/2 years ago. People very proudly looking forward to completion of road to Loreto (trail only, now) so “cars” can come through. Indians

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wore barefoot sandals; old guy who was guiding us could and did outwalk and outclimb horses and mules. We walked ahead the entire trip, tiring out the animals. We six rode until too steep, then led horses to flat, maybe 1,500′ up, near 300–400′-drop waterfall. Little water, but good pools. And such an oasis around it; known probably and loved for hundreds of years. Fresh and cool, green; the shadow of a rock in a weary land. Or, rather, in a fantastic land, since the plains and hills over which we came were rich with xerophytic plants, cacti, mimosa, brush and small trees with thorns. Branches you mustn’t touch and afterward rub your eyes. The little waterfall canyon up in the mountains was steep, unapproachable from below because of cliffs; we got in from a side canyon above. It had palms (date palms—Datil silvestre), some tree with edible fruit—we couldn’t make out what it was and they couldn’t tell us (no one spoke English except the customs man, and he slightly; was learning by a correspondence course). And maidenhair fern (infusion used on women after childbirth), bracken, lichens. Tree frogs about pool, tadpoles, water striders and horsehair worms within. Doves. The two Indians went after Boregas [borregos]—mountain sheep. None. Apparently left for Gigantas [Sierra de la Gigantas, mountain range northwest of Puerto Escondido]. The men looked after us kindly, fed us well, gave Jon a blanket (he had none), fixed up pillows for both of us. Good friends! I thought we should leave a gift, but customs man said none. He is a good fellow. In the meantime, the mices was playing, as Jon says. A little scurrilous drinking got done, and bread crumbs instead of Epsom salts got put in anaesthetizing tray of cucumbers, but they had been previously pretty well started and some came out alright. This is one of the really good places. The good places to date are Cape San Lucas, Pulmo Reef, La Paz area, and Puerto Escondido. The men’s names were: English-speaking customs man, born in Durango: Manuel Madinabeitia C. Seccion Aduanera Loreto, B.C. The school teacher, born in La Paz and attended normal school north of there: Gilbert Baldibia Loreto, B.C.

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The rancher: Leopoldo Perpuly Loreto, B.C. The outstanding ubiquitous animals so far are: Heliaster kubiniji—practically everywhere, the sunstar. Cucumaria sp., possibly the Puget Sound and Monterey Bay lubrica, green or yellow underneath, dark or purple above, nearly everywhere, providing there are rocks for it to get under or crevices for it to crawl into. Eurythoë, the stinging worm. Wherever there are loosely imbedded rocks, coral clusters, etc. A purple urchin, much like the Pacific Grove Strongy. franciscanus (red urchin), wherever there is rock or reef exposed to wave shock or strong scouring currents. The usual barnacles and limpets on suitable bare rocks high up. Anemones quite like the small bunodid forms at Pacific Grove. Several small crabs; a porcelain crab and a Panopeus. A red-legged hermit crab. Our visit to Puerto Escondido was quite possibly an event in the life of a barefooted Indian fisherman (who spoke good Spanish) and his son. They have seen yachts before, probably many times, and some outside purse seiners, may even have been on them, but I imagine they may never before have been treated with living and considered kindness by Americans. They may never before have been offered a cup of coffee by an American host before he helped himself, and with a polite bow, and addressed as Señor, and all perfectly real and heartfelt. Although he may have been a pest, no doubt was, to the different time sense of Tony particularly—all Indians are that way—he was nevertheless a good man, and I respected and liked him for that and for his abilities, and he no doubt knew it. Puerto Escondido. Jon noticed the son, thinking himself unobserved, examining a pocket knife lying on deck, doubtless being utterly charmed, wanting but not taking it. But if a person is going to spend more than a day or so with such people, he has to realize that, for all their naïveté and real nobility, they (like the boys around the lab), have avarice, may have

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manners that seem boorish to us, and in any case can take up more time than most impatient Westerners have to spare. In collecting, I am interested in comparing our results to date, 9 days entirely along shore, with those of lengthy, expensive, well equipped and well manned expeditions. For instance, possibly the best to date (I have been unable to procure, without excessive cash outlay, the few published Hancock Exped. Reports, so cannot compare their results with ours) was the 1911 Albatross Amer. Mus. Nat. His. Exped. into the gulf. [The Hancock expedition is described in George Hugh Banning, “Hancock Expedition to the Galápagos Islands, 1933,” Bulletin of the Zoological Society of San Diego 10 (May 1933).] There were 8 naturalists on a specially built and equipped steam boat, with a complete and well trained crew. In two months out of San Diego, they occupied about 35 stations, got a total, for instance, of . . . individuals of . . . species of echinoderms, the majority in deep water—altho shore collecting was also done, of which 170 individuals of 20 species were holothurians (we got . . . individuals of . . . species), . . . individuals of 41 species of starfish . . . individuals of 21 species of echinoids and . . . individuals of 34 species of ophiuroids. [Ricketts used ellipses to indicate where he would later fill in figures. Those numbers were not added to the typescript, however.] I am wondering what curious factor in distribution results in “burned” reefs. (I saw the term used elsewhere also, possibly in [Maurice] Yonge’s Years on the Great Barrier Reef [London: Putnam, 1930]. There is no specific distinction that I can lay my hands on, yet I can as a rule determine when I first glimpse a given region whether or not it will be rich, so there must be some differential apparent, perhaps subconsciously. Mch. 27, Wed.: I have been thinking that the anaesthetization of cucumbers, even the cursory way I’ve been doing, might have little value. But today, after having collected 15 of the big flat holothurians at Puerto Escondido on early tide, I put them directly in formalin and saw very quickly that even the sloppiest narcosis is more than a gesture. Jon and I got out before 5:30 am Mexican time, encircled Puerto Escondido entirely, mostly by flashlight. Fine tide. The E shore was dominated by the big flat brown Holothuria, with the mussel-like clam with hard and thick wavy shell, and a fair under-rock fauna. There were no sand flats until we got around west; there, there was some of the knobbed green coral. Cerianthus in both locations wherever the sub-

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stratum was suitable. Spicy smell of the mangrove flowers. Mangroves occur here on both rocky and (apparently) sandy shores. We saw one of the gigantic worm-like synaptids walking around before dawn. At the entrance, and thence outside, was a fine fauna with the red-and-green cushion star, very plentiful, one other cushion star, a most remarkable colonial-solitary soft coral in great knobs and heads in one restricted location on the rocks. A large (pelagic anemone ?? caught in the rocks by the current ??) that stung me quite severely. Really very severely. Like several bee stings. But practically over in a few hours. A giant Spheciospongia or similar is an important feature of the tidal scape. Giant sea hare. Clams. One small hacha. There are many poisonous and stinging forms in these waters: urchins, sting rays, morays, Eurythoë, stinging anemone, botete. No method seems to work well on the giant synaptid; Epsom salts and menthol maybe best. Detailed list of Puerto Escondido stuff: rock isopods, sponges. Tunicates. Turbellarians. Chitons. Bivalves. Snails. Hermits. Crabs. Heteroneroids pelagic at night. Mysids pelagic at night. Small ophiurans. Limpets. Worms. Gordiaceans from stream beds in mountains above. Plus large stuff. Loreto: Stopped at Loreto about 11:30 am, Mexican Standard Time, to mail letters, to buy beer, and to see Loreto mission. Main part was pretty much in ruins with part of the roof tumbled down by earthquake, but some fine woodwork and hinges still standing. One section was in present use, and I was very moved by the altar decoration from Easter. The virgin was a vision of loveliness; I should think that very naïve people would be rather overwhelmed by the rather gaudy loveliness. She was so lovely, I don’t like even to use the word gaudy. For most people, it must be a great privilege to be able to pray to such a lovely lady. The virgin is all men’s secret and unconscious mistress; to all women she is a symbol of the thing deepest to womanhood—maternity. Also, one of the paintings, second from the right as you face the altar (I looked at it from the locked grillwork), was very El Grecoish. Postmaster spoke a little English. People very fine. Not forward; apparently not looking for tips. The boy who attached himself to me was kind and straight-forward, apparently his only expediency was genuine interest in the stranger, and he asked only for cigarros. Only begging was from a small-boy portador who helped haul beer. He groaned at the weight and complained how poor he and his family were. Only High Life beer, from brewery at Hermosillo, was available.

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Coming N from Loreto at anchorage at Coronado Id., the boys caught Mexican sierra (p. 38, fig. 132 [probably “The Fishes of Sinaloa,” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 2, no. 5 (1895)]), Scomberomorus sierra Jordan and Starks, and an apparent cross btwn a yellow fin (Neothunnus macropterus, fig. 130) and an albacore (Germo alalunga, fig. 131), which the boys say is definite and fairly well known. Ed and Jn collecting on NE shore of long westerly-extending point of Coronado Island, cursing outboard motor. Barren region, almost burned, but many cucumbers, some anemones, one starfish. I found what might have turned out to be a Tanais, but it failed to show up in the catch. Best of all, we found solitary corals in clustered heads. A yellow hemispherical sponge strikingly similar to the Monterey Bay Tethya or Geodia is a characteristic feature of the Coronado’s intertidal. Detailed list: Solitary corals. Aggregated anemone or corals, 2 spp. Sponges, several spp. Anemones, several spp. Shelled snails. Worms. Holothurians. Ophiurans. A few small Solaster. Echiuroids (?? they behave like Urechis). Coralline algae or bryozoa. 2 spp. of nudibranchs, 1 indiv. each. Crabs. 2 other spec. of corallines or bryozoa. Tunicates. Bryozoa. Keyhole limpets. Bivalves. Chitons. Amphipods. And amphipods brought up from anchorage. Mch. 28: Good sleep. Didn’t go collecting this morning; it seemed not worthwhile to expend good morale in a bad place, and we needed sleep badly. Started 9 am for Concepcion Bay, expect to arrive 6 or 7 pm; boat rolling a little for the first time in the gulf. I was amused at Tiny, theoretically the hardest-boiled one in the bunch, finally, after lots of grief and dopiness and some actual sickness, keeping his head covered and keeping it covered religiously to the point of draping a handkerchief behind his hat so as to cover his neck a la Legionnaire. He is quite kind to the Mexicans and Indians, too, going along, rather than trying to buck their different time sense, and their half-starvedness, both for food and for human contact, whereas even a guy like Tony tends to be a little intolerant and stand-offish. Average Nordic, especially average Englishman, certainly doesn’t get along very well with anyone but another Nordic; no participation. Getting along with the Indian or with the local ranchers—if a person wants to— involves lots of coffee, cigarettes, canned fruit, cold beer, and patience; ability to go about the necessary work with them hanging around, five kids grown up, only they sit quietly, don’t ask so many questions. Visits

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aboard whatever boats tolerate them must be rich experiences, horizonenlarging experiences which no doubt furnish subjects for much future conversation and speculation. Like the Indians up north, these come to visit and sit quietly for hours, maybe days. Thinking of that reminds me of the barefooted Indian fisherman and his boy at Puerto Escondido, the one that Tony said had been hanging around all the time—couldn’t get rid of him. When the Loreto schoolteacher and the customs man and that group came aboard, he was there and shared in the canned fruit. When they went away with indications on both sides of real affection, he said simply in Spanish, “Good friends.” I thought what a true thing that was, and what a commentary on the whole non-Western character which emphasizes the spiritual values of European-American insistence on material values. Not many American people have as many or as true friendships as those people up on the mountain near Loreto had for each other; not many Americans put as much into their friendships nor know so much about them; they are busy with another set of values, not necessarily better but not necessarily worse, either, just different. To recognize that difference might mean to have better respect for another race; to participate in it is to experience richness. [Account] of pearl oysters, pp. 437–38, etc. in Townsend, C. H. 1916 [sic]. “Scient[ific] Results of the Exped[ition] to the Gulf of Calif[ornia by the U.S. Fisheries Steamship Albatross in 1911.” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 48 (1923): 126]. [Townsend, C. H.] “Voyage of the Albatross to the Gulf of Calif[ornia] in 1911.” [Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 35 (1916): 399–476]. We have got only one specimen of the pearl oyster so far, brought in by the Indian fisherman at Puerto Escondido and stored in the 15 gallon barrel from that place. Margaritophora mazatlanica Henley. Male and female are separate. Adult at 3 years, “——————— industrial uses in about 4 yrs” ———————which they grow but “suffer deterioration from worms and boring sponges.” The pearls are taken chiefly from young oysters. There are no abalones that I could find, nor hear tell of, in the gulf, and few lobsters. What lobsters there are appear not to be P. interruptus. Townsend calls the green turtle Chelonia virgata, and the hawksbill or tortoise shell turtle Eretmochelys squamata.

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[Account] of food fishes of the gulf [in Townsend, “Voyage of the Albatross”] on pp. 449–50, etc. The two Albatross Clark Echinoderm papers [report] from the gulf only (they did lots of dredging outside also) per detail on pp. 5 etc. of Post-fire NB [Notebook] VIII, Post-separ[ation] NB [Notebook] III. [These are two of Ricketts’s own notebooks.] Nine species of asteroids, totaling 126 individuals; 7 of these I know, and they have been common in our collecting there. Two, Amphiaster and Echinaster, I am not familiar with. We may or may not have taken them. We took from 15 to 20 species. Seven species of ophiuroids, in 125 individuals. I recognize surely only three of them. We took ?? species. Ten species and 112 individuals of echinoids, of which I recognize about 6. We took about 15 to 20 species. Three species and 10 individuals of holothurians. I recog. none surely. We took some 15 to 20 species. 5:30 to 7 pm. Tide seems to be stationary at what I judge to be high, about 15 miles S in Concepcion Bay along the E shore (the W shore of the little peninsula that forms one boundary of the bay). In 2-1/2 to 4′ of water on the sand shore (foreshore covered with pebbles), there were hundreds, probably thousands of two species of sand dollars, both pierced; Encope grandis and possible Mellita. In the same association, brilliant red sponge arborescences on occasional rocks (great clusters—some of these were dried). They are important horizon markers and ought if possible to be determined. Also, on other occasional rocks imbedded in the sand, clams with tunicates and the usual small ophiurans and crabs. Closer inshore, many brilliant large snails. One of the masked rock clams had on it a group of solitary corals. A few rods inland along the shore, there were some pools of bitterly salt water with a gang of fiddler crabs on their banks and one only greater crab. One only sea-serpent-like moray taken at night by light. Also, Sparky took a flying fish (see Barnhart, [Marine Fishes of Southern California,] 1936, p. 192, for following reference: Carl L. Hubbs, “The Flight of the Calif[ornia] Flying Fish,” Copeia, no. 62 (1918): 85–88). Also taken thus pelagically at anchorage were several small swimming crabs, other morays seen, Penaeus, bright green flying fish, many heteronereis and other free swimming annelids, some fish (probably larval flying fish), and some almost entirely transparent ribbon fish visible chiefly by shadow.

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The Bingham exped. in the yacht Pawneon, a cruise from the Perlas Is. to the upper gulf, took 17 species, 111 individuals of echinoderms, 4 starfish in 22 examples, 3 ophiurans in 12 examples, 9 echinoids in 75 examples, and 1 holothurian in 3 examples. Per detail on p. 5, PSNB [Post-separation Notebook] III. Animals brought up in crab nets, etc., from 4 fathoms anchorage sandy bottom in Concepcion Bay, about the middle of the peninsula (E) shore. Large voracious snails (probably Phyllonotus) eating dead fish bait in crab nets, new starfish. Everything gets eaten here in a hurry. Several hermit crabs on the half shell. Very large, very active sea urchins with long vicious spines. The Phyllonotus is probably bicolor. We should have Rogers’s The Shell Book; the nomenclature is obsolete and the treatment is spotty, but there are many illustrations of Pacific coast, including Gulf [of] Calif. forms. One of the finest eating fish I have had in many a long day is the Mexican sierra. Mch. 29, Fri.: E side of Concepcion Bay, L. 26˚ 35′ N. Jon and I went ashore about 7:30 am, Mexican time. The tide, still running out, was already way below last night’s stage. When we were ready to return at 9 am, it was considerably below the position of the stake with the handkerchief which we had adjusted to the water level at 7:30 when we came ashore. And at 10 am, the water level may have come up a little (as per examination from boat with binoculars), but not much. I should say that ebb water was about 9 am Mex. time. The place in which we collected was something like this:

Figure 14. Original sketch from the “Verbatim Transcription” illustrating the collecting sites near Concepcion Bay. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

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The two species of cake urchins, apparently commingled, were at Position 1, in from 1/2′ to 1-1/2′ of water at low tide, which was maybe 3′ or so below high tide. The ordinary cake urchin here, with holes, is probably Encope californica Verrill. The grotesque keyhole dollar is Encope grandis Agassiz. The large regular sand dollar, of which only 3 specimens were taken, more or less without our knowing we had them, may be Clypeaster testudinarius Gray. A little deeper, at Position 2, were another (new to us) species of Holothuria, fairly flat and sand-encrusted. The giant heart urchins, probably Meoma grandis, which in some places were so abundant that we could have gotten almost any number, started between Positions 2 and 3 and reached their maximum at Position 3. They were all under 2-1/2 or 3′ below water level. The shore here is much like Puget Sound. In the high littoral is a foreshore of gravel to pebbles to small rocks, sandy in the low, and sand with occasional rocks well below the tideline. In this zone, with a maximum at Position 4, there were growths of some algae, presumably Sargassum, lush and tall and extending to the surface. Again exactly like Puget Sound, except that we had no eel grass. Giant conch with eyes, same flat holothurians as at Escondido, Cerianthus, and sloppy guts, the anemone. At Position 1 at 9:30 am, we found a few hachas, and at 10:30 Sparky got several fine big ones by wading and diving. The surfaces were encrusted with sponge and tunicates, under which were crabs and snapping shrimps. Great scalloped limpets were attached also to the shells. While we were walking along shore in this region, which was to me ecstatically beautiful, a great group of porpoises went by, quite slowly and blowing loudly. We heard again the lovely doves up in the hills, one of the prettiest sounds I have heard ever anywhere, except as Shelley should have said it, “And so they voice when thou art gone,” or “Now at thy soft recalling voice I rise.” The sound of the doves was like a soft two-toned yodel. In the distance especially, it was mellow. They answered each other like echoes. The green of the tall giant cacti is lovely against the burnt color of the mountains. Walking through them as I did last night was like going into a peaceful green valley. If I had time, I should have liked to walk all the way up into the hills—not far—just to be alive and to hear the doves calling at evening and again in the morning. I have never heard so many; they put a mark on the place. Reminded me faintly of when I was a child in Dakota, on a hot day in the cool creek draw, hearing the mourning doves.

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After we had returned to the boat, Carol and Sparky went inshore again, coming back about 11:30 with another big load of sand dollars (it was in this load that the three specimens of the third different species turned up). Also, many hachas, many of which had a large shrimp, apparently a commensal Thallasinid. San Lucas Cove: Arrived 5 pm outside San Lucas Cove. Sand bar and salt water lagoon. At 6 or 6:30 pm, the tide was still flowing into the cove, yet I’m practically certain we’ll find ebb at 9:30 am or so. A few hermits, a few snails of 4 different species and several individuals of a very high-tide small clam were picked up. The types of collecting adapted to this gulf regions are: (1) On the shore at low tide, as usual. (2) From boat, working along shore with net and spear. Since the water is usually clear and quiet, this can be carried out in water up to 4 or 5′ deep. (3) By crab net from boat anchorage. At night especially. (4) At night, at anchorage, by light hung over side. At night by light hung over side, San Lucas Cove (S of Sta. Rosalia): small squid; usual heteronereis and crustacea, crab larvae, transparent fish. Mch. 30, Sat.: San Lucas Cove. Started about 8:30 am, returned to boat about 11:30 am. Collecting inside the lagoon (which I should have called a slough): San Lucas Cove, S of Santa Rosalia. The tide seemed to be starting back in about 11:00. I would put the ebb at about 10 or 10:30 am. Wasn’t very low. I don’t think the Cerianthus were ever exposed; the ones I got were in 4 to 8″ of water. Cerianthus very very plentiful, and I collected maybe 20 or 30. John took some Chione; someone got a small smooth Venus-like clam; I took one razor clam. Carol got a large male Uca and several fleshy tubes which are apparently Enteropneusta. John dug up some small and not very active Amphioxus. We picked up a few snails. Saw 1 Emerita, several hermits, and quite a few swimming crabs like Callinectes—of which we took 5. John searched long and intently for pea crabs, as he was extracting the anemones and the probably commensal sipunculids, but without success.

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San Carlos Bay: Arrived 6 pm and went ashore immediately, returning about 7:30. The tide was slightly low but still coming in strongly, presumably from the mid-day low. Such tides! Tivela sp. (like the Calif. Pismo, but shiny brown to black), several. Ribbed mussel-like clam VVP [very, very prevalent]. Chitons VVP, 2 species. Snails and crabs, both new to us. Heliaster, Strongy-like urchin. Heart urchins in sand. Flatworms. Also the usual cucumber (C. lubrica?), discarded. I picked up a few beach hoppers under high shore masses of decaying seaweed. Had a great scramble for them. The animals down here certainly know how to take care of themselves by either running or stinging. 9–10 pm, by light hung over side: another squid, a larval Squilla(?), a great run of transparent fish, including a new type; the usual heteronereis and crustacea. Cerianthus is one of the most difficult anemones in this region to anaesthetize. The small bunodids go under nicely with Epsom salts, can even be preserved without any preliminaries at all, when sufficiently dopey from warm and stagnant water. But Cerianthus after 6 or 8 hours of almost concentrated Epsom salts solution, standing part of the time in the hot sun (but of course they are used to that) were able to contract rapidly and violently by expelling water from the pore at the aboral end. Mch. 31, Sunday: The tide, which was very poor (about 2-1/2 or 3′ below the uppermost line of barnacles) ebbed slowly for a long time and started slowly to flow about 12:30 pm. Jon and the others started out about 10 am; I got over there about 11:30. Before I got there, the wind was up, which made collecting very difficult. However, partly because we were entirely unable to get into the low littoral—where I’m perfectly sure the lobsters and other finds would have been located—I was able to make quite a fine survey of the upper regions. One fact increasingly emerges: the green-and-black cucumber (C. lubrica?) is the most ubiquitous Gulf of California shore animal, and Heliaster runs it a close second.

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In this region Sally Lightfoot is highest, with a few Ligyda. Attached to the rocks and cliffs high up and fully exposed to the sun are barnacles and limpets. Under the rocks and boulders in the next association further down are the mussel-like clams and brown chitons (both VVP, latter especially occurring by the thousand), cucumbers by the hundred, a few Heliaster mostly under rocks, and 2 ophiurans, probably Ophioderma panamensis and Ophionereis annulata. A third ophiuran similar to Ophiopteris papillosa, occurs as large and more occasional individuals further out. No Ophiothrix were seen here, altho they have been everywhere else. In this zone there are verrucose anemones growing under overhangs, on the sides of rocks, and in pits deep in the rocks like urchins. A few Astrometis sertulifera. Garbonzo clams attached to rock undersides, by the hundred. Small urchins. Another kind of anemone, pale, clubbed. Under rocks further out on the point were Linckia columbine VVP. Under rocks: sponges of several species including a beautiful blue form, octopi (P. bimaculatus), one Ischnochiton conspicuus, large urchins similar to PG [Pacific Grove] Strongy. franciscanus; heart urchins in sand btwn. rocks. And probably lobsters. Small crabs occasional. Many flatworms. Some sipunculids. Tunicates. Large sponges, including a yellow form like MB [Monterey Bay] noxiosa and a white Steletta-like form. Nudibranchs. Giant amphitrite. Naked limpets or nudibranchs. A few club tentacled urchins. A few stinging worms. Carinella-like nemertean. Solitary corals. San Francisquito Bay: Made anchor about 6 pm. Bad wind. Water was very very cold. We went ashore at once and set up a tide stake at 6 pm; the water was then 2 or 2-1/2′ below the highest line of barnacles. Below that level were 3 types of crabs. One was a porcelain crab under rocks, one was Pachygrapsus crassipes, so far as I could see, one was maybe P. transversus. On the sides were barnacles and great limpets, two species of small (Tegula and something like a small Purpura), anemones as before. A few and very large smooth brown chitons, 2 or 3 of the bristle chitons. Further down under the rocks were great masses of Filograna, some tunicates (one very large, flat, brown), Astrometis, cucumbers and Heliasters as usual, a few hermits. I saw one flat worm and Tiny took one octopus. Tiny took the freshly cleaned (by isopods or amphipods) skeleton of Panulirus, apparently interruptus. On the sand beach, I took, out of multitudes, a few Emerita-like forms.

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About 10 pm, Carol took by hook and line 1 only Gyropleuodus francisci (Girard), the horned shark of the family Heterodontidae, which I preserved, and 2 Mustelus californicus Gill (apparently), one about 3-1/2′ long, which we used for bait. Half-dozen scorpaenids in red, 1 black. Apr. 1, Mon.: San Francisquito Bay. When Jon got up, 8 am, the stake on shore was high and dry, about 6″ vertically maybe. When I got out, half-hour later, the gap of sand beach between the water and the stake was smaller, and when we got under way about 9:15 or 9:30, the stake was slightly submerged. So the tide was coming in fairly rapidly. Got out big camera and started working out its operation again. Got everything doped out except how to put shutter curtain back to larger aperture without making exposure. One way is to put in slide and snap the shutter back to correct speed, but there must be some more instantaneous way. Angeles Bay: Went ashore at Angeles Bay about 3:30 pm. The tide was running out, rapidly. A boy and a man ashore (there is little community here, and unscheduled, uncharted! Rum runners! Jon said possibly gun runner, because [a] plane landed here, with sportsmen who said they were from Hattie Hamilton Ranch in their own plane) said low water was mas tarde. Collected from 3:30 to 4:30, on a bouldery flat. Granite on coarse sand. A few hundred yards to the S of the big new adobe building with glass windows. The high rocks had anemones, cucumbers, “sea cockroaches,” a few (very scarce) small porcellanids. But no Sally Lightfoots and no large crabs whatsoever. A few Heliaster. Further down, the dominant animal was easily the shell-less limpet or tectibranch, which occurred by the thousand in fairly large individuals. Some chitons, both the smooth brown and the fuzzy kind. Great clusters of Filograna were very very plentiful. Bryozoa, flatworms. Two octopi, one quite large. Both seemed to be Polypus bimaculatus. Further down and entirely submerged were yellow Goodia on the undersides of rocks, and magnificent pink erect globular or hollow-vase-like (where largest) sponge masses, some several feet in diameter. The algal zonation was very apparent. A Sargassum-like form was submerged about 2 to 2-1/2′ at ebb; above this there were no algae, the rocks were completely bare. Below this narrow belt (like the narrow zone of shallow eel grass up north) was a great zone of the flat frond-

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like algae. On the few occasions when the wind died down sufficiently so we could look into this zone, it seemed sterile except for the lush growth of algae. About 5 pm, we took the outboard motor boat over to some fine sandy mud flats (compact, not mucky, with more sand than mud, but fairly fine grained) on the N shore of the bay. Some Chiones (Tiny went back after we had returned and dug a whole pailful). Two Tivela. One Amphioxus. Several long turreted snails with commensal anemones. One octopus under cavernous rock imbedded in sand. The occasional imbedded rocks have oysters, but particularly a large and highly ornamented limpet VVP. Small snails VVVP [very, very, very prevalent] and ubiquitous. Pea crab commensal in sand tube of worm, Leptosynapta and possibly sipunculids. Astropecten armatus, 1 only. Most of the biological accounts of expeditions have featured and illustrated only the rare forms. This is understandable; the more common animals have been described and possibly illustrated years ago—often, however, in publications now difficult of access. But it seems to me that the purposes of travelers and even of zoologists can be served best by accounts and illustrations of the common forms, particularly the ubiquitous forms, or the horizon markers. When I go into a new region, I am only secondarily curious about the occasional animals, unless they represent spectacular or curious types. But I do want to know something about the common, the obvious, the ubiquitous, and the economically important forms. Sometimes it’s a job just to satisfy that simple requirement. Apr. 2, Tue.: Puerto Refugio, Angel de la Guardia Island. Arrived about 2:30 or 3 pm. Jn, Crl, Tiny, and Sparky started collecting at once. I wrote up notes and didn’t start collecting until about 7:30 or so. At that time, the tide was at its greatest ebb, quite low, possibly 7 to 10′ on the point, below the highest line of barnacles. The point was jagged volcanic rock, very hard and washed clear. Toward the E, there was a flat with fairly smooth (and terribly slippery) boulders on a flat of coarse sand. Not on the whole a very rich region, but surprisingly productive, nevertheless. The big finds were: (1) Echiuroids. Green Echiurus with spoon shaped probosces. [Found] acc. to Crl, loose under the rocks.

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(2) Shrimps, possibly Spirontocaris or similar. (3) New species (probably) of hydrocoral. Jon says purplish brown; I’d think creamish buff. The specimens we found submerged in pools were obviously expanded. When you touched the colonies, they changed color. This is stony coral. (5) New chitons, a couple of octopi, etc. The most obvious animals were: (1) Tectibranchs. Little fellows all over everything, particularly in the pools. (2) Naked mollusks (limpets or tectibranchs) (marine pulmonates) very large, walking all over the highest rocks, fairly dry, right out in the sun. (3) Ligyda. Rock ledges have Pachygrapsus, Heliaster, barnacles. Tiny caught 2 Sally Lightfoots. Rock pool high up had everything small: mussels (a spec. of Mytilus different than at Monterey), snails, hermits, limpets, barnacles, sponges, shelled tectibranchs. In small rocks or coarse gravel in gullies were a new type of ophiuran. In caverns under rocks were many species of sponge, including both the blue and the white encrusting forms. Club urchins, regular urchins. Tiny [found] 4 heart urchins in sand. During the night the tidal currents were swirling by the boat at several miles per hour. The usual heteronereis were present, and we saw and captured a pelagic nudibranch not easily distinguishable from the Pug. Sd. Chioraeraleonina. The crab nets were overboard. Altho weighted with chunks of lead, they may never have touched the bottom due to the current, but we brought up in them several Callinectes or similar and 7 fine fat Eurythoë of a species different than the littoral. Seven fathom anchorage. List of Puerto Refugio animals, contd.: Eurythoë of 2 species, very common. Starfish: Heliaster, common, as before. Linckia, 3 or 4. Henricia sp., 5 or 6.

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Astrometis sertulifera, many. Phataria, 1 only. Urchins: Eucidaris, the club spined. Regular sharp spined urchins. A few heart urchins in sand pools. Cephalopods: 2 octopi. Large sea hare: Tethys or similar. Mussel-like clam. Red tectibranchs, 6 or 8 (orange, look like nudibranchs). Black nudibranchs, small species of Bullaria? Sucker fish. Plumularian hydroids. Anemones of 2 species. Could not get large rock boring anemone VP. Limpets. Small black shell-less limpet like tectibranch? VP. Snails of several spp., incl. high up Turitella-like form. Rock oysters. Sponges of several types VVP, incl. several large erect forms in white Leuconia-like clusters and in hemispherical Geodia and soft forms. Usual cucumbers, plus 1 sand-eating form (also saw a Leptosynapta under rock but lost it). Sipunculids. New green bryozoan. Crabs of several species, incl. Sally Lightfoot. Chitons: the large smooth brown, the fuzzy form, and probably one or two others. Three or 4 species of ophiurans: Ophiothrix, Ophiopteris, and Phioderma.

Apr. 3, Wed.: En route to Tiburon Island, we ran by a great group of jellyfish. Apparently ctenophores, 6 to 10″ long, zeppelin-like. Or possibly siphonophores. Caught one with a very slight way [sic] on the boat, but

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it went to pieces and passed right through the net, so we made no other attempts. SE of Red Bluff Point on SW corner of Tiburon Island, we had good anchorage. Collecting inshore 6 to 7:45 pm was very good. Reef was SW, a few boulders SE. Reef had Heliaster, cucumbers, and anemones, as usual. A giant snail was enormously abundant; I suppose we could have collected 500. High up, there were great clusters of a Tegula-like snail such as we found at Cape San Lucas. No shell-less limpet-like tectibranchs (except one that Tiny took in the boulders). Limpets and keyhole limpets. Geodia. Clusters of coral-like anemone. Pachygrapsus. Jon got one Sally Lightfoot, 2 solitary corals, some Plumularian hydroids. Barnacles. Many Phataria, Linckia, some Strongylocentrotus-like urchins, many club-tentacled urchins, some brittle stars. Jon located a most remarkably attenuated spider crab, which, fortunately, we were able to catch. Sponges. Tunicates. Male and female stingrays found copulating and captured. Hydrocorals, very very plentiful. On the more bouldery shore, Tiny took a few small crabs, searched long and unsuccessfully for a furry crab that had a hole in the sandy mud of a pool, several sand-living cucumbers. Took 3 Sally Lightfoots. In the evening, Jon speared 4 or 5 barracuda-like fish with the harpoon from the big boat. The bats were very very plentiful, and Sparky finally got one with a spear. Several of them seemed then to drive right at him, and he broke and ran for the galley in some fright. Then every bat disappeared from the region, as though by command. It was some time before any of them came back, and they never came back in quantity. Apr. 4, Thurs.: Left for Guaymas environs about 8:30 Mexican time. Two Mexican sierras taken en route by trolling jib. At Port San Carlos, outside Guaymas Bay, 6:30 pm. Completely land-locked harbor. Another pretty fair collecting place. I went ashore at once with Crl, Sparky, and Tiny. Jon followed later on. Some new snails, a couple of echiuroids under rocks, usual anemones, Heliasters, and cucumbers. The water was soupy with shrimps, and after quite a little work, I went back to the boat (partly at Crl’s instigation; she’d seen several swimming crabs) and got the dip nets. Then I got quite a few of the shrimps. Jon picked up some of the swimming crabs which had lovely ultramarine claws. A few chitons. Some under-rock crabs (porcelain and Cancer-like).

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10 pm. Great flock of little fish about. Boys terribly excited. They tried netting them with bait seine, but no good, too fast. Tiny and Sparky, however, were finally able to work out a technique with the dip nets, and soon the nets full of little fish were being handed in through the galley window, literally into the frying pan, and, almost literally, they wriggled into our mouths. Very rich. Pelagic stuff taken that night included shrimps, swimming crabs, and transparent fish. Apr. 5, Fri., Guaymas: Here are some Spanish names of animals, as supplied mostly by boys: Chacal is the camaron de la hacha, the little shrimp in the pinna Erizo is urchin. Cucuracha is Ligyda. Lapa is chiton. Pata de mula is cockle (Cardium). Broma is barnacle. Esponja is sponge. Concha de perla is pearl oyster. Anguilla or anguila is eel. Congrejo de Caracol is hermit crab. Caracol is shell in general. Cochito is sea hare (with tinta [ink]). Almeja is clam in general. An Indian further back said the elongate sea cucumber (he seemed to know what we meant, but you can’t ever tell except by checking up many times with other people, and this we had no chance to do: none of the others knew the beast or, at most, didn’t know its name) was called “lumbricia”; the Latin name for earthworm is Lumbrious. Here are a couple of addresses I took; don’t know why, don’t recognize the people now. Oh yes, I think they are the kids who attached themselves to us: Francisco Marquez, Hotel Almada Bar, Guaymas Felipe Hernandes [ditto] The first boy is supposed to be a great liar; and it is he who went away finally with my straw hat, but I’m not sure he intended to take it.

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Apr. 7, Sun., Guaymas: We have been here since Friday noon. First to [the] agent’s office; very good, business-like man with German or Hungarian name—Hunaus. Then to American consul, who is usually stationed at Juarez. Lots of mail for Jon. Two letters for me: one from lab forwarded from La Paz postmaster, one from Frank Lloyd, concerned with [a] bawling out from Ritch [Lovejoy]. Then, [the] agent having asked Captain Corona, the shrimp man and a port official, to contact us, we went to Carta Blanca saloon on the waterfront, where he joined us. Captain Diego Ramirez Corona speaks and thinks both in English and Spanish, is interested philologically, and is somewhat of a philosopher. Highly developed consciousness. He told us lots about the shrimp industry, now pretty much in the hands of Japanese, was very humorous and kind and interested-ing [sic]. The Japanese big boats are 10,000 tons, the smallest feeder boats 100 tons and over; now they trawl for shrimp here (where they formerly used tide nets) as they do in San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound. Captain Corona himself runs three boats. He sent some shrimp aboard and returned subsequently Saturday for visiting. Then we went to Mitla, a restaurant, had beer (but only High Life) and started drinking Hennessey VSOP. With the second bottle, a couple of English-speaking Mexicans joined us. One, a local druggist, very good man, United States educated, who with [his] brother runs a drogueria and botica, the largest one here. And a half-Italian, halfMexican dry goods salesman who is very good man. When we left, a couple of the waitresses, Soccoro and Virginia, very nice and jolly, said they’d like to go along. Someone sent ashore for a guitar-player and for more liquor. I got sick and went to bed, waking up subsequently, vomiting, sick drunk from too much brandy and too much cigar. In the meantime, all the crew had come back from town half drunk and joined the party; they all got stinko and many of them, to judge by the deck in the following morning, got puking drunk. I was sufficiently out so that I heard only occasional echoes, but the reports in the morning from Jon, who was very post-alcohol depressed, were that the Mexican girls got very drunk, and Socorro especially dissolved in pools of vomit until they, with Antonio, were poured aboard a water taxi. The rest I heard from Antonio, whom I met in the morning when, first thing, Jon took me ashore to get the cold beer which is my picker-up. He said Virginia was able to walk home, but Socorro was drunk and crazy and crying and hollering, in no fit condition to go home. Policeman finally nearly arrested the lot, but Antonio succeeded in getting Socorro into a hotel,

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where he had to bribe the night clerk to take them in. According to his report, he then wanted to go and leave her as a vomiting mess, but she insisted he stay until they got ousted, and she went home when the night clerk went off duty at 6 am. I got up several times during the night to find everything awry. I couldn’t find the bronionol, and the phenobarbital disappeared completely and is still gone. I couldn’t find the sea-water bucket or my flashlights, but finally took a Nembutal, my stomach feeling still squeamish, and went back to bed after cleaning up around my porthole. Didn’t get well back to sleep, however, despite Nembutal, and got up around 9 am. Got cleaned up and went to town for beer; felt fine after about five bottles. Jon took me in with [the] outboard, himself staying with [the] boat; I brought back [a] case of Carta Blanca, cold, and we stopped en route back at the Velero II for a couple of bottles with the captain and chief. Coming back, found Carol had cleaned up the boat a little. Tony still in bed very sick. Tex didn’t show up at all this morning, having stayed ashore where we thought he might be in jail. Sparky in swimming; then Crl jumped in with her clothes on, starting a rumor inshore (so it was reported) that she fell overboard. Back in town, saw Socorro in Mitla, looking fine, but I’ll bet not feeling so good. Wouldn’t touch a drop, and Virginia failed to show up for her later shift, so Socorro had to work right through. Antonio very kindly took us in hand, he refusing anything to drink. I was unable to eat more than soup and oyster cocktail, but drank the fine Bordeaux wine that the druggist bought. Went shopping in the market, where I was much moved at seeing little Indian girls, 4, 5, 6, or 7 years old, sitting at stalls: . . . patient and cautious, A flight of pelicans Is nothing lovelier to look at; The flight of the planets is nothing nobler; all the arts lose virtue Against the essential reality Of creatures going about their business among the equally Earnest elements of nature. (Jeffers, “Boats in a Fog”)

It was the essential reality of these (inwardly, to me) unbelievably beautiful children that affected me so deeply. . . . Beautiful beyond belief The heights glimmer in the sliding cloud, the great bronze gorge-cut sides

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of the mountains tower up invincibly, Not the least hurt by this ribbon of road carved on their sea-foot. (Jeffers, “The Coast Road”)

The three or four deep things for me about this trip to date: the Good Friday service at La Paz; the still-used wing of the mission at Loreto; the little Indian girls at the Guaymas market. Oh, yes, and the sad, fierce Indian boy who attached himself to us last and frenziedly at La Paz. And going ashore on the seaward peninsula at Concepcion, with the abundant straight cacti so green against the barren hills, and the pigeons calling. And so back to the boat for a much needed couple of hours rest, and into town again for [an] evening prizefight, where Tiny was to be knocked out. Socorro said she’d like to go with us, but, when I called for her, she said the other girl was too sick to work and she had to pinch-hit for her. Fine evening with three or four good Mexican people. Captain Corona and the druggist and Antonio being pleasantly with us by preference and accepting us quietly. One American was very unpleasant, drunk, raucous, and insulting. And the gallery of Mexicans, being razzed by him viciously, razzing back amusedly. With our different outlook as to time and mechanistics, probably it’s not surprising that we should find inscrutable (except during temporary enlightenments), the genial and slow-paced social kindness of the Mexicans. Against our furious pace and impatience. When I think of Corona, of Antonio, of the drugstore man, of the drunks we saw Sunday at the waterfront bar, of the friendly people at Mitla, of the boy who hired the orchestra Sunday night, it seems impossible that so many people can be so kind in a nonexpedient sense. I keep wondering if I should not interpret their actions in terms of temporal expediency, but I think that in many cases that expression is inadequate, and in some cases it doesn’t apply at all. Many people here have done things for us, even casually, that have no reference to material remuneration or to social, political, or financial advancement for them. In other words, that whole field of human activity that you would call “physical”—i.e., material, scientific, cause-effect, temporal, conceptual in an intellectual sense—they haven’t been working in. The only repayment their actions could have reference to is a payment in kind, or in spiritual things. (Like the army officer in the Tolstoy play who says, when criticized for his wildness in chasing around with tramps, that his gypsy girl friend car-

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ries him to heaven by her singing, and all she wants is a little insignificant, common, and mundane thing: money. That’s an example in reverse.) But some of the things offered, the spiritual or the friendship things, I have a feeling, are offered out of the “deep thing” which underlies both spiritual and physical; in other words, they are given for what they are themselves, without either physical or spiritual expediency. Whenever I accept those things, so freely and even joyfully offered, I have a sense within myself of accepting an obligation in kind also. But in some cases, that’s not the point; maybe some small percentage of such things are offered not with the unconscious hope of reciprocity, in which case they’re pure and free. You can’t easily tell, because the words and actions are identical for the superficial or expedient thing and for the deep thing. The only discriminating quality I’ve ever heard of is what the Upanishads call “the high and fine intuition of the wise.” Now, most Anglo-Saxons, most Germanic people, won’t do those physically nonexpedient things (leaving out for the moment whether or not they’re spiritually expedient). I do, and usually without much, maybe not any, sense of establishing an obligation. But when I’m accepting such things, it’s usually with a full heart that makes me hope they will show up in California so I can do likewise, not necessarily so I can discharge the obligation, altho that feeling is sometimes present, too. I have thought that about Indians who have been good to me up north. But suppose that fine old Indian at Cape Flattery would sometime show up at the lab, he having almost literally given over his soul and (if I’d wanted) many of his poor enough worldly possessions when I was his guest. I had a feeling that he had a feeling (as I had first when the Bohemian neighbor’s saloon burned down) that what he had to offer he found not enough, couldn’t be enough, and that the only nobility was in the giving, not in what was given. Yet, if that Indian would show up, he’d simply sit down for maybe a couple of days in one place, and he’d smell up the lab, and all my other friends would hate him (soon) or be embarrassed after their original interest or condescension had worn off. A person can go from race to race all right; it’s the coming back that involves violation. Yet I know that that old uncivilized Indian was greater, in the way I rate greatness, than the younger, less naïve men on the reservation, who are familiar enough with our customs so as to fit in better. I think, increasingly, that the tie-up of a different culture, with increased interest in temporal and material things (“civilization”) is through good roads and high-tension power transmission. I used to

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think that, in Mexico, increased interest in such temporal and material things as education, public health, housing improvements, etc. was through such political vehicles as national socialism, communism, etc., but now I believe it’s chiefly a matter of good roads and power hookups, or through the influence of people who have been affected by their virus. La Paz and Loreto were “local” towns, although Loreto had the bug for progress (“progress” is a starry-eyed term for people like the young customs guard at La Paz, the custom official at Loreto, maybe, or certainly for the Ensenada woman with whom I had such a long talk last year). Ensenada is tending toward cosmopolitanism, and that whole northern district of Lower California is starry-eyed with hopes for woman suffrage, for the trade high schools that are thought to be fitting the children for a more abundant life, for irrigation, for General Rodriguez’s model canneries and company houses and farms—or upset with disappointment when they find that the vehicles into which they put their hopes have clay feet. I thought all this was related to the renascence of Mexico, but it’s more likely a zeitgeist, infection by the virus of civilization, the most obvious indices of which are good roads and power hook-ups and maybe canned foods. A 110 volt d.c. local power line and a windy dirt road doesn’t change a community very rapidly or drastically, but a high voltage a.c. transmission line, operating day and night and supplying all the power that can possibly be used (since the infinity of all the power produced in [the] western United States is behind it), and a cement road will do the trick in a hurry, whether the locality is conservative England, modern United States, Asiatic Russia, or Indian Mexico. That zeitgeist operates anywhere. Interesting prize fights, not much science or training, but lots of intent and vigor and good health. Tiny, who had been training on the bottle even the afternoon of the fight, took a bad beating from an unskilled, but longer-armed and more sober, Mexican who was in good training. Toilets here are bad and few, as in the smelly Juarez bars in the old days. And as at Ensenada; but I haven’t recently had much experience with them on account of camping out. Here in Guaymas, as at La Paz, they are very bad and very public. The kind of places you have to chase the chickens and the kids out of first, if you’re modest. The kind of toilets where the kids would play toy boat, if Mexican kids were given to playing toy boat, which they’re not. The Indian-Latin combination results in much more openness in matters of sex and excretion than with us. Funny. And in much more real democracy, too, as in the Mexican

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middle-class families, who seem to be glad to have their girls screwed by American sailors who stay all night right in the girls’ homes. Tony, Sparky, and Texas went in to church, were too late, and had a bang-up dinner as guests of [the] Jugoslavian, who was affiliated with the fishing industry here, and with several Japanese and the chief of police. From Sparky, I got a picture of trade unionism as [being as] expedient as in the United States, but far more obvious, intense, and widespread. And with no checks, since there the CIO isn’t fighting the AF of L with opposing ideologies. They pictured a trade union situation that was far more of an out-and-out racket even than it is here. They had a fine time, were well-received and treated wonderfully and hospitably. The “ins” can always be genial. I wanted to see more of Guaymas, which seemed a delightful city. Jon was in a deep post-alcohol depression, feeling very low, not wanting to go in town and not wanting ever again to see even beer, so that he shivered when I mentioned it. But Carol wanted to go in. And so did Tiny, who felt depressed about his defeat, the first in his life. Jon was concerned also, because there had been a note about him in local paper, but I couldn’t see it had any effect on most of the people we met, who had never heard of Steinbeck and who didn’t care if they had; [it] didn’t mean anything to anyone but some American tourists who took me for Jon and asked for autographs. So we three went in, the inevitable small boy looking after our boat, and Crl, Tiny, and I discussing the salutary disciplinary effect of defeat. Seemed to me that if Tiny hadn’t known defeat before, which is a common concomitant of life, it was high time he was meeting it. Went to Mitla, where the druggist joined us in a bottle of wine. Later, Antonio. Had a pleasant quiet time—too quiet for Tiny, who, I imagine, wouldn’t have tolerated it half an hour if he hadn’t been suffering from depression on account of his licking—listening to [a] jam session of [the] orchestra, tuning up, as we supposed, for the dance which was scheduled for 10 that night (but which never came off). Orchestra played Crl’s “Mi Partita” several times, skipper of the Velero II joined us; he and Antonio started “remembering when” about the correctos, which bored us, and which bored Crl particularly. So we three took a pleasant walk along the waterfront to [an] oyster shucking place (fisherman co-op) and back through the whorehouse Yankee-town section. A few girls with the universal earmarks of prostitution. Not attractive, I thought. District lacked the usual severe segregation of prostitution.

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There were children all about; in most red light districts, there’s [a] curious hush, and I’ve associated it with the lack of children, as though the region were “burned.” We met the boy who beat up Tiny, and he came out to greet us open-armed. Shook hands with a genuine democracy most charming, was really glad to see us and expressed it freely. A thoroughly nice boy. We asked another passer-by about a great building, if it was the juzgado. He said, “No, preeson.” And went along with us a while, there again without any expediency except that he wanted to, as an expression of apparently genuine courtliness and hospitality. Then in [the] saloon next to Mitla, we had a few, not-so-good High Life beers and were joined by Sparky. No dance. Some other Americans came in for a while. One of them, thinking I was John, asked for [an] autograph. Crl obliged. I asked if he wouldn’t join us in a beer; he said they were going over to stag at California Cabaret, presumably after side-tracking their women. Tiny got [a] date for himself and Sparky with Socorro and Virginia. They wanted to be taken to California Cabaret, which Sparky couldn’t figure out, since that’s sort of a whorehouse where you dance with a girl and take her to a room and pay her 2 to 5 pesos, she presumably squaring with the management for the room rent. (But Tex, ashore the other night without any money, got taken care of all night free.) Crl wanted [the] orchestra to play “Mi Partita” for her as they did that afternoon, and Tiny sent over 2 pesos as before. But a group of young men who had rented the orchestra for the night returned the money, which for a while made Tiny a little sore. But then the orchestra played the piece complimentarily, the young men being very courtly and kind (no women in the party). Subsequently, the guy who was throwing the party came to our table and asked what we would like to have played. Then we asked him to join us. A friend of his sat in for a while also. They wouldn’t let us buy any more liquor, and invited us to dinner and to the municipal dance from midnight to 4 am. A pansy made a play for Tiny. A nuisance. Finally stopped by one of the water taxi men, who simply told him not to annoy the Americanos. The 30-year-old boy who was giving the party was very genuinely kind; said he wanted to talk English but just was too dumb to be able to learn. Crl understands pretty well. I, poorly. Went then to the municipal dance, which was well-filled. Antonio and the Velero II skipper were there. Antonio got Tiny a dance right away with a not very attractive but exceedingly good person. Mexican gal who took him home to sleep with her at her family’s house. And her

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sister wanted some friend, too, but there was none. I ought to have stayed on, if Crl shouldn’t have been put back aboard ship and if my bladder hadn’t been so ungodly full; Antonio had warned me against urinating in the street (which I found, subsequently, was perfectly OK). So we went to find [a] water taxi. Impossible at that time, Sunday night. Sparky, who had previously announced he had [an] all night date, had been sitting there for an hour or more, disconsolately trying to get back to [the] boat. He and the Velero II captain borrowed a canoe, picked up the Velero launch, and took us aboard for a drink and some pickled oysters before he took us back to [the] Western Flyer about 2:30 or 3 am, where Jon and Tex had been waiting up, Jon very low. Apr. 8, Mon.: Captain Corona was aboard and invited us to lunch. We saw [the] American consul and agent, arranged for groceries, beer, and ice; got leatherware and other curios for presents; and had [a] long, fine, and gracious lunch with Captain Corona. Carta Blanca beer, St. Tomas white wine, Habanero. Fine, funny old adobe house with courtyard with bougainvillea. No English, in honor of Mrs. Corona, but the captain and his wife spoke so slowly that even I was able to follow some of it. An amusing thing happened while we were there. The phone rang several times and we got to talking about telephones, of which there are several hundred in the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Nyarit. When Corona picked up the phone, he would ask for Senor So-and-So’s store, and the house of So-and-So. Although numbers were listed in the book. He said that at one time the phone company insisted that the subscribers should use numbers. But, he said, “We were able to get along for a few days without using the telephone very much, so then the phone company didn’t mind so much if we didn’t use numbers.” Off at 4 pm, piloted out by Captain Corona, who gave us 2 giant shrimps, one mounted crab, 2 dried sea horses, and gave Jon some very hot chile rellenos, etc. The shrimps turned out to be Penaeus stylirostris Stimpson. The sea horses were male and female; the male carried the young in a “zipper” pouch. The captain stopped some of his shrimp boats, poor, funny little miserable craft like the smallest Puget Sound shrimpers, and took us over there in the pilot launch to see what they had. They had gotten only 1,600 pounds [of] shrimp, merely showing the big Japanese boats (as Corona said) where the shrimps were located. Then they come over with their big fine equipment and clean out the beds, so that, Corona said, it scarcely paid the Mexican boats to operate. But from what I saw of Japanese efficiency later, I should be in-

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clined to believe that the Japanese boats were perfectly capable of finding their own shrimp. Anchored for the night right outside Guaymas Harbor, opposite Pajaro Island light, where John promptly caught a bunch of fish that looked, acted, and felt like catfish, and the boys went ashore to dig a bucket of clams that looked like Venerupis staminea. Apr. 9, Tues.: Located the first Japanese shrimping fleet quickly. There were 6 or 7 boats. Upon permission being granted by Mexican and Japanese authorities aboard, we boarded the largest boat of that particular fleet, after our letters from the Mexican Department of Marine [Industries] had been presented and read. Large outfit, with [a] crew of 50 or more in [a] 14′ draft boat apparently built for shallow water work. Mostly shrimps (of the invertebrates) were taken. All the large specimens examined were Penaeus stylirostris (Kingsley). One magnificent anemone, several sponges and/or tunicates, quite a few grass-like gorgonians, an arborescent gorgonian, one sea horse, several squid. In life, the sea horse was quite brilliantly red; turned gray in alcohol. Stomolophus in brilliant hues all over the surface. Many many fish, possibly several tons per haul, which were thrown back; the Japanese saved only the shrimps. We brought back one or two each of the smaller fish. The men, both Japanese and Mexicans, were very kind. They gave us their choicest treasures, 2 dried sea fans and one of the “lobsters” that had been brought aboard presumably that same day, since it was still moist and undecayed. The shrimps were beheaded, shelled, cooked, and possibly also canned, immediately. Very very efficient lot, both in handling boat and net and in preparing the catch. Fish consisted of a great many small teleosts, including pompano (and our boys were pretty mad that we didn’t bring back more of them for food), catfish, and puercos. Eagle rays and butterfly rays. Maybe a hundred or so sharks, from 20″ to 5 or 6′ long, all thrown overboard, hammerheads, brown smooth hounds, etc. Arbolito is their name for gorgonians, and agua mala for jellyfish. The shrimps have ovaries distended. The Mexican Fish and Game Commission man aboard knew nothing about the names of the shrimps; said a study was in progress. Was very kind and fairly intelligent, but not intellectual and certainly no scientist. He said there was legal recognition of (I think he said) 7, 9, and 11 common shrimp, but he could differentiate no species. Had, however, a tremendous respect for scientific work. The respect that tolerant but ignorant people have. He

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thought the male-female succession was correct for the Mexican Penaeus as for the Canadian Pandalus. His name was: G. Mendoz Valerdi, Pisciculta Depts. Pesca y Industrias Maritimas Balderas No. 55, Mexico, D.F. And his personal address: 6˚ Transo av. 3 No. 92 Sn. Pedro de los Pinos Mexico, D.F. He wants [a] copy of our estudios. We also promised to send him [a] copy of Schmitt’s Marine Decapod Crustacea of California, U.C. Press, and list of publications on shrimps. With their many and their very large boats, with their industry and efficiency, but most of all by their intense energy, the Japanese very obviously will soon clean out the shrimp resources of Guaymas. In addition to which, they kill probably many hundreds of tons of fish per day, of which no human use is made and for which only the scavengers, such as sea gulls, can be thankful. After sorting, the dead material is dumped back into the ocean. The eventual depletion is so obvious that, before getting acquainted with the men, I thought there must be some skullduggery going on between the Mexican Fish and Game Commission Inspector and the Japanese captain. But when I got to understand the kindness and integrity (would you call it? honesty, maybe) of the inspector, I saw he was absolutely OK. Maybe collusion higher up. But, on the whole, I imagine the Mexican Department of Marine Industries hasn’t yet realized the danger of depletion, or else hasn’t realized it intensely enough to start doing anything about it. This is not Mexico for the Mexicans, at least not in the long run, anyway, because soon the Japanese will have cleaned out the fishing banks, a purely Mexican resource will be depleted and the Mexicans will have nothing but the taxes they collected. The first step should be some sort of evaluation, no matter how rough, so that catch limits could be imposed. If the fishery will, apparently, stand a 50,000 catch per year, that limit should be established as a starter; the requirement should be insisted upon that the region be combed not so intensively and completely. Part of the resulting taxes should finance a more careful investigation. If the shrimp are going to be depleted anyway, and to hell with the future, the way California sardines are going, and the way much United States timber has already gone, at least the depletion ought to be by Mexicans or for the

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immediate benefit of Mexico. At least some of the needy Mexicans ought to get some of the good. But there again is the conflict of nations, of ideologies, of two conflicting organisms. And the units in those organisms are themselves good people, people you’d like to know, like the kind young Japanese captain. He didn’t have any of the courtesy and formality and false front we associate with Japanese. He was just good people. And so were the crew. The ship we were on was estimated by Tony to be 150 to 175′ long, 600 tons. There were 12 boats in the combined fleets, including the 10,000 tonner. The smallest were 100 ton, larger than the largest Monterey purse seiner. En route south, the boys have been having an exciting time with manta rays. Saw maybe a dozen or more. Two were harpooned but got away, the latter carrying two spears and breaking two lines, one of which was 1-1/2″ hemp rope. Now they have a 3-3/4″ line attached, with a high breaking strain, maybe 20 tons. Pilot fish riding on the back of [a] big manta ray. At that night’s anchorage S of Lobos Light[house], 5 miles from the entrance to Estero de la Luna, John caught a young male hammerhead shark with copepods, via hook and line. Apr. 10, Wed.: Low tide at Altate 6:45 am, at Guaymas 8:15 am, Mexican time; -0.1′, at San Diego 4:45 pm Pacific Standard Time. Up at 5:30. Jon and I left around 6 am to collect in Estero de la Luna. A wet cool night. Outboard motor wouldn’t start, so we had to row the entire distance, a matter of 3 or 4 miles according to the chart and according to Tiny’s estimate. I started rowing while John tried to start [the] engine. Set a hindsight star about due S by the N star and rowed thus until fog blotted out stars, then the Western Flyer mast light by which I was at that time steering, then the boat itself. Then the fog closed in on us heavily from the other direction as well, and we were able to maintain our course only by keeping the boat at a given angle to the waves. We could only hope the wind didn’t gradually switch the waves around, since then we might miss the point entirely and start rowing the long 100 miles around the whole gulf. A “wrong side of the bed” day from the start. I had slept poorly, dreaming I had been bereft of the still physically present girl friend. Got up once at 2:30 am, thinking it was time to start, just about the time Carol screamed with [a] nightmare, and I reassured her. Maybe she

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heard me and felt quieter. Then, when I started to jump from [the] big boat into [the] skiff, I fell instead. Then it was wet and cold. Then the fog closed down. We weren’t even sure originally of our right course for the estuary, a small mark to hit in that distance, even on a clear night. Fearful we’d get too far out to sea, we kept bearing E of N. Finally, with a fair wind kicking up the ocean a little, but at the same time improving our rowing speed, we heard suddenly a vicious whistling or hissing, and both thought at once of the dreaded cordonazo, the violent hurricane, which, fortunately, doesn’t occur at this time of the year. What with thinking about the possibility of the continuing fog keeping us ashore all day or maybe a couple of days, because in a fog it would be impossible for us to find the big boat even with a compass, we were apprehensive in the first place. But our hissing was only the breakers, which we soon got through to a low sandy shore with wave marks and shells cast up even on the highest ridges, and with the tracks of birds and animals all around. The entrance to the estuary was nowhere in sight. Finally, the fog lifted and the sun shone and we made out the entrance, maybe half a mile to the west. Within, the estuary was an inland sea with no shore visible from most places. There was a channel, and fairly large boats with local knowledge could get in. Biologically, it was fairly sterile. There were many small snails, from 1 to 5 examples each of several species of large snails, and some gorgonians with hydroids growing on submerged shells. Near the entrance (where some fishermen were working; they were unsmiling, sullen, willing to talk and be talked to, but with none of the joy that most Mexicans evidence at the chance of a conversation; they had 50–60 pounds of [a] great wide mullet-like fish, took two to carry one between them), there were Harenactis with transparent and almost colorless tentacles spread out on the sand. Further in, there were Cerianthus in tubes, such as we had taken before. Scores of minute sand dollars of a new type, rather brilliantly colored (for a sand dollar) and with holes and elongate spines. A few small heart urchins. I dug a couple of larger ones, further in. There were big holes of two types, but they went down too far for our search on this tide. Some big crustacean, I figured. But the commonest animal of all was the same (Enteropneusta) that we had found at San Lucas Cove and at Angeles Bay and that Carol had worked on. There were hundreds of the piles of castings. I was still un-

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able to get any more of an animal than we had found there, but am not at all convinced we got the whole beast even once. Several large, beautifully striped Tivela-like clams. Many small, flat, pearly clams in the holes we dug in [a] vain attempt to find [the] inhabitant of [a] big burrow. Hermit crabs in various gastropod shells, some large, were fairly common. We found one of the sand-burrowing brittle stars (Amphiodia). Shells and sticks had barnacles, one type of which seemed to be new. One giant swimming crab with barnacles and seaweed. But on the whole, the region was surprisingly sterile. Might have been partly real, partly due to wind making for poor visibility, or partly psychological. I had a feeling that we mightn’t be getting even a fair representation of what was there, but I guess the fauna actually must have been sparse. Mirage is very very bad here. A strange region. You can’t see the shores of these lagoons. No wonder the charts show dotted lines. Everything so strange and indefinite, and wind always on the water. No wonder the Yaqui fishermen (if it was Yaquis that I talked to) have such a bad reputation. They live in an uncertain land. Returning, a long hard trip. Must have taken nearly two hours, in spite of John being able to start the motor this time. (Tex has spent more hours working on that little outboard than he has on the big diesel that goes day and night with little attention, yet it still isn’t dependable. In order to operate an outboard dependably, you must either know that particular motor or else be a good mechanic; with this, both—and still NG [no good].) I was thinking about Boodin’s remarks. His reference to the essential nobility of philosophy and how it has fallen into disrepute. But particularly p. XVIII of The Realistic Universe (1931): “Somehow the laws of thought must be the laws of things, if we are going to attempt a science of reality. Thoughts and things are part of one evolving matrix, and cannot ultimately conflict” (in connection with his favorable disposition toward what he calls pragmatism—a newer and far better light on pragmatism for me). But of course so. In a unified field hypothesis (or in life, which is a unified field of reality), everything is an index of everything else. And the truth of mind (the way mind is) must be an index of the truth of things (the way things are). However, one may stand in relation to the other as an index of the second or irregular order, rather than as a harmonic or first-order index. That is, the two types of indices may be compared to the two types of waves (and indices are symbols as primi-

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tive as waves). Type one: the regular or cosine wave, as the tide, or undulations of light, sound, or any other type of energy, especially where the output is steady and unmixed. These waves can be progressive in the sense of increasing or diminishing, or can be apparently stationary. (But deeply, some change or progression may be found in all oscillation, since all terms of a series must be influenced by the torsion of the first term, and by the torsion of the end or the change of the series.) These waves are fairly predictable, as the tide. Type two: irregular, like the graphs of rainfall in a given region, which fall into means which are functions of the length of time during which observations have been made. These are unpredictable individually; that is, you can’t say whether or not it’s going to rain on a given day, but in ten years you can say there will probably be a certain amount of rainfall. Then I was thinking of the difficulty of explaining this to, for instance, Tiny (when he tried to understand what I had to say about depleting and sardine fluctuation, he got very mixed up and upset), as an index of people in general. He would be happier if he could be relaxed and “easy”—go along with—until he really understood what I was talking about. That may be plenty difficult, but it’s a lot easier and there’s a lot less strain to it than putting up barriers, with their impatience and intolerance, before a person even understands what’s being discussed. Then, if he had any valid criticism, is the time for it. Criticism then becomes a constructive thing, instead of a confusion. I am again impressed with the inaccessibility of the shore. You can go to places out in the ocean easily enough by boat. And you can get nearly anywhere on land by car, or by a combination of car and walking. But that narrow stretch of country called the strand or the beach, which is neither land nor sea, but alternately one and then the other, and which is often beaten by surf, may be very difficult of access. People who are afraid of having something put over on them must live a life of continual and quite difficult defense. I should think it would be very nerve-wracking. They insure themselves against doing more than their share of the work at too high a cost. Talking to Sparky, I was reminded again how important short-wave radio is to these boys. Every night they talk to fishing boats at or near home, or to others who relay the message to Monterey. Which means a lot to family people such as Italians. And it’s a source of much-needed entertainment to them. We’ve twice received fairly important long distance phone or radio calls on business and once sent a wire clear from the wilderness.

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Passing Mayo River mouth today, we saw 5 manta rays, big ones, in quick succession, mostly deep, but one so near the surface that Tony would have run him down if he hadn’t submerged quickly. Apr. 11, Thurs.: Anchored 5 miles off Agiabampo shore last night and ran in further with the big boat this morning. Left about 10 am, arrived inside Agiabampo estuary about 10:30 AM. Returned about 1 pm. The tide when we returned was running so strongly against us through the channel that two men had to row to help the outboard motor. Within the entrance, the banks were heavily cut by currents. There were grapsoid crabs (but not Sally Lightfoot) high in the intertidal in sand burrows slanting 12 to 18″. There were lots of conches with great stalked eyes, and hermits living in their cast-off shells. Further in, there were some Chione and a good many of the blueclawed swimming crabs, Callinectes or similar. In the eel grass, there were a few hermit crabs, not many, but one large and new to us, many sting rays and botetes and some other fish, but it was on the whole—the eel grass especially—a sterile area. I found some eel grass sexually mature and took along some for identification. Lots of snail egg masses on the grass. What snail? We saw none of the animals. Also, what were the birds feeding on, on the bar in the middle of the little bay? One scale worm, magnificent specimen in Cerianthuslike tube. A good many worm tubes not investigated. Why isn’t [George] MacGinitie [director of the Kerckhoff Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology] here? While we were collecting in the bay area to the N of the entrance, the wind was entirely still and we could see well. There weren’t many animals, at least not obviously, on the bottom. On the way out, it seemed that the oystercatchers were hunting the fast and large grapsoid crabs. And what were the crabs hunting, I wonder? En route across the gulf: Tony just asked me to move his can of cigarettes away from the bridge, saying, “It draws the compass.” I realized he said that in the way he’d say, “The point draws the waves,” and I thought for a moment amusedly that an unthinking person would class these phenomena as equivalent, in the sense that they were equally true. Then I thought, “Why not, he’s probably correct, they are.” The Sea of Cortez: and not an awful lot better known now than then.

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Apr. 12, Fri.: Arrived San Gabriel Bay, Espiritu Santo Island, about 10–10:30 am, after running most of the night, but hove to for a few hours on account of fog. Left at once to go ashore, returning 2 or 2:30 pm, Mexican Standard Time. And on the last day of all, as on the first, the outboard motor absolutely balked; we had to row in; fortunately, this time, a short distance. San Gabriel Bay consists of stretches of white coral sand alternating with boulder reefs. There is a fine big patch of coral almost emerging in the center of the bay. Mangrove islands and swamps on some of the bouldery patches. The coral is of the green and brown sorts, with many great heads. There are Phataria and club-spined urchins. The sand beach had: (1) Chitons VVP. By the thousand. At first we found only a few and by accident, but Sparky and Crl discovered while they were in swimming that multitudes could be turned out of the deeper water, maybe 2 or 3 feet submerged, by following the small tufts of green algae attached to the front of each valve. They got a whole wash tub full. (2) Hachas, with their fauna (3) Solitary and clustered Harenactis-like anemones, possibly the same we have been seeing in many variations, as the hard anemone, from La Paz clear on up to Guardian Angel. All varieties from typical Harenactis, solitary, elongate, with bulb buried in sand, down to short and clustered forms attached to stones or shells. (4) Lighter colored Callinectes. Possibly a function of these vividly white coral sands. (5) 1 worm-like holothurian, such as we took at Puerto Escondido. A few new snails. A sea porcupine or heart urchin, very nasty and with vicious sharp spines. Sparky had a pretty sore thumb for several days as a result of picking them up. The rocky reef had anemones, limpets, and barnacles. The one I investigated was being inundated by sand and consisted largely of rocks and small boulders indurated below and being drowned above. The feature here, and the most characteristic animal, was a membranous tubed worm with tentacles like a serpulid. The purple-and-brown color of these tentacles was a feature of the intertidal landscape which changed

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suddenly to sand color when you stepped near and disturbed the animals so they withdrew their tentacles. Langustinas were being cast up by the million. The mangrove swamp was a rich region. The roots of the trees were impacted with rocks that had a fine fauna of crabs and cucumbers. The large hairy grapsoid was highest, very active, hard to catch, and belligerent when caught. Autotomized readily. A Panopeus-like form was very common, and dopey. Many porcelain crabs and quite a few snapping shrimps but difficult to capture. The usual anemones and cockroaches not taken. Mosquitoes. Oysters, 3 limpets, and barnacles on the rocks. Barnacles on the mangrove roots. One Callianassa under rocks. A couple of new ophiurans. The mussel-like clam. A large sea hare turned up in the haul, and a few miscellaneous snails and clams. Most things here seem to be the same color as the coral sand, dazzling white. The last collecting trip of this series, and a very good one. In connection with the unified field hypothesis, note the horror with which Tiny regards such “waste” as throwing dead fish overboard (as the Japanese were doing on that shrimp boat). (I couldn’t tell him that, of course.) Every bit of that fish is eaten by scavengers. If by chance they miss any, the minute particles are utilized by detritus feeders, of which worms and cucumbers are most noticeable. Any microscopic portions—or even large portions, for that matter—so missed are reduced by the bacteria. So that what is one group’s loss or death is another group’s gain or life. Nothing is wasted. The equation always balances. The elements which the fish elaborated into an individuated physical organism, a microcosm, go back again into the undifferentiated macrocosm. There is no “waste”; there are, simply, forms of energy and/or food not utilizable by man. And any process that results in the forming of products not utilizable by man is called waste. The large picture is always clear; also the small picture of eater and eaten, and the large equilibrium of the life of a given animal being postulated on the presence of abundant larvae of just such forms as itself for food. Nothing is wasted. No star is lost. And, in a sense, there is no overproduction, since every single living thing has its niche—a posteriori. Apr. 13, Sat.: 11 am, back on Pacific Standard Time, and back into the open Pacific; there was a tremendous clap of thunder. In an immediately menacing sky, I was above making things shipshape against the coming storm, picking up a couple of boxes of matches before the rain should soak them—we were short anyway. When the perfectly tremendous

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clap of thunder came, it sounded as though we had been shot; I nearly fell overboard. Below, Sparky had been taking a leak. That stopped that. But Tiny was best. He was sleeping and awoke suddenly to say, “What are they shooting at us for?” (I guess navy training; there had been another boat on the horizon before he went to sleep.) Tex just reported a fine dream about me. I was giving a very erudite lecture somewhere before a great hall of people. Very dignified lecture on food, how many varieties there were to it, how many ways it could be cooked, how much care people should take in preparing it. Suddenly I asked, “Oh, by the way, can I get one of the young gentlemen in the audience to go get me a sandwich?” “Going along with” is merely an articulate expression for a process of relaxation whereby you go along with, rather than fight against, the pace of external events over which you have no control, or while you are developing a technique of control in the case of events that aren’t inexorable. Duality. In steering: a west-making tendency on the part of the waves or the wind is compensated by an east-bearing pressure on the wheel. The one is external influence over which you have no control, the other is a compensatory response directed from within, to the end that a straight course can be maintained. The mangrove is Rhizphora mangle (Bancroft, p. 145) [citation incomplete]. Also mentioned as such in Nelson [citation incomplete]. This afternoon, I found myself humorously saying to Tony, as he spotted Margarita Island way ahead, “Is it where it ought to be?” and I have often said that of lighthouses at night. Now it seems to me that that idea is a good distinction between “ought” and “is.” Of course the lighthouse is where it is; we, in a sense are where we are, too, but it is we who are “out” by relation to the lighthouse. Lighthouses are fixed; it’s we who move (comparatively), and if the lighthouse isn’t where it “ought to be,” it’s because we are out of where we want to be. Immediately [when] I came up on deck for my midnight to 3 am shift with Tony, I had that unpleasant sense of [a] presence of an unseen third person. As though a tall cloaked stranger were behind me, face muffled. Someone who couldn’t be on the boat, since there were only seven of us and we were all accounted for, yet there he was. As though you forgot for a minute how many there were and absent-mindedly allowed for an extra. I thought of death behind me in the gray night. It was murky, cloudy, slightly misty, everything was wet, you couldn’t see the stars or the land. We couldn’t pick up the lighthouses that should have come

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into sight, they weren’t where they should be, and one of them never did appear. For a while, I thought of mentioning that sense of presence to Tony, but didn’t, wisely, since he was already plenty strained with his navigation problem. Then I thought of Jon. Then I realized that in this whole superstitious crew there wasn’t one person from whom I could have gotten comfort. All I’d have done in mentioning it would be to scare the hearer, or to arouse the antagonism or ridicule that is unaccepted fear. So the watch passed and nothing happened. Tony got six new gray hairs from changing course according to dead reckoning without being able to see the lighthouse from which he hoped to get bearings. They “weren’t where they ought to have been.” But the critical time passed with no trouble, I steering almost the entire shift while Tony, with even the riding lights turned off, strained eyes and ears for evidence of any possible oncoming danger. Things I forgot to record, and recall now, reading Bancroft again: Dugout canoes, everywhere in the gulf, from Nyarit. Effects of chubasco, p. 165, etc. Dugout water taxis at La Paz. The inner courtyard houses with Bougainvillea, etc. as at La Paz and Guaymas. Hotel at La Paz where there was [an] open sewer running thru [the] courtyard, with many flowers and trees and shrubs, and chickens and turkeys, and caged wild birds. Tiny is flying his kite again this afternoon. Just seems to satisfy some impulse in him, so up it goes. He spent all morning making it, all afternoon flying it from the turntable, or once from the crow’s nest—of a boat coming full tilt up the Lower California coast. Steering illustrates one of the important relations between technic and intention. With Tony standing over me, and I nervous of his observation, no matter how deeply I want the compass card to swing in the desired direction, no matter how great a price I would pay if my wish were fulfilled, no matter how intently under such circumstances an oldfashioned person would pray, it will not swing correctly unless I push the wheel in the right direction. The intensity of desire and the frenzy of the attempt have nothing to do with the desired results unless the technic is correct. If I push the wheel west strong and hard enough, that compass card is going to spin east, in spite of hell and high water. But Ed [Jr.] is an illustration of the opposite relation. He had no predispositions toward music or toward playing the trumpet, except in-

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tense desire. His ear wasn’t good, his sense of time was bad, he didn’t know anything about the technic of music. A musical aptitude test would have demonstrated conclusively that music wasn’t for him. Yet, it seems now that in time he’ll become an extraordinarily good trumpet player, and he’s already pretty good. Saturday following, and subsequent [Saturday, April 20]: We got into San Diego maybe Wednesday—I don’t recall exactly and have been pretty binzled ever since. There were moderate winds and stormy seas for the last 36 hours, and I was out for 22 of them. Tony and I had the watch wherein we came in through the narrow pass S of Cedros and changed the course. Was already pretty rough when I got up after my little sleep. Crl was already getting sick and went to her bunk in the morning. During the day, it got steadily rougher, typical Northwester; I was able to eat and to keep my wheel watch, but not much else. Even if you keep well, bad weather is terribly boring. You can’t read or typewrite, you can’t even talk pleasantly, for the labor of holding on. At 9 pm, I went up on top to take my wheel watch; quite a little spray was coming over, and it was hard to hold on and dangerous to climb the side ladder. Tony was steering, before his time, and he said he wouldn’t want anyone else to guide the boat through the rough seas. The boat rode beautifully. Tony was able to ease her into waves so that she didn’t take any green water, and there was not even much spray when Tiny was hollering for him to “slow down for this one.” Jack used to slow down for them, but Tony said the thing to do was to ease her into them, and if they got too bad to run half-speed. The wind was only moderate, say 20 M.P.H., but the seas were higher than the wind would have indicated. I think three days of a gale would kill me, because I couldn’t keep up my strength enough to eat. I was feeling rocky. Tony suggested that both Jon and I go below, take some sleeping pills, and hit the hay, since it’s difficult, for me anyway, to sleep when the boat is pitching badly, on account of the energy required to hold on. Between then and the following day, counting a couple of phenobarbitals already in me, I had taken 12 of those and Nembutals, and didn’t get up until 7:30 the following night, when we were nearly into San Diego. At 2 am, Tony sent down, asking Jon to take the wheel, and he had to fight off his sleeping pill in addition to fighting the boat around in the stormy seas. All that medicine ought to have slugged me, but still I woke up when spoken to, or when the engine stopped, or the bell rang that indicated

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overheating, or even when my name was mentioned. But when I dressed, passed customs and medical inspection and went ashore to eat steak, I was drunken boy. I couldn’t see or walk or talk clearly. We got into town late, due to rigorous customs inspection, more intense than at any other time I have come in from either Canada or Mexico or Alaska. The boys tried to smuggle some sea stores and the inspectors, finding some of them, slapped a $38 fine against the boat and made a pretty thorough search. I suppose we should have got in touch with the agent first thing. The woman said they were available night or day, but there would be overtime if we came in after 5 or before 8. Jon and Crl went to a hotel for a decent night’s sleep, I went back to the boat, where I slept through that night also. Awoke early, helped clean up the boat, Tiny and I working fairly briskly in the galley; had a little breakfast beer. Intended then to type, but Jon came down and we started drinking Scotch whiskey. All that day we drank. Tiny and Sparky came to [the] hotel and had drinks and dinner with us, I first luxuriating in [a] hot shower with plenty of fresh water. Then Tiny’s girl friend showed up, then Maxie Wagner, and we took over the bar. Later went to the Paris Inn, where I got sad and walked back to [the] boat about 2 am. Got in quietly a little before Sparky rolled along, wearing Maxie’s hat, which woke up the boat. The following day, Crl and I had been considering going back by land but she ended up by deciding to take it on the chin and go by boat. Alberta was going to drive back to Los Angeles anyway and offered to take Maxie and me. I looked up the weather report, found another Northwester moving down from the coast of Oregon, and figured to get a train in Los Angeles. I never have liked being bounced around in small boats and avoid it when I can; seasickness, even if you avoid nausea as I did this time, is pretty unpleasant. We drank beer on the way up, Alberta and I, and whenever we’d stop, Maxie would have a double slug of rum. He was due back at the studio at 5 pm. We got into Hollywood about 6 pm, after he had called the lot, and we hung around, drinking and talking and meeting some quite nice people, like the guy who made Grass and Chang, until Max got shaved and dressed and got me a check cashed. Got to [the] RKO lot about 9 pm; interesting place and people, and what drunks! And beautiful girls who acted like clever floozies, one of them jumping on Maxie’s leg and giving him an imitation screwing that was very realistic. We hadn’t eaten, wanted to go, so some of them asked us to bring back a bottle of Scotch and gave us paycheck vouchers to identify us for re-

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turn. Instead, Alberta and I had been getting acquainted and liking each other, and she said, “Wouldn’t it be amusing if you didn’t show up until after the boat?” I said that’s just about what would happen, and then she said if I’d stay over, we’d go down to San Pedro to the Sea Giant the following night and call up the ship to kid them along, they expecting me already to be in Pacific Grove. So we had a good dinner and lots more to drink and started making the rounds of Hollywood night clubs, which are very good and very cheap. I found Carta Blanca beer everywhere. Alberta knew one of the entertainers at Seven Seas, and we drank and danced around until I thought of the possible urgent need that guy might have for his paycheck voucher. So we went back to the bar where that gang hung out—Alberta has a marvelous sense of direction; I’d never have found it—and there they were. Maxie said, “I knew Eddie would come back,” and the guy with the recovered voucher hugged and kissed us. So then we went to another place, where there was a marvelous Negro orchestra with a piano player, King Cole, whom it was a pleasure to watch. We put the place to sleep, finally, apparently first insulting some minor movie director who figured people should know him. I don’t know any of the names even, and when he got put out, Alberta said it would be all right with us if he went back to his own table. Which Maxie said was a fine thing, because the guy was too much toadied to. Jack Wagner is a good man. So we got to Alberta’s sister’s place pretty late, and didn’t get up until late [the] next day. Then we persuaded her brother-in-law, who is a street-car conductor, nice young kid just out of Missouri, to take the day off, and we got pleasantly binzled again; and they were very good to me and took me to see some of their relatives. Part Indian Oklahoma people. Always in some drunken driving trouble. Compton is terribly strict, opposite of Hollywood. Their Aunt Lizzie was fine; wish John could have been there; I had a sense of love for her in the sense that I loved that old, old Russian woman in Seattle who couldn’t speak any English, that time Xen [Kashevaroff] and I went there for Easter morning breakfast after midnight service with Jk and Sasha [Calvin]. Then over to look up Sea Giant, and nobody knew where it was. We went from Terminal Island to San Pedro, a long way around, only to find it was out fishing. So Alberta located another Monterey boat, the New Roma, and the captain, Buster, a very nice guy, made us welcome, gave us still more beer, which by that time we very obviously didn’t need, and started his motor for power to broadcast to the Western Flyer. They had already closed down their receiver, however, Sparky saying subse-

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quently that he thought Crl might be disturbed by very extensive conversations. Buster promised to try to contact Sparky at 8 the following morning to tell him we were there and partly maybe to forewarn Tiny, in case he’d be sore at Alberta not telling him what she was up to. So back to their house in Compton again, where, way after 10, we cooked a big dinner and went to bed. Lucille was toying with the idea of eating the fine Italian salad that Alberta fixed to go with the best steak I could get—and not very good that time of night—said it usually made her sick. But she ate it and was promptly sick as a horse. In the morning, up late again, leisurely lunch after sunning awhile on Long Beach beach. Left for PG about 5:30, I driving most of the way, a safe steady 65 or 70; car was new. Good dinner at Santa Barbara and beer after that whenever we wanted it. We closed the bar at San Miguel and brought a little beer along, but by the time we got to the lab after dawn, we were cold and tired, and I was worried about how cold the lab would be and figured that my blankets would all be on the boat, and we didn’t have money enough to stay out comfortably one more night and have meals in the morning. But the lab was neat and pretty; I started the furnace. Tal [Lovejoy], bless her heart, had brought back my bed, so we had some music and went to sleep for a couple of hours before trying to route out Tiny, who had been out all the night before. Frances [Strong, Ricketts’s sister] called up about 8 am and Jon a little later. Following day, Monday the 22nd, was the day on which we were supposed to return, I having cut it by one day and the others by two. Sparky and I unloaded the boat; I got Ed to help, and what with the Scotch whiskey I had been trained on, I found it plenty hard. Took four truckloads and one more load of groceries in the back of the Ford. In the afternoon, Alberta and Tiny came over, she en route back to Los Angeles. I sorted stuff out so I could get around; picked up Tal; we had some beer and went down to the boat for some final errands. Trip covered approximately 25–30 collecting stations all in the gulf, upward of 4,000 miles, and two days less than six weeks. We took probably the greatest lot of specimens ever to have been collected in the gulf by any single expedition, certainly the greatest per individual, since there were only 2 to 6 of us, and other trips have had whole corps of scientists and trained personnel to run the equipment. I had kept up in good spirits throughout but feel depressed and lonely now. Part probably hangover, part let-down from the last few days, which were fairly happy, but most probably due to seeing how,

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when people come back from a trip, everyone has some one person who sidetracks everything else just for him. And I keep recalling that in the past year I have had only people with whom I was [the] No. 2 person; I have been companions with terribly nice people like Jan and Alberta— and had a fine time—but their depths were for someone else, and they had little or nothing to give me, or with people like Lee or Marge or Muriel, who haven’t much to give anyone. I suppose the answer is that it’s nice to be loved best and only; and who hasn’t that, lacks an important part of life. So, in one sense, every place is alike for me and there’s no point to my coming back; I felt that most strongly when I came back from Alaska after four months. But all things pass, including that feeling; and the good feelings; and all things. Finished Friday, April 26, 6 pm, a big job. And sorting the specimens, a bigger one now before me. Zoogeographical summing up: at least three regions in the gulf. 1. The SW portion, along the Baja California shore from Cape San Lucas to maybe San Jose Island (the first place the tides started to be “wrong” and the water was so cold). Tropical fauna; corals, sea fans and arborescent gorgonians, ornate starfish, club-spined urchins, highly ornamented spiny lobster. Very rich in a tropical sense. 2. The W and NW portion of the Baja California shore. Much like Pacific Grove: barnacles, limpets, anemones, Panulirus interruptus, no starfish except Heliaster and a few Linckia. Very rich in a northern sense. 3. The E portion along the Sonora shore. Depositing shore, lagoon region, oysters and shrimp. Rather sterile. To be inserted in transcription of notes, gulf trip 1940 Animal names that have become available since trip: Date

Group of animals

Name

Mch. 16

Hydroids

Obelia dichotoma, on turtle

Crabs (no report digested yet) Pleuroncodes planipes, the lobster-like form I mentioned as looking like Pug. Sd. Minida Mch. 18

Cape San Lucas

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Mch. 19

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Pulmo Reef. The tubiculous mollusk that I took to be a tube worm (similar to the forms which proved to be tube worms at C S L) proved to be Vermetus contortus indentatus Carpenter, acc. to rpt. recently received from Dr. [Olga] Hartman (to whom the worms were sent), who had it identified by [Leo George] Hertlein and [G. Dallas] Hanna at Calif. Acad. Sci.

Jon, I started to work this up as an added aid to the notes, but found it not practical to tie in with the notes detail in all cases; so decided not to do it at all. When you write up the collecting trips, let me dig out whatever detail you need the night before. Complete detail can be provided on the groups determined to date, and some dope on the others. For one thing, I found it was difficult to allocate the exact identification to the particular specimen mentioned in the notes, because the tidal level, etc. wasn’t always recorded in the notes if on the labels and vice versa, and in some cases even where my own data was complete— which it wasn’t always—the information supplied by specialist wasn’t treated in such a way as to be completely allocatable. Statement of Collecting Stations in the Spring 1940 Steinbeck-Ricketts Gulf of California Trip Hydrographic Chart 1664 Mch. 18: Rocks south of the cannery in the cove, Cape San Lucas. Cliffy rocks. L 22˚ 52′ N. Moderately protected in usual weather but fairly open to surf and ground swell from the south. Mch. 19: L 24˚26′ El Pulmo Reef extending to about 1/2 mile offshore. In the gulf, but exposed to wave motion from the south. Rocky and/or coral reef, with no loose boulders. Mch. 20: L 24˚29′ N. Bouldery reef S of Pt. Lobos, Espiritu Santos Island, at foot of cliff. Detail on chart 2193. Open to gulf waves only. Mch. 21: L 24˚10′ N. Rocky flat being drowned in sand, 1/2 to 1 mile NE of La Paz. The animals were mainly sand flat forms, but there were a good many heads of corals and occasional rocks exposed; use of shovels was proscribed by rocky understratum. Detail on chart 2103. Completely protected from waves.

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Mch. 22: [ditto]. Sand and muddy sand at El Mogote, the peninsula NW of La Paz. Exploring the substratum with shovels. Detail on chart 2103. Completely protected from waves. At La Paz a number of small boys helped us collect [on] Mch. 21st on the flats NE of town, and [on] Mch. 22nd they brought stuff to the boat for sale, mostly from the Mch. 21 location, but some of the animals (Pennatula at least) from under a cement wharf being built in the harbor. H O [Hydrographic] Chart. . . . . Mch. 23: L 24˚53′: (anchorage at Amortajada Bay, San Jose Id.) Collecting on barren looking rocky reef or islet, probably Cayo Islet 1/2 or 3/4 mile W of anchorage, cliffy rocks and great boulders. Exposed to gulf waves. Mch. 24: Chart 850. San Marcial Point, just S of anchorage, which was at about L 25˚30′. Two trips made here, on the poor afternoon and the better early morning (before dawn) tide, on a rocky reef extending out 1/4 mile from shore. Some of the afternoon collecting was done on the bouldery shore. Exposed to gulf waves. Mch. 25: Puerto Escondido. L 25˚48′ N. Mostly completely protected, rocky pools (Chart 850) and reefs and mangrove swamp area. Some of the collecting here was done in the channel which leads into P. Escondido proper, where the tidal currents run strong; some inside the completely protected cove, but mostly in a smaller cove outside, open only to the anchorage. Mch. 26 and 27: ditto. Made a final morning tide (before dawn) here before leaving. At this point also an Indian speared up a few “abalons” (which were great fixed scallops), hachas, pearl oysters, and great conches from below the tidal range. Slept nite 27th. Mch. 27: pm tide, rocky NE shore of long westerly extending point on Coronado Isld. Mch. 28: Chart 849. L 26˚40′, shore, along the western shore of Concepcion Bay. Sandy shore. We brought up snails, starfish, and sea urchins in [a] crab net set at night at 4 fathom anchorage. Completely protected except from N storms.

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Mch. 29: [ditto]. Much of the material here was got by wading in the water. Some items were scooped up from the bottom via boat with net. Mch. 29: San Lucas Cove. Sand bar and salt water lagoon. L 27˚12′ N. The bar is subject to gulf waves, but the lagoon is completely sheltered. Sand flats explored by shovel. Chart 849. Mch. 30: San Carlos Bay. L 27˚50′ on chart 620. Bouldery shore not accessible on the poor afternoon tide. Gravel foreshore with sea weed and detritus. Some material was taken here this night by light hung over side. Mch. 31: Same. Collecting on the bouldery shore. We were restricted to the middle and upper zones by the poor tide and high wind. Exposed to gulf waves and winds. Mch. 31: San Francisquito Bay. L 28˚25′ N. Fully protected. Mostly rocky and bouldery shore. The Emerita came from sand beach. Apr. 1: Angeles Bay, L 28˚55′ N. Fully protected, but the harbor is large enough so that there are local waves in high winds which are common here. Bouldery flat, granite on coarse sand; below the intertidal there was an extensive algal zone on a soft bottom with so many boulders that walking was difficult. On the north at 5 pm before the tide came in, we collected on the extensive sand flats, with firmly compact, slightly muddy sand. . . . At this point we left the Lower Calif. shore for Sonora. . . . Apr. 2: Puerto Refugio, Angel de la Guardia Island, about 29˚30′ N latitude. The rock ledges and rocky pools in which much of the collecting was done were fairly exposed to gulf waves from the north and showed all evidence of being pretty surfswept— considering the limited size of the gulf—more so than any places N of Cape Pulmo. Strong tidal currents, springs rise 13 feet. Furthest north in the gulf. Apr. 3: SE of Red Bluff Point on SW corner of Tiburon Island. Most of the collecting was on a very hard rocky reef; there were some boulders to the east. L28˚45′ N. A bat was harpooned here at night from the anchorage. Apr. 4: Port San Carlos outside Guaymas Bay. L 27˚57′ N. Completely landlocked harbor. Some sandy beach with swimming crabs and larval shrimps, but mostly bouldery shore. Pelagic stuff taken at night by net at anchorage with light hung over the side.

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Apr. 8: Capt. Corona at Guaymas, who runs some small shrimp boats, gave us a few specimens. Apr. 9: Aboard Japanese shrimp trawler about 5 miles E of Pajaro Id Light[house]. L 27˚53′ N. Trawling in water possibly 4 or 5 fm deep. Apr. 10: Estero de la Luna, Sonora. L27˚18′ N. Completely protected estuary, probably with several entrances. Sand flat. Apr. 11: Agiabampo Estuary, L26˚20′ N. Very large complex estuary, probably mostly uncharted. Sand flats and steep sandy banks, rapid tidal currents. Further in, great beds of eel grass in little pond-like bays. Apr. 12: San Gabriel Bay, L 24˚26′ N. Espiritu Santo Id., back on the Lower California side again. Well protected except from W waves, which have only a few miles to build up [on] acct. [of] L C shore. Stretches of white coral sand alternating with boulder reefs, one of which (which we investigated) having mangroves.

chapter 7

“Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico”

The antiscript Ricketts composed during the summer of 1940, “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico Which Shall Be Motivated Oppositely to John’s ‘Forgotten Village’,” is the only existing documentation of the single most profound ideological disagreement between Ricketts and Steinbeck. A thirteen-page typescript partly in outline form, the antiscript was a pointed response to Steinbeck’s movie script The Forgotten Village, in which technology triumphs over traditional custom. Even more important, it reveals Ricketts’s growing discomfort with the global decline of indigenous culture crowded out by sprawling modernity, a phenomenon he witnessed firsthand in his travels to the Sea of Cortez and later the outer shores of British Columbia. This widening gap between cultures—which he saw in Steinbeck’s The Forgotten Village and objected to—would lead, Ricketts believed, to disharmony among human beings and disengagement from a nurturing natural world. The antiscript includes some of the most explicit statements he made about the interconnectedness between human societies and the environment, and demonstrates how his unified field hypothesis continued to broaden during the 1940s to reconcile human interactions among groups and their subsequent effects on the natural world. •

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I. Thesis II. Materials for a Script A. Plan B. Prelude C. Part I: The Way Things Have Been D. Part II: The New Thing Creeping In E. Part III: The Result—The Debacle F. Postlude

I. Thesis There are two types of entities: The Region of Outward Possessions 1. The outer or intellectual-material things, related to the realm of physical and mental acquisitions: communication and transportation; education in the formal and usual sense, as emphasizing the acquisition of facts and skills, and in which the teaching is by rule, more or less impersonal, and in quantity production; sanitation, medicine, and surgery; engineering, the planning and executing of functional and efficient buildings, cities, highway systems, radio networks, etc.; development and refinements of measuring methods, mathematics, logic, and science; finance and economics. The realm of thinking and of the physical world. The emphasis is on change, acquisition, progress. Symbols are: high-tension lines, modern highways, modern schools. The Region of Inward Adjustments 2. The inward things. Entities of this sort are associated so frequently with the stagnation of present-day religion, or considered so rarely in a consciously disciplined fashion as to require some discussion even to define them roughly. The most obvious examples are in the field of human relationships, involving friendship, tolerance, dignity, or love, but there are larger relationships, between human society and the given individual, between man and the land, and between man and his feeling of suprapersonal participation from within. I have tried to indicate the modern feeling for some of these relationships by the quotations below. Teaching in the old sense is another example, wherein there was emphasis on inward structures, “something to tie to in a crashing world,” a sense of verities, usually established through personal relationship between master and pupil. Although now obscure, ideas of this sort are not without their modern protagonists. A weekly magazine has twice recently questioned whether

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“the other side” may not have values, the loss of which involves a price too high to pay for the acquisition of material benefits: “The life of an English village is based on the premise that contentment is better than efficiency. It asserts that a mass production assembly line is less important to a man than liking his own village and his fellow villagers.” And again, speaking of a Chinese village now being modernized: “Before the war, it was one of the most backward places in China. . . . Today, with the best brains . . . [in the country] within its borders, Szechwan Province is one of the most progressive parts of China. Philosophers may question whether what Lung Chuan I has may not be better than what it will get from the West. For one thing, its kind of civilization has survived a long time. Whether Western civilization will do better can only be answered in 5000 a.d. China is going to find out” (Life, Nov. 24, 1941, italics are mine). A professor of economics contrasts the scale of living with the standard of living: In some cases, the scale as an indication of the standard is poor indeed. In practical life, some social investigators have fallen into error in assuming the standard to be no more than the scale. They have made recommendations for “reform” based on a very incomplete understanding of the whole standard-of-living pattern. The following example shows this. . . . A group of farm families lived in a hilly and infertile region of the South. The material goods they consumed were very meager. They were poor. They were unable to produce enough to purchase what the investigators held was a decent American scale of living. The people had no washing machines and no bathrooms. Their children went barefoot. The variety of food was limited to pork and cornmeal, the vegetables they raised, and the fruit they gathered in the pastures. The investigators proposed that the government take over the land of these farmers and the farmers be helped to migrate to more fertile farms or to take up industrial labor in the city. What the investigators failed to take into account was the fact that to some of these families the life they led was a life they preferred to its alternatives. Fertile fields and fat pay envelopes were not what they most wanted. Bathrooms and washing machines were good, to be sure, but the price their critics would have them pay was too high. Their standard included things that the investigators did not measure or even notice. These families liked the beauty of the hills around them; they liked picking raspberries in the briar patch; they enjoyed their isolation; they did not want ease; some of them even took satisfaction in the struggle itself. Their scale appeared as one thing, their standard very different. Working on fertile lands or in factories, they would gain certain things easily measured and lose others, measured not so easily; and the latter, to them, were more important.

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In the same way, and in even more marked degree, governments may interfere with the lives of subject races who are technologically backward and, in the effort to raise their scale, break down their standard. The change may be so rapid and so extreme that the subject peoples lose their zest for living or even their hold on life. The history of the government’s effort to raise the scale of the Indians affords many examples of this. We gave them money, food, our own type of education and religion; they lost their sense of cultural security on which their standard of living depended. For the sake of a higher scale, standard was sacrificed. (Elizabeth E. Hunt, Consumption in Our Society [New York: McGraw Hill, 1938], p. 265)

Applying this parallel to present-day Mexico, it would seem that the active and articulate middle class already prefers the fat pay envelope. Many of the people are stage-struck with technological progress and tend to hasten the march of their already committed nation. Finally, even the presumably hard-boiled editor of a very practical newspaper is constrained to write about these spiritual entities in a Memorial Day editorial: There is no sorrier nor more unmanly propaganda than that that libels the dead of America’s wars . . . with the inference that these dead have died in vain. It is not for war itself nor for causes of war, that free men give their lives. It is for things they believe in, rightly or wrongly, for causes they consider to be just, for ideals that are in their own minds, or even for the sake of carrying a man’s part among their fellows in suffering and in danger—these things are not vain things for which men have died. Conscientious objectors to war, religious “heretics,” political dissenters have also given their lives for their beliefs. Socialists, fascists, communists, republicans, jacobins, royalists—all have their roll of honor. To be willing to suffer and die for his traditions, his country, and his love of liberty is perhaps the most god-like attribute of man. In that, he is eternally right and forever to be honored—no matter how misled, misguided, cheated, or wrong in fact or principle. However such men die, they rise superior to those that live in vain. (Monterey [CA] Peninsula Herald, May 30[, 1938?])

This “other side,” which in the East even the bravest men are proud to own, is, with us, rarely discussed by practical men. It is associated too often with feminine traits, with the unconscious—the realm of feeling. The emphasis is on acceptance, on appreciation of what is, as contrasted with propaganda for change. A symbol is hard to suggest. Perhaps the “deep smile,” mentioned further along, comes nearest. Having (I hope) indicated the validity of entities of the second or spiritual order, as contrasted to those of the first order, [I have laid] the foundation will for the materials I have in mind. The argument for a

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script on Mexico with a motif diametrically opposite to that of John’s Forgotten Village, but equally true and equally significant factually, could be developed somewhat along the following lines: 1. In the past, the majority of the Mexican people have put more of their life energy into things of the second order (love, friendship, appreciation) than into the problems of getting themselves fine homes and other material acquisitions in general, good health through medicine, etc., thus achieving among their countrymen to the north the reputation for being lazy and careless. 2. The majority of people of the European nations have put their energy into things of the first order, and so have beautiful bathrooms and aseptic operations but lack the Mexican’s natural development in the arts of friendship, appreciation, and human relations in general. 3. The spirit of the first order is dominant in the so-called progressive nations, and it tends to spread from its centers of nurture into previously uninfected regions, a true zeitgeist. It arrives coincident with the spread of high-tension wires, modern schools, [and] the automobile age; but its receptor must be already there, potential in the minds of the people who espouse it. And the spread of this spirit is so rapid and devastating that it upsets the age-old relation between man and the land, and between man and man. The tragedy is that, whatever as individuals we think about it, whether or not we approve, the modern thing exists. Here it is. And it’s furthermore still in the ascendancy as a present reality. We must deal with it, and refusing to face it cannot minimize its increasing inroads. Although history shows that only most rarely the two things may coexist racially (the Periclean Age in Greece), we may at least hope to avoid the extreme imbalance of the Hindu—all inner [values] with an utter lack of material progress—or that of the material American culture with its dearth of inner values. Why the two should coexist so rarely is difficult to understand. Probably the life energy of a race is more circumscribed (restricted) than that of the individual, who seems to be able to build it up pretty much as he will. Developing coordinately is probably equivalent to walking the knife edge. By intent, discipline, and skill, the individual with his free will and determinacy may achieve it. But to postulate that goal for the race would be for us to assign the free will of

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the molecule to the inevitable destiny of the molecule group. Whatever may be the individual divergences of rare constituents, the group, having started in one direction, tends to develop along those lines until it exhibits the law of diminishing returns, or until it contacts powerful opposite influences such as technologically backward races seem to have found in the spirit of American progress.

II. Materials for a Script A. Plan The chief character in John’s script is the Indian boy who becomes so imbued with the spirit of modern medical progress that he leaves the traditional way of his people to associate himself with the new thing. The working out of a script for the “other side” might correspondingly be achieved through the figure of some wise and mellow old man who has long ago developed beyond the expediencies of economic drives and power drives, and to whom for guidance in adolescent troubles some grandchild comes (as the young girl to the philosopher in James Stephens’s Crock of Gold). A wise old man, present during the time of building a high-speed road through a primitive community, appropriately might point out the evils of the encroaching mechanistic civilization to a young person. B. Prelude Picture of some nonexpedient artist such as Goitia or Orozco finishing, with fatigue, but with the sense of a good job well done, a mural that has been conceived and executed in love and with integrity, painting in the final inscription: “La verdadera civilizacion sera la harmonia de los hombres con la tierra y de los hombres entre se.” Literally: “The true civilization will be the harmony of the men with the land and of the men among themselves.” In better English, it would read: “True civilization will secure harmony between men and the land, and between men among themselves.” Actually, it was Rivera who made use of this phrase on one of his murals, I think, on one of the Ministry of Education murals. C. The Way Things Have Been 1. The curiously illuminating smiles, of especially the younger poor country people, on the rare occasions when you are able to get contact

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with them, as evidence of their internal adjustment and happiness in a life normally involving almost unbelievable rigors of poverty and disease (despite which they exhibit stamina probably unattainable by the vigorous American who describes them as lazy), as in (all this as contrasted with the inwardly shallow lives of the outwardly rich tourists as they drive by, bored, or condescending, or dewy-eyed with romance, or seeking something vicarious they’ve been told they can find here): a. Some of the children we passed and waved to, and many of the young men to whom we threw cigarettes, along the main highway to Mexico City. These deep smiles are so illuminating as to comprise in themselves important experiences for the observer. An American would do well to trade his material possessions and his health for such transcendent joy. b. The indescribably poor Indians in the Comancho procession at Puebla, who, stumbling over a sidewalk obstruction in the great crowd where we were taking movies, would laugh heartily and enjoyably instead of being irritated. 2. Their rich relational life, as evidenced by: a. The genuine and contagious joy with which friends greet each other. Even the men were sincerely glad to see one another, not regarding each other so much as we do, merely in terms of possible social or financial advancement. More like the pure camaraderie of slightly drunk Americans, but more quiet and apparently more real. b. Captain Corona in Guaymas remarking to us with courtly sincerity in the presence of his wife that finding and marrying her was the finest move he [had ever] made in his life. c. The Indian who, with his small son, was loitering about aboard the Western Flyer. When he saw a group of Mexicans taking leave of us with expressions of real regret, he said to me with a smile, “Good friends.” I suddenly realized the significance of what he was saying, agreed with him, and told him that such a thing occurred not so often in the United States as it did here. d. The hand-operated, incredibly junky merry-go-round for infants, near the poor people’s market in Guadalajara. Little children were fastened into seats—everything was improvised, poor, and homemade— hung on chains from a Maypole canopied with native religious paintings. Then the operator swung the whole thing around by hand from the inside. I suppose one centavo per ride. Little girls came, themselves little more than infants, with infant sisters and brothers. It was such a joyful occasion I would have given a great deal to be able gracefully to

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treat some of those children to a ride, who looked on so wistfully. If I could [have]—without changing the simplicity of the picture. In this intent, I wasn’t alone. In the scattered group of older spectators, there was wrinkled Indian with a suppurating eye. He saw me watching, as I saw him, and he smiled at me. Probably both of us wanted just one thing more than anything else in the world right then: to give those youngsters, all the children in Guadalajara, all the people everywhere in the whole world, a ride on that wonderful, on that unbelievably beautiful, contraption. But I couldn’t participate without spoiling what I most admired. And he couldn’t; he hadn’t any money. 3. Their inherent honesty, in a sense deeper than we use the term. The fiction that the Mexican is fundamentally dishonest is in part fostered by Americans. (Although I remember sixteen years ago driving with a loaded touring car into Ensenada and asking an American restaurant owner if it was safe for us to park in front of her place while we had dinner. “Lord, yes,” she said, “you’re not in the States. Leave your car parked here several days if you want; nobody’ll take anything.”) But Americans will document this idea, especially those who have lived (as Americans) for many years in the big Mexican cities without once having touched the heart of the country—or anything else, for that matter—except in the most superficial manner (vide the American business man I talked to over by the Green Cross Hospital on election day, 1940). But even the Mexicans themselves, especially the upper class, keep this fiction alive, in pretty much the same way that Chicagoans boast about the wickedness of their city. With some semblance of truth, they point out that everything removable may be stripped from an unguarded parked car; they’re proud of the fact that strangers who walk into certain sections of the city may get into trouble. Their pride in these things is such that they want to believe them whether or not they are factually true. And of course there is some truth in all of it. Petty thievery, as the Communist gal at the university assured me, may be more prevalent in Mexico City than in most United States towns. But the fact of the matter is that people so diverse as Mark Marvin, Carlos Cabello, and Ed Ricketts have been treated better and more honestly in Mexico as a whole than they have been in the States. And even the people who foster the tradition act out of knowledge of its incorrectness: a. In the crowded street near Sanborn’s, at the 6 pm rush hour, Mark gave one peso to a young boy he’d never seen before, with the request that he get an American paper and return with the change. Four out of

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five Mexican kids would fulfill that trust; one out of two Chicago kids would not. (Yes, the boy returned!) b. Carlos is more careless about locking the car than I am (except in the heart of Mexico City, where he says it’s different). When I check up on him, he says, “Listen, Ed, the people in this town are honest, I know them, they won’t steal anything from us.” (As though I thought they would! Just following Herb’s [Herbert Kline’s] instructions.) And Carlos is quicker than I to pick up people along the road. The idea (even if true, and even if Herb insists on it) that giving Mexicans a lift is bad business, ought to be disregarded, because it results in contacts whose value far outweighs its risk of dire consequences. In fact, I, who most disapproved of this proscription, was the only one who paid any attention to it. In its results, the fiction that everything must be watched is a pretty good thing—so long as you don’t believe in it implicitly (and it is true to some extent). It provides a not very remunerative occupation to a great many Indians who would otherwise (presumably) starve and to lots of children. Lovely children! And in the process, many small amounts of money change hands. It provides a function in life for old women who lock courtyard gates—and then relock them—if you come home after 10 pm, charging you ten centavos. Everyone knows you have no business being out after 10 pm, anyway! If this idea were to be repudiated suddenly, it would cause a real upset in the economic life of Mexico (and probably of France and of Spain, unless the war has changed all that) and would work a real hardship on a good many old or infirm people who have no other means of income. D. The New Thing Creeping In The gradual influence of the “new thing,” which was at first outside the country, but which is now working from within, in corrupting the old life and in upsetting the age-old relation between the people and the land and between the people themselves, as evidenced by: 1. The nieve seller at Puebla. The day of the Comancho meeting, a nieve seller was operating in the plaza. Sasha [Alexander Hackensmid, director of photography of The Forgotten Village] and I, faced with an indeterminate wait, were observing the way he did business. From his backpack headquarters set up in one corner of the park, he would fill with nieve his stock of fifteen or twenty glasses, stick a spoon in each dish, and then start dispensing them around the park from his hand

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tray. He would hand a glass of this cheap snow-ice-cream to whomever beckoned for one. We wondered how he could possibly keep track of his dishes and of the five centavos due him, since he took no money at the time. We discovered it was very simple. He didn’t keep track at all; the customer did! When the customer had eaten the ice—slowly, because things of that sort didn’t happen every day and were to be relished fully when they did—he sought out the nieve-seller’s headquarters, returned the glass and spoon and paid him the five centavos. We watched and waited, confident that, in a holiday group of careless Mexicans, the inevitable was only a matter of time. Sure enough! A poorly dressed country-fellow walked up confidently, relaxed and happy, set his glass and spoon on the tray, started to dig for his five centavo piece. At first, everything was fine—just a matter of a misplaced coin. Then the truth dawned on the nieve-seller, on the buyer, and on us, all at the same time. That piece of money had already been spent, earlier in the day. The nieve-seller went about his business, purposefully, permitting his customer to get accustomed to the predicament, unembarrassed by attention. Finally, he walked away, as I believe, to let the man get some composure. Then when he came back, Sasha and I could see the pantomime, and I thought we could safely reconstruct the substance of what was said. “Perfectly all right,” said the nieve-seller, “these things happen to anyone. Why, I remember once when I . . . etc., etc. . . . If you’re in town of a Sunday or feast day in the next few months, and have the money, look me up, I’ll be right here in the plaza. If you’re not, or if you’re broke, perfectly all right, think nothing of it.” And so on, until they parted, best of friends. I kept thinking: What if the nieve-seller tried to conduct business with Americans along those fines, or even with United States–resident Mexicans who had acclimated themselves to our ways? Your brisk, ethical American would not only not bother to pay the nieve-seller (since doing so would entail some trouble), he wouldn’t even bother to return the glass and spoon. “Such lack of business acumen!” the American would think. He’d set down the glass and the spoon, that precious stock-in-trade of a poor huckster, wherever he’d happen to be. He wouldn’t mean to cheat the man. He’d say to himself, “Hell, it’s only a small amount, less than a cent in real money, anyway.” He’d just neglect to attend to that small matter. And the nieve-seller, who dealt formerly only with Mexicans, who have, in any case, such a reputation for small thievery, would have to adopt a C.O.D. policy when dealing with Americans. Or else he’d have to retire bankrupt from his business

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with an attitude of cynicism toward the “honest” norteamericanos, to boot. 2. A new road being forced through an unwilling country (as I have seen happen in Santa Tomas Valley in northern Lower California) by a nonresident socialist government which believes in good roads and rapid communication, whether the district wants it or not. A wise old man, seeing this, would realize that the sudden change would destroy a lovely old way of life, and that the school teacher or government official who was the instrument of the change would be all the more dangerous if he were a good man who himself had the fire of zeal for the new thing. The old harmony between the people and the land would be upset by the new high-speed road with its strange people passing by, with its trespassers and picnickers, and by the changed economy incident to a highspeed road. The good relations between parent and child would be upset by the boys hitch-hiking into Ensenada to the movies and pool halls, and by the gals getting themselves screwed by flashy strangers in shiny cars. (Alongside of this contrast are Orozco or Goitia, honest and fierce, uncorrupted by the new thing, painting a mural in which a mechanical man is shown strangling the Mexican race [which Orozco actually did portray in his Belles Artes mural.]) 3. The children in a primitive community before and after the high speed road has come through. The first is exemplified by such a town as Loreto, where one boy was genuinely interested in showing the strangers through the mission and the school and the town, not primarily expediently or for money, but because he had a warm heart and because he liked the stranger. The second type is illustrated by the kids at Tijuana, interested chiefly in what they can get out of you, in some cases becoming thieves and rascals. In an inward sense, the Mexicans are more advanced than we are, but they can be corrupted by a virus so powerful as that of the present United States mechanistic civilization. E. The Probable Results Humorous interplays: Their naïve use of the machine in which they are (already today) most vitally interested. It’s a beautiful new toy, and they cling to it, despite the fact that it takes the smile and the slow pace out of them, upsets their relation with the land and with each other, and substitutes the irritated nervous pace of Western man.

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A debacle, per remarks of what’s his name, the very tall movie director who did Grass and Chang. Just returning from the interior of Guatemala a couple of years back, he said it was his hope that there would be no compulsory education there ever, to change that sturdy primitive simplicity and hospitality. Said that he was in Persia before and after the spread of education—went in the second time by plane— and that the very great change could be attributed to no other obvious factor. That the new thing had come in there without benefit of road or power line (but of course the airplane and its basing facilities is [sic] a pretty modern transportation method, and I should expect that it could change the country fastest of all). Mexico City camiones, driven like a bat out of hell, radiator invariably boiling, cap thrown away after the engine has boiled the first few times. It’s the ideal of every Mexican boy to be [the] driver of an emergency vehicle, and very many of them are! After this change had [sic] taken place—and it’s happening pretty rapidly in Mexico—I should expect to see: The fine plumbing that doesn’t work at night [on] account of low water pressure. As Carol says of the bombas, the pressure pumps: “They can’t go day and night.” The lack of the deep smile in the common people as evidence of their lack of inward adjustment and happiness in the midst of a life now of comparative ease, health, and financial security. 1. The woman in the home now would be making tortillas from packaged cornmeal with a not-too-good electric mixer. Goats milked by an electric milking machine, worker in a hurry, co-op dairy closes at a certain time and 100 percent production must be in before then. Smile gone. My incident of the Lomas de Chapultepec line of camiones suddenly ceasing operations. No one seems to know why. The people told me, “They just stopped going by,” and didn’t seem even surprised! (There was a strike. I kept at it until I found out. But still I’m not entirely sure!) 2. A Mexican in a co-op factory, as a putter-on of a single bolt in a quantity production line. Smile gone. A nervous irritability (foreign to him and to his race) now in its place as the foreman gives them a pep talk on the five-year plan, speeding them up toward still greater heights of production “so that everybody’ll have enough of everything” (except adjustment and happiness). Impossible for him to quit now. He’s acclimated to the new thing, accustomed to his present scale of living and

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has now no other means of support for his family. There is also the social pressure of his fellows. And of his superior: “The state needs you.” An American rushing suddenly into a store to phone, only to be told by the storekeeper after storming into the phone for several minutes: “Oh, Senor, a thousand pardons. How unfortunate that I neglected to tell you sooner. For three days that telephone doesn’t work!” F. Postlude A group of assembly line workers, spending their day of rest in the State Museum (of the future), as all good workers should do, passing before the painting shown in the prelude, smile all gone now, significantly and sadly reading the words (now all the workers can read). La verdadera civilizacion sera la harmonia de los hombres con la tierra y de los hombres entre se.

chapter 8

“Outline and Conspectus” for a Book on the Mandated Islands

Ricketts’s interest in the Japanese Mandated Islands—in particular the Palau Islands east of the Philippines—began in the early 1940s and continued through World War II. Though he initially hoped to assist the United States Navy by gathering data about the region from published studies by Japanese scientists, his correspondence and encounter with military officials—portrayed by Steinbeck in “About Ed Ricketts”— were less than fruitful. Ricketts turned his attention instead to assembling a popular book that would help American citizens understand the history and culture of the region’s inhabitants. In the five-page typescript he drafted in 1944, “Outline and Conspectus,” one of the most thorough of his proposals, he presents a comprehensive overview of the book’s projected content and structure. Through his Mandated Islands project—like his explorations of philosophy and literature—he continued his pursuit of a holistic perspective not limited by a single discipline or political stance, one that literally and metaphorically widened the latitude and longitude of his worldview. Ricketts’s studies of the Mandated Islands marked a temporary shift into an unfamiliar geography and seldom-worked social and political territory, and the aside enriched and deepened his unified field hypothesis for precisely that reason. •

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I have been interested in writing a book along the following lines because very little information is available popularly on the Mandated Is215

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lands. Beyond a recent but limited book of Willard Price’s, there are few popular accounts of this region, now very much in the headlines and important in its own right. The average man frequently sees the names Truk, Ponape, Woleai, Palau, Kusiae, Jaluit, Tinian—fantastic names at that—mentioned in the papers, but he can’t find out anything about them. The encyclopedias carry only the sketchiest articles on the three or four chief groups, and most gazetteers fail even to mention such names as Korror and Kwajalein. Yet the capital of an area dominating more than a third of the northwest Pacific Ocean is on the comparatively unknown island of Korror in the Palau group. The region has great strategic importance; within it may be waged some of the decisive campaigns of this war. Here many an American boy will lose his life, many a medal of honor will be won. After the war, the United States unquestionably will administer the region. It was here too that an ideological struggle was symbolized. A bell tolled here also, as in Hemingway’s subject matter. The forces of internationalism stood on trial and were defeated by Japanese nationalism. This mandate was also an experiment by the world’s first largescale political experiment, the League of Nations—an experiment in humanity that has failed as much from our national refusal to participate as from any other cause. More information of a popular nature should be available on the Mandated Islands, and it is this need that I am attempting to fill. Nothing else at all comprehensive and popularly addressed is elsewhere available.

I Prefatory: How come one who’s never been there—as few Westerners have recently—and who speaks no Japanese, should be writing about this region. Per detail on pages 6 and 7 attached. II Introductory. Physical aspects. Highlights of the investigation. 1. Popularly unknown. Actually well known, but to scholars only. 2. Japan’s colonial empire, “the gold of the Indies” on a toy scale. Land area only eight hundred square miles (city of New York almost four hundred) yet dominating a large part of the north-

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west Pacific Ocean and hence of great strategic importance altho commonly rated as worthless. 3. Huge number of islands, small size, many minute. Atolls. Population small. But important to Japan, as [a] producer and consumer and as [an] outlet for overflow populations. Lebensraum [space sought for occupation by a nation whose population is expanding]. And, since the jingoists in the homeland came into power, an important fulcrum in their scheme of world empire. All evidence, nevertheless, points to the fact that Japan kept to the letter of her agreement with the League, at least until the nationalists assumed control, newspaper statements to the contrary notwithstanding. 4. Miscellaneous: Mandated Islands [are] chiefly where our romantic ideas of the South Seas islands came from originally, via New England whalers who practically controlled the region [a] hundred years ago. Illustration of Japanese trait of decentralization. Governmental buildings and works scattered around. Area ideally adapted to defense in depth. Other ideas.

III. History A tangled montage of Japanese occasional traders before the 1600 isolation of their homeland; of rediscovery by Cook, Marshall, Kotsebue, etc.; of conquest and neglect by Spain; American whalers and missionaries, Germans, Spanish and German Catholics: all influencing the easygoing natives, who only rarely revolted; commerce, religion, and politics of a particularly tarnished sort. American traders. Biologists and ethnologists. The German Godeffroy Company, and the museum at Hamburg. German South Seas expedition and thirty fine, large, and well-illustrated volumes of its report. Charted every inch of many of the islands, mapped every road, every house. Sketches of the shoreline. Genealogies of many of the natives. Then the world war. Japanese conquest. The usual secret agreement later modified by the League of Nations into a mandate. The Japanese recolonize the area. And now again the Americans.

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IV. The Natives Predecessors of the present natives were of a different and unknown race. Left [a] large mark on [the] islands in the form of archeological ruins related to those of Easter Island but more extensive. Method of transportation of great stones is still a mystery. Language, culture, ethnology, anthropology of the present natives well known thanks to the Germans, the Japanese, and our own Bishop Museum at Honolulu. The intense insularity has speeded up evolution, making the societies of humans markedly different from island to island (as it does with races of insular animals), highly adjusted to their specialized environment, hence sensitive and very susceptible to introduced changes. Specialization includes social and land ownership systems, clans, monetary systems (Yap stone money), taboos, sexual perversions, mutilations, [a] multitude of languages. Altho differing widely, there is conformity to [the] following general plan: 1. They are placid, kind, intelligent, easygoing, and easily influenced. 2. [They] reflect the “path” standard of the East as opposed to “bread” standard of the West. 3. Their life span is short, and epochs [are] correspondingly compressed. 4. Sexuality is highly developed and highly specialized. 5. They are barely holding their own, slowly dying out in some of the islands, slowly forging ahead in others, but just about keeping even on the whole. The language is primitive and (therefore) highly specialized. Many words, the multiform inflections being indicated by separate words. Several types of plurals. Apparently not too difficult. But varied enough not to be understood from one group to the next. Implements originally [made] of the hinge of the giant clam; terribly hard stuff, must have been difficult to work with their limited tools. Systems of taboos, of land ownership, of social structure, [of] inheritance of nobility and possessions. Complicated and varied. Religion. Every entity, storm, sky, ocean, tree, had its titular spirit, which often dwelt elsewhere. For instance, the blue starfish was sacred to the spirit of the rain, and therefore molesting one of these starfish

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brought on a rain storm. Account of F. W. Christian. Furness account of integration of witch doctor, per modern psychological development of personality. Present natives [are] all Christians of the most narrow fundamentalist sort, reflecting the missionaries who taught them; old taboos take new forms. Mutilization [sic], etc. Elaborate tattooing in some of the islands. Elsewhere partial castration. On Woleai the labia minora at adolescence are lengthened artificially to so much as three inches by technicians who do that work especially. “Dadurch,” as the German scientists explain “cunnilingus befördern,” but I presume this isn’t exactly a hindrance in more conventional relations as well. Fine weaving. Elaborate dances. Poetry per examples attached (page 8). [Editor’s note: No text was attached to the extant draft of this outline.]

V. Present (Japanese) Landlords Certainly very good at least up to war years. Personal opinion: Best colonial government in South Seas at least until homeland was delivered over to the militarists. Only complaint: they make the natives work, who very obviously prefer not to! The question of fortifications: Clyde, Price, Herre. Development of natural resources. Agriculture. Sugar. Modern Agriculture Experiment Station. Tuna fisheries. Fisheries Experiment Station at Korror. Pearls. Marine Biological Station at Korror. Mining: phosphates. Big business ala [sic] Mitsui’s, the Du Ponts of Japan. Nationalism and education. Religion. The Protestant and Catholic missions get the money, even those with headquarters in Germany and the United States. Japanese Buddhist missions get little. Public health. Well looked after. Hospitals. Low fees rather than charity, which is available but not preferred by the natives; Japanese colonists pay higher rates. [The] Marshall Islands, at the time Japan investigated, had [the] highest venereal rate in the world, in part attributable to our good New England ancestors, the whalers.

VI. Missionaries Most important single chapter in the South Seas: The not-always (but usually) depressing story of the missionaries. Potpourri of intolerance,

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avarice, self-sacrifice, power, honesty, commerce, downright wickedness, occasional greatness, and loving kindness. The squabble between sects often very bitter among missionaries, with converts dragged into it. Verbatim reports from the missionaries themselves, and from early explorers, later travelers, traders, scientists. Some of the troubles of the earliest missionaries are too amusing to pass by. “Mr. Harris told him (the chief) that he did not want the woman. However, she looked up to him as her husband, and finding herself treated with total neglect, became doubtful of his sex; and [she] acquainted some of the other females with her suspicion, who accordingly came in [at] night when he slept, and satisfied themselves concerning that point, but not in such a peaceable way but that they awoke him. Discovering so many strangers he was greatly terrified, and perceiving what they had been doing, was determined to leave a place where the people were so abandoned and given up to wickedness, a cause which should have excited a contrary resolution.”

VII. Summary and Conclusions The Mandated Islands and their ramifications in world politics. A proving ground for the tenets of internationally minded leaders versus rabid nationalists among the Japanese politicians. See text attached, pages 9–15.

VIII Alphabetical gazetteer to the principal islands, area, location, population, character, etc., with synonymy. Some of the islands have more than half a dozen entirely different names in as many languages: English, native, Spanish, Russian, German, Japanese, etc.

IX Alphabetical and chronological reference bibliography to the principal books. Where to find out about the region in greater detail. Useful for soldiers, administrators, travelers, even for the armchair variety of traveler. My own experience has been that the first problem in investigating a new field, and often one of the most difficult, is where to find out about it; this will be a brief directory for such a further search.

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X Illustrations and maps. The whole area can be shown on illuminated and cover maps, which I will have prepared. There can be three smaller maps in greater detail to show the Marshalls and east Carolines, the central Carolines and Marianas, the eastern Carolines including the Palau Islands, with blown up inserts of the smaller groups. Outline maps as line cuts could be shown in the gazetteer if desirable, opposite the listings of the separate islands. Illustrations of natives, fetishes, houses, tattooing, boats, fabrics, and possibly a few air photos to show the general setup if we can get any that are interesting.

XI. Index

chapter 9

“Transcript of Summer 1945 and 1946 Notes Based on Trips to the Outer Shores, West Coast of Vancouver Island, Queen Charlotte Islands, and So On”

By 1945, Ricketts had begun what he expected to be the third volume in his North American Pacific trilogy, a study of the outer shores of British Columbia that would complete an ecological map of marine invertebrates of the North American Pacific coast. That summer, he and Toni Jackson made a six-week ecological reconnaissance of Vancouver Island studying marine specimens and coastal environs—the first of a series of preparatory trips for the project. One year later, they returned, accompanied by Ed Ricketts Jr., recently discharged from the army, and expanded their survey to include the Queen Charlotte Islands. Ricketts saw the two trips as the groundwork for the book “The Outer Shores” and the expedition he and Steinbeck would take together in the future, much like their 1940 Sea of Cortez trip. Ricketts recorded his 1945 and 1946 observations in his “New Series Note Books #3 and #4,” a series of oversized black volumes. In early 1948, he compiled his notes and recollections into the “Outer Shores Transcript,” documenting personal reflections and anecdotes as well as scientific data from both trips—a typescript similar to his “Verbatim Transcription” of the Sea of Cortez trip. The original single-spaced document includes seventy-one pages (twenty-eight for the 1945 trip and forty-three for the 1946 trip) and one hand-drawn sketch. Significantly, throughout the typescript, Ricketts makes more complex connections between animal societies and human behavior, a shift in his attention away from aggregations and cooperation. He looks instead at the intricacies of relationships, and he 222

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Figure 15. Ricketts and Toni Jackson collecting in the outer shores region of British Columbia, 1945 or 1946. Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

begins to articulate an integrated system of associations, or the concept of the ecosystem. His studies and writings from the final years of his life reveal an increased attention to the interconnectedness of such relationships, stretching wide a unified field hypothesis that embraced the delicate balance of all things, living and nonliving. •

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Journal of the 1946 Trip Because some of the offshore islands of the PC [Pacific coast] (Cocos and Galapagos, for instance) are known to have unique elements even in their marine fauna, and because very little had been done with the Queen Charlottes and the west coast of Vancouver Island even in cataloging the fauna, let alone in considering it ecologically, I decided to investigate them during the summer and, particularly, during the times when I couldn’t get to more distant and more important (to my work) places such as [the] Aleutians, Bering Sea, Kamchatka. Altho very few people ever go there, the west coast of Vancouver Island is fairly accessible. The seventeen-hundred-ton Princess Maquinna of the fine CPR [Canadian Pacific Railway] system makes the trip every

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ten days, and much of this time is spent in quiet inland waterways. The west coast can be reached otherwise from the east shore. The railroad runs to Port Alberni, at the head of Barclay Sound—Alberni Canal, one of the fjords that cut more than halfway thru the island—and from there you can get to the open coast by a seventy-five-foot motorboat that makes the trip three times a week. A third way is to get off the inland passage steamer at Port Hardy near the northern tip, where a road seventeen miles long takes you over to the Pacific coast at Coal Harbor, a port of call for the west coast steamer. The Queen Charlottes are little less accessible. The Union [Steamship Company] line runs a service there every two weeks from Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The steamer is small, nine hundred tons and very old, rebuilt in something like 1909, slow and old-fashioned. One of the charms of these outer shores is that the methods of transportation are two generations back; even the navigation methods haven’t (or hadn’t in 1946) picked up any of the new methods. Steering is still done by hand, and they say northwest by a quarter north, etc., instead of giving the course in degrees. Sounding is done by hand. They haven’t [a] radio compass. Some of the navigation is still being done by the old rule of thumb method of sounding the steamer whistle and determining how far the boat is standing off from the shore cliffs by the length of time the echo requires. Fog. Before going up there first in May 1945, I read all the apropos literature I could find at the University of California library—not much— both general and biological. The early navigators, including Cook and Vancouver, had some interesting dope, and there was even a tie-up between Nootka and Monterey that Toni explored and wrote up in an early issue of What’s Doing. It’s amusing to recall that, when the Spaniards were pushed out of British Columbia as a result of the Nootka Convention, they took some of the Nootka Indians with them to Monterey and to [the] San Juan mission. One of the fathers in the Indian school at Kakawis told me that a priest of their order, stationed at [the] University of Santa Clara, got interested in that tie-up, looked up the church records, and found that the children of some Nootka Indians were baptized at Mission San Juan near Salinas; that must have been 150 years ago or more. This same Father showed me also their official record book for [the] west coast of Vancouver Island—all the marriages, baptisms, burying, confirmations since the modern Catholic Church started up there again. Starting out in the clear old-fashioned handwriting of beautiful, stern Father Brabant. Well, that’s all later in

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the notes, and I hope to hell I recorded it. careless eddie. dirty daddy. Tully of the Nanaimo Biological Station just wrote a paper on the oceanography of Nootka Sound; fortunately I was able to get copies of this and most other apropos papers before starting out. First trip, we went right thru to Victoria, past the unpleasantness of wartime travel, secret schedules of departures of all open coast ships. (The CPR [Canadian Pacific Railway] west coast service took a beating; the ships had to be completely blacked out—one of the lighthouses in this country took a shelling from [a] Japanese sub—yet they had to run, otherwise the people living there would suffer, and the canneries, pulp mills, lumber camps, and mines had to be served.) Isn’t that all ridiculous to look back to now, yet probably we’ll be in it again, and worse, and maybe soon. If Russia and the United States, if Great Britain and France and Norway and Switzerland could only junk their defense (and offense!) military budgets, devote that money and thought and energy to the common enemy—degenerative diseases, public health, psychiatry, and human relations, including especially international relations [and the] problems of the distribution of goods—what a difference that would make in our human misery and our bad dreams and our unexplained personal depressions. Maybe a difference only for a while. But what a difference! To believe the Ed Jrs. and the Thom Steinbecks and the John Lovejoys, sensitive people all, could devote their life energy to interesting and constructive things rather than to getting along with a bunch of men in the army. Oh say, Jn, in that connection, I seem to have lost all my copies of an old paper I wrote chiefly about wave shock, based on the southeastern Alaska small boat trip with Jack Calvin. If by any stroke of great good luck you have a copy—I’m sure you don’t, but how I wish you did!— send it along; very apropos right now for comparing with these results. But in Victoria we had a little time, and the very good library there put its facilities at our disposal. They have a lot of fine old stuff, natural history only incidentally, but not much natural history of humans in a pioneering wilderness. Also some dope on Alaska and the Aleutians I hadn’t been able to get previously, even at the University of California library. The librarian there even let us take some books up the west coast with us, so Toni had the honor of either then or next year having overdue books from four different libraries at once. It’s amazing how few people even in Victoria have been on the west coast; it’s far more a terra incognita to them than it was to us, because, of course, [it was] more imminent. They regard it as an almost hopeless

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wilderness of rain and storm. The museum there is fair in marine biology, v.g. [very good] in anthropology. British Columbian Indians were certainly fine craftsmen. Still are. You recall the fine heraldic paintings we brought back from the Catholic school at Kakawis, done by children eight to thirteen. Midnight sailing brings us into Clo-ose to see [a] boat landing three or four miles offshore, usually [done in] daylight. But at night with fog and [a] great groundswell running, I don’t see how those Indians in their dugouts can possibly contact the steamer; that landing can be interesting and dangerous. The captain, still slightly swacked (but a better seaman than his sober young mate), trying to find the buoy, sounding his horn, hoping the small boatmen on shore (waiting hours for this, no way of knowing beforehand when the steamer will make it—on the way back anyway), can hear his whistle, saying to me [in a] Scotch brogue, “Doc, this is the shit of a life.” How those Indians hand up and discharge baggage and freight, and even on one occasion five or six children, including some in arms, or Indian women off for medical treatment, is more than I can see. I figure that the vertical disparity between steamer and canoe can be twenty feet. Takes nice coordination. Yet I’ve seen only one piece of freight dropped into the water, and that floated and was recovered instantly. The kids are perfectly quiet, they make no sound or motion; I suppose [they’re] scared, but you can’t tell it from their action. When the two seamen aboard get a firm grip on the outstretched arms of one of the women, how they do hold on. And the canoe drops away maybe fifteen feet as the steamer heaves up. At Clayoquot [on Vancouver Island] subsequently, they told me that in the old days the Alaska sealing fleet of those wonderfully seaworthy Indians had its headquarters there. The payoff was at Clayoquot, in gold, and the very guy whose house and store we were living in ([an] Indian trader name of Dawley, [with a] daughter married now to [a] crab cannery owner in Tofino, very good guy) would get his satchel of gold from the steamer. On one winter day of difficult landing, [the] steamer couldn’t come in to the wharf; [a] small boat contacted it in the stream. Somehow the bag of gold got dropped, and of course that would be the end; but it landed on that ledge—what do you call it, Plimsoll?—that ledge that splashes so bad when you come alongside in a small boat. Landed there and stayed there till the boatmen picked it up, thousands of dollars. Another thing that amuses me along this coast where the steamer is the only contact: the sale of stale newspapers and magazines, particu-

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larly to the young Indians. It must be quite wonderful for them to come aboard from their wilderness and not very good houses, onto a warm, dry, brilliantly lighted steamer with all the trappings of the civilization that’s so far away from them racially. For ten cents they can buy the wonderful and the illustrated adventures of Superman. Well, how are they different from Superman? The contrast between their life fifty years back or seventy-five, and what they can be in now for a few minutes once or twice in ten days, is just fantastic. And a woman who is well dressed, and who maybe earns hundreds of dollars every month—for all they know—waits on them; they can get her to wait on them if only they have the dimes and the quarters. They can even go down into the dining room, if the steamer stays there long enough, and buy a swank meal. I don’t know why more discriminating people don’t come up here. The ten-day round-trip costs something less than sixty dollars, cheaper than you can stay in a comparable hotel ashore. I had along on this first trip a manuscript copy of the English translation of that marvelous [book by] Ekman, Tiergeographie des Meeres, and I would read and eat and sleep and watch those Indians, wonderful restful time, and go out in the rain and wind and see that fantastic coastline go by. I get a curious feeling that’s a combination of fear of the sea and of seasickness, and cold, and liking of the sea and its animals, and loving that lovely difficult west coast; it’s very exhilarating; you have to be alone, but on the deck outside on a bad day you are alone. That Ekman is a magnificent thing; I hope the English translation will be published soon. Amusing to think of a million-dollar steamer heaving to on a wilderness coast, dropping a mail sac, delivering a few hundred pounds of freight, selling a few papers to the Indians. I suppose their mail franchise requires it. A rake and some groceries consigned to Rev So-andSo, a case of was it whiskey—I hope, but I bet not—or probably just an MT [empty] whiskey box refilled with groceries. Probably not so much as a case of whiskey left anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. You get it by the bottle. If you’re lucky. All this reminds me of another time we came along here very very late at night, I guess 1 or 2 am; the Indians must have been waiting hours for that whistle. Fog and a heavy sea; you literally couldn’t see three hundred feet. Anyway, here they came on out soon as the engines were stopped. Lots of stuff to pick up and deliver, and there was a marvelous young girl along, I suppose eighteen or twenty or twenty-two, lived there I understood from one of the crew, came out with the Indians often just because she liked it. That gal’s eyes

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were positively sparkling; she looked wonderful; what a life that must be, atavisms right at the surface all the time. A Reverend here and one or two families of old-timers, now not much to do, but they stay on. A cheap and a good place to live. And of course the Indians. Revenue man later on told me they have trouble here all the time, because they can’t beat it into the heads of the Indians that they mustn’t get into their canoes and paddle sixty or eighty miles over the stormy open ocean to the coast of Washington and buy and sell stuff there, or bring back U.S. goods here with customs duties unpaid; it ain’t right. What people. They’re like the gulf Indians: they’re born in their dugouts. But down there it’s often calm; here it never is. And on this time, there were several boatloads, and when the first boat got unloaded of its going-to-theIndian-school passengers [and] started back, the steersman hollered up to the captain—this was, I guess, four miles from shore on a black foggy night—asked him for a point back to the land. The other Indians just hooted. They shouted him down. They said, “You know from which direction the wind was coming, you know how the waves were hitting; don’t be asking the skipper for information self-evident to any boatman,” and back he went without it. Into Bamfield about noon of June 3; that first sight of the rocks in a new region is certainly marvelous. Just inside the deep fjord called Barclay Sound. Quiet waters but with plenty [of] pelagic larvae of surfswept animals, to be sorted out by the environment and by the physiological needs of the beasts themselves, and by eating and being eaten. That sorting out is a curious process; here, all the mussels I noted were the small, smooth brown Mytilus edulis. A few thousand yards on the outside rocks, all would be M. californianus. Not one percent of admixture here. Yet in Europe, M. edulis, as nearly as I can tell from my reading, grows both in sheltered and in surf-swept waters. And on the Atlantic coast no californianus occurs, yet mussels grow on the surf-swept rocks of Maine. This was the sparkling fauna of the British Columbia inland channels where the currents are good; you’d think the scouring effects of tidal currents would be the same as surf, yet I don’t recall ever seeing M. californianus in the inland channels, no matter how high the currents (and in Seymour Narrows they run officially fifteen knots). And I’ve never seen Pacific M. edulis on the outer surf-swept rocks. But our California big red surf-swept urchins occur in these tidal channels. Some beasts do and some don’t; that’s about all you can say. Lots of the small, bright snail-shell Calliostoma, the large calcareous tubeworm Serpula, and the small Filograna. And the leathery tubed sabellid

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worms. The white and the red anemones, Metridium; in California they grow only on the pilings, here on the rocks. Erect bryozoa. Erect and encrusting sponges in yellows—the boring sponge Cliona, and in soft rose colors. Cirolana, the chunky isopods that curl up when you disturb them. A few strands of the Laminaria that Gonionemus is elsewhere associated with; and I’ll bet if I had the time and tide to look, G[onionemus] would be here too. Membranipora on kelp. The environment was similar to the little cove at Point Lobos [south] of [Carmel], except more sheltered; fine clear oceanic water. Perhaps two-thirds of the animals are recorded from California also, but they occur somewhat differently. The high rocks had littorines and Fucus; ours at Monterey would have littorines and Pelvetia. The crabs were Hemigrapsus nudus, a few; H. oregonensis, many; Pachycheles rudis and Petrolisthes cinctipes, abundant. Here in Monterey, all would occur, but oregonensis not common outside the sheltered waters of Elkhorn Slough, and Pachygrapsus, which doesn’t occur north of California, would replace the high-up H. nudus. Several Pisaster ochraceus under rocks, red-stalked tunicates, the old Styela stimpsoni, now Katatropa vancouverensis. Barnacles, littorines, and occasional Tegula funebrale in the high levels. Terebellid and sipunculid worms in the crevices and underrock, just as they occur at Carmel. In all, I suppose we saw forty or fifty species. At a very low tide the rocks at the entrance would be very rich, but to make a decent collecting trip here a person would have to stay over several days [on] account [of] boat schedules. There is quite a community; this is the terminus of the cable going to Australia, etc., and there’s a big personnel here in the dormitory-like cable station. Also the inevitable fish float of the fisheries co-op. Traveling this way, a person ought to have good warm clothes; windproof, easily available raincoat; a roll of charts of the region he’s traveling in, not down in the baggage hold but right in his room; a small bag with [a] flashlight, alarm clock, tide table, a few jars of alcohol, vials, labels, Nembutal, 1/200 gram scolpolamine, Dexedrine, some APCs [for seasickness], maybe a little hot stuff like capsolin, remedy for burns, for sunburns, a physic, a little whiskey—never forget the whiskey. All but the last I usually carry and I usually dispense elsewhere. Whiskey of course we grant as not being available, and even if it is a person shouldn’t carry any; it’s too heavy. These CPR [Canadian Pacific Railway] steamers are very pleasant. The company in the first place is very leisurely and patriarchal. I think they got done years back with the idea of making money, or at least

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with the sole idea of making money. They seem to make an attempt to serve the region. The Union steamers sail right thru, rain or shine, daylight or night; their moneymaking schedules permit no monkey business. The CPR steamers stop a long time. They have loose, liberal schedules; the officers often invite townspeople aboard for a meal or a drink. Probably neither of them pay their employees well; both lines no doubt exploit [the] hell out of the country. But the CPR] does it so genially and in such a cultured leisurely way: I guess I told you that the skipper of the Maquinna at that time, a Captain MacKinnon, Scotch as the country he came from, was a very friendly and a very inquisitive and—it has to be said, but it shouldn’t be published—a very drunken man. Every time his ship pulled in to Clayoquot (after he got to know me), he’d light on down the path and come up to my place for a little talk and, he hoped (and was generally right), a drop of whiskey. Or anyway some beer, which there we could, fortunately, get in any quantity. We were sitting up in my improvised lab one afternoon with a favored passenger, and then [a] warning whistle blew. The passenger said, “Gosh I’m glad to be sitting here with the skipper; ordinarily I’d light out at this time nervous as hell and in a hurry to get aboard. Now I sit comfortably.” Captain MacKinnon said, “You better not. Let me tell you that one time I was sitting right here drinking beer with Betty, when my first mate (I guess he thought I was aboard, anyway I hope he thought I was aboard) blew the whistle, waited a decent time, and then took her on out. I saw the boat stand off into the stream, then it stopped. I thought they’d discovered I was ashore and were waiting for me. So I got a canoe to take me out, went up on the bridge, told Mister So-and-So he could take her out. He said, ‘We can’t sir, we’re hung up on the sandbank.’ So I gave her a quick ‘full-speed astern’ and followed at once with “full speed ahead,” and she went off so fast she bumped into Betty’s wharf and knocked out some timbers before I could reverse her back down.” And then Betty told me about it afterward, and said the CPR several times had weakened their wharf by just such activities, and they never had any luck at all collecting for it. But many’s the favor the CPR did for them anyway. Once they rigged up the big boom just so they could lift Bill’s cabin cruiser onto the float and out of the bad winter waves, and they never charged him a cent. It’s fun to watch these steamers make a landing at some of these tidecurrent wharfs. Takes a nice skill and judgment in handling. They drift in sideways so calculated that there’s no weigh-on, against tide and wind, at just the right point for a line to be cast ashore, made fast, and

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pulled in before the drift sends the ship back out into the stream. Coming into the very windy lumber port at Franklin River (far up Barclay Sound), several times I’ve seen them miss it so the line falls short, or extends too long for the engines to haul the ship in safely, and they have to back out in the stream, come in again, and do the whole slow maneuver again all over. Once I saw that happen three times at Franklin River, and it must have been a full hour from the time she first approached to the placing of the gangplank. At Masset, a nine-knot steamer docks in a current that usually runs seven. If they hit too hard they smash the wharf; if they come in too lightly, they can’t get fast in time and they may run her ashore downstream, or get her so far out in the current they can’t get in until the tide changes; it’s like MacKinnon says, a shit of a life. No wonder he drinks. I go ashore at all these points. They stop usually an hour or more, and I can always see some animals except at extreme high tide; get quite a picture of the region that way. And a feel of it otherwise, since the whole community turns out when the steamer docks. Whatever time of day or night, a lot of people show up, the post office and store usually open. At Franklin River a funny diesel locomotive, used ordinarily in hauling logging cars, comes scooting out on the wharf carrying people, mail, freight. A funny double-ended thing, they call it a speeder locally, probably because it’ll run up to ten or fifteen m.p.h., and everybody knows that’s faster than rowing. At the cannery ports, people come in from the countryside for miles around, not so many people at that when you consider the size of the country, but there they all are. The store gets fresh meat, fresh bread. In the Queen Charlottes they don’t worry about things like bakery goods; they all make their own; once every two weeks is too infrequent. But here on the west coast of Vancouver, there’s a round-trip every ten days, and some places get two calls in that time, coming and going. There’s a bakery and some stores at Port Alice and elsewhere, so the service may be better than once a week. At Kildonan, the British Columbia Packers have a big plant; pilchards are reduced, some even are canned, and herring are canned and reduced. In 1945 there was a fine political fight going on up there. Gibson’s candidacy was announced on the bald platform “We don’t want the Japs in here— ever.” In Monterey that was settled so easily and so wisely and so democratically by Toni and the high school principal Thor Krogh and by the beautiful Margot Morrow—I don’t mean physically beautiful altho that too for her age. Three people who gave their time and energy wisely; and good for the community. Gibson was a self-made man. I think a

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bad man. Certainly a sordid drunk. But an empire builder. And for that [reason] liked. Later on we met his mother and saw thru her eyes a different picture, but I think the best isn’t good. I believe he got in—I started to say “of course.” Ecoole is the seat of a Nelson Brothers [Fisheries] plant. These two outfits seem to control certain aspects of the fishing industry here. But the co-op is very powerful in fresh fish; and in the Queen Charlottes nothing else can hold on. The economy of the Indian and the small-time white man is almost identical here. I mean of the nonreservation Indian, or I guess even some of the government wards. And the co-op is certainly the answer there. The leisurely steamer stops overnight at Point Alberni. The metropolis of the west coast (tho actually nearer the east) with railway connections, a movie, restaurants, a liquor store, a good hotel, really a rather fine hotel that since then burned. An important plywood center, I believe it is. The best name is Ucluelet. Pronounced You-clu-let, with [an] accent on the second syllable. Sounds like the song of a thrush. Clo-ose is good, pronounced Clo-oose. Hell, maybe it’s spelled that way. The road, the logging road—actually, I guess it’s a logging railroad, goes in from Franklin River to Lake Nit-Nat—and then there’s a trail over to Clo-oose and a branch to Bamfield. Clay-o-quot was probably the broad Indian way of pronunciation; now it’s said all the way from Clayquot to Clacquot to Clack-it, but the last is, I bet, the same fine English corruption that makes Wooster out of Worchester. Finest example of that I know is what I hope is more than my conjecture. A landlocked lake inland is called locally Calm Creek—why creek I don’t know. It appears on the charts as Quait Bay. And I’ll just bet a cookie that some facetious surveyor couldn’t resist that one. He had to change around the Creek, so he figured he’d do a job and let the Calm be Quiet, which the most perverse English would pronounce quate. Surveyor is still chuckling, when he isn’t fearful of official censure if his dignified office finds out. So anyway, Ucluelet is one of the really fine rocky collecting places. A completely enclosed bay of very clear quiet water, but separated from the open ocean only by a narrow but high rocky isthmus. There’s a little town, there’s a boat works, a military station, a school, the only one for miles around, and a cannery. This is mostly salmon, I guess, caught outside by trollers. When I was there [in] 1946, there was talk of either a beer parlor (pub), or a government liquor store being petitioned for. The liquor situation is pretty serious. On the whole west coast of Van-

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couver Island, an air line of perhaps three hundred miles and a shore line of at least a thousand, there are only two government liquor stores and three pubs. At the pubs you can get only beer. One trouble is shortages, especially of scotch, but even if that’s over, think of the liquor store hardship. The gravelly shores are just like Puget Sound, some rocks with H. nudus and H. oregonensis underneath, sometimes literally under the same rock with no sign of ecological segregation; but of course in the statistics there probably is. Nereis, including at this season heteronereis. Cirolana and the ubiquitous amphipods. Anemones, with minute bunodids, including Epiactis prolifera; Metridium under overhangs. The hairy hermits. Littorina scutulata high up and the usual limpets and barnacles. Frilly Thais lamellosa; the lamella can develop as pronounced ornaments here; there’s no surf to roll the beasts around by catching the frilly surfaces. Small rock cockles squirting whenever you turn over their protection. Here, there’s a navigable road [that] takes off for Tofino. By a twenty-mile bus or taxi ride, you can avoid another several hours outside, but meals, warmth, and cost considered, we stay with the steamer, past Long Beach, where, as at Pismo or Daytona or Ensenada, autos can drive for miles on the smooth packed sand. The first stop in Clayoquot Sound—Tofino, another metropolis of perhaps several hundred people, well, one hundred anyway. The Canadian boiler inspector takes us in hand, shows us the beautiful (and I guess now unused) Church of England chapel with its lovely garden; says he comes in here every time he makes that trip; the lovely rhododendrons and the hummingbirds make him forget the riled ocean and his seasickness. Where, before we reach our immediate destination at Clayoquot, I see some of the loveliest Indian sweaters you ever saw, on some of the loveliest gals. Clayoquot PO (Clayoquot Island, also called Stubbs Island) is perhaps 3/8 mile in diameter. The shores are mostly rocky altho there are several small sand beaches, especially on the west, the exposed side. It’s just within Clayoquot Sound and usually fairly well protected by the fringing islands, Wikininish, Leonard Island, etc., but the outer shores get some wave shock, and during the winter, the swells roll in clear to the wharf on the southeastern side, so the steamer can’t dock. It used to be an important port in the old days, and even recently it supported a considerable Japanese fishing colony. Betty Farmer and her brother Bill White bought in and made a hotel resort out of it with, I guess, moderate success; they maintain there one of the few pubs on the whole west coast, and on Saturday nights people come in from thirty-to-forty-mile

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boat trips. In the early days of white domination, it was an important place for the Clayoquot Indians, a fierce and warlike tribe whose worst exploits now are beer stealing (about which they’re very clever) and an occasional drunken murder. There was quite a famous wife murder across the bay within the past few years, or was it a wife who murdered her husband with an axe. The chief village is across the sound from Clayoquot, but the Indians mostly come to Bill’s store to trade. He hates them, has no use for their curious time sense, their leisureliness, etc., but Betty likes them, respects them, and gets on well with them. They’re likely to show up anytime wanting to buy stuff, and Betty’s usually pretty good about opening the store to accommodate them, but Bill turns them away. A dissertation on these people has no place here, but it’s worth recording that some of them, to my certain knowledge, are clean personally and maintain scrupulously clean houses—probably the influence of the Catholic school. In this as in all other qualities, there are probably bad and good. We lived over the store when we first got there, and before I got used to surprises of this sort, I heard someone downstairs singing, humming, the Gregorian “Kyrie” from the Missa de Angelis. I tumbled downstairs in a hurry; there was a nice young Indian woman who helped Betty about the hotel. I outright asked her if it was she who was singing; she said yes, the priests taught them. Finished shopping, put her groceries in the dugout, and paddled on home to her husband across the sound. Visiting of unauthorized whites at these Indian villages isn’t customary, and I believe it’s actually prohibited by the Canadian bureau of Indian affairs—whatever it calls itself—and I never went over there, altho I’ve rowed past it many times. Believe Toni went over once with Betty; and every year they stage a festival at which whites are invited. This whole island was very surprising to me. I had told Toni she must expect the very most rigorous in living conditions: dirt, discomfort, inconvenience, and probably millions of fleas. Instead we were led thru a chicken yard–cow pasture, up some rickety stairs into a comfortable even a luxurious apartment over this junky store. I almost fell down from surprise. Hardwood floors, a bathroom that usually worked, running water that usually ran, electric lights during most of the night. Fantastic. The apartment very comfortable, two wood stoves, the dining room and living room decorated with the treasures that Betty’s husband, who was a magistrate in Burma, had collected in the Orient. A really significant portrait of a Burmese princess, a set of Burmese weights, lots of china, pottery, metal utensils, idols including a fine huge Buddha,

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a wonderful antique wine chest I’d give a lot to have, beautiful tables. The most fantastic library: Jacob Boehme’s Signature of All Things (the second copy I’ve seen in my life—no, the third, I have the second), Changing Asia, Autobiography of John Cowper Powys, The Nervous Child, Life of Lenin, many things on psychology, labor unions, communism, Russian novels, English poems, novels, essays, even a very fine English book of seashore natural history! There is a bunch of tumbledown buildings by the wharf. What looks like a mill or a grain elevator, the remains of a blacksmith shop, a machine shop that serves now as a power house. They have an old, old English diesel engine, a fine low-speed heavy duty job that runs perfectly. With a Willys-Knight big old-fashioned engine, gears, starter, and battery for starting the diesel. The generator supplies power to two or three hundred outlets, in which the lights have to be left burning whenever the plant is turned on. Now working only at half capacity, with a onephase instead of three-phase hookup, I believe they told me; the plant used to supply lights to the Japanese village also, now tumbling down. The vegetation in this region—a function of the abundant rains?—is lush and tropical; it takes over very quickly any unused shack just as the jungle would. The interior of the island can’t be got thru except over the trail or [by] hacking your way thru the underbrush with a machete. Devils club, berry bushes, rhododendrons, the ground either stony or boggy with [bunches] of sphagnuni, over which you can travel only on a plank trail. They have a gas-engine-pressure freshwater system. The water is very bad, dark colored, scarce. Funny to think of freshwater as being scarce here, within twenty miles of the wettest place in the North American continent (Lake Henderson, something like 170 inches per year). Weather observer, who is also postmaster at Tofino, told me that the authorities at Victoria once asked him for a recheck on current precipitation; they didn’t think that much rain possibly could have fallen in the past twenty-four hours; he went back to check the gauge, found it overflowing; it had gone beyond its capacity—actually he’d reported too little! Yet Tofino has [a] water shortage often in the summer. Must be a function of inadequate waterworks, or maybe rocky ground and rapid runoff. June 5, 1945: collected from 2 to 4 pm on a plus 3.6′ (Canadian datum) tide. The Canadian Pacific coast tides are figured from a unique datum, the mean of all the lowest “normal” waters, a datum about 2′ below mean-lower-low water of U.S. charts. So this was about plus 1.5′ our datum. A very rich region perhaps not ever before collected over.

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My thought is that occasional animals manage to survive in the tide pools, but just barely so, and that the added hand of man is more than they can stand. For instance, in a region which has changed climatically, such as Southern California, and which is being invaded by northern animals progressively, rare tropical animals will make a last stand in the warm estuaries. Such as the gorgonians in Newport Bay, which are probably slow-growing anyway. Now that industrialization has wiped out the San Diego Bay and the San Pedro fauna, Newport has still a few relics, perhaps the only ones north of San Quentin Bay, Lower California. These get along until the collector plucks them, and that’s the end of them, since the area is so small that the slow-growing forms aren’t quite perpetuating, except when the region is left in its primitive condition. If that’s all so, it’s very desirable for a person to keep accurate records when he first collects over a new region. In any case, whether true or not, this is a likely explanation that fits the observable facts. Since I have been in Monterey, some south-ranging brittle stars, which were among the rarest finds originally (and in the literature), have disappeared, and I think even that slight bit of collecting, of myself and of specialists, is the answer. Anyway, in this very rich region I have recorded about fifty determined species from this one bad tide, and the reports aren’t all in. I’ve taken I guess over one hundred species around the Clayoquot wharf. This doesn’t bear out the oft-repeated (and certainly true) observation that the south is rich in individual species, and the north in individuals, total populations being equal. I think the answer here is that, due to the uniformity of shore temperatures along the whole North Pacific, a very uniform fauna has developed and spread along the outer rocky shores from California to southeast Alaska, that this fauna is rich in species and, due to upwelling and the incident-high inshore plankton, very rich in individuals. Especially due to the very slight summer-winter variation in temperatures, a highly specialized fauna has not had to be developed, but generalized forms can filter in and work up and down the coast. Where you have highly specialized animals, you usually have great numbers of a few species; easy to understand. Only a few species will have solved the great problems (for instance, of high summer temperatures and great winter cold, involving resting stages, etc.), those species having competition only among themselves, and will develop great numbers in an environment unsuited to others. Anyway, the commonest species and the highlights were four species of anemones, including the common aggregated beasts we get here in Pa-

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cific Grove, and Metridium under rocks and overhangs, no hydroids at this level, a red encrusting sponge, and the common crumb-of-bread sponge. One very common flatworm, Notoplana sanjuana, described in 1933 from Friday Harbor. Many worms especially the peanut worm, Physcosoma, same as here but in a dark phase; Nereis, serpulid and small colonial serpulids, terebellids very common under rocks, often with commensal polynoids; Pisaster ochraceus very abundant with occasional one-to-two-inch specimens. Many Leptasterias. The brittle star Ophiopholis occasional. There were no urchins, nor did I see today any cucumbers at this level, altho around the point they occur even this high, and here they are very abundant a foot or so lower down. The commonest crabs were Hemigrapsus especially nudus above, Cancer productus here and more commonly in the water, with one Pugettia producta, and the porcelain crabs very very abundant, under every rock. The hermits at this level seemed to be Pagurus granosimanus only, the bright clean-cut beast. There were the usual isopods and amphipods, and of course the high-up barnacles. There were some of the leathery and black Katharina, but the commonest chiton at this level was the slightly photo-negative Cyanoplax raymondi. Snails were abundant: the minute and delicate Amphissa columbiana under rocks, often with the larger Calliostoma costatum and, further down especially, great numbers of the largest Searlesia dira. Exposed, especially higher up, were the familiar Tegula funebralis and Thais emarginata. The jingle [shell] Pododesmus macrosohisma was common attached to the rock undersides, and Paphia staminea, the rock cockles, were spurting commonly. The most interesting find perhaps was a group of Onchiids, air-breathing sluglike snails similar to those we took in the gulf. These have been reported only a few times, and I was much surprised to find them here and in some quantity; I took eight or ten. Two compound tunicates were very common, Amaroucium californicum and the Sigillinaria pulchra that looks like a red Clavellina. Two tide-pool fish were common, but I collected none until later, and the smooth, small Mytilus edulis was common on the high rocks, with several limpets and with Littorina scutulata. No simple tunicates were seen at this level, no bryozoa, only one Anisodoris. The only other common animal recorded was the scaleworm, Halosydna. Sorting, laying out, preserving, labeling, and noting these took all the rest of the day, what with investigating the local beer situation, which was one of the reasons I chose this place as headquarters. On June 6 we spent the low tide (3.9′ Canadian datum, slightly higher than yesterday) on the outer shore. The granite reef had very

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large barnacles (not yet worked on; Dr. Henry has just written now she’s ready to start on them), Mytilus californianus (the surf mussel) of good size and in great clusters, the goose barnacle Mitella polymera, Pisaster ochraceus, giant green anemones and aggregated smaller specimens exactly as at Monterey, occasional Leptasterias, high-up Littorina scutulata, small acorn barnacles and Acmaea digitalis. Tegula funebrale and Thais emarginata were further down. The mussel clusters had the snail Tritonalia lurida. Bare rocks further down had Acmaea pelta. Hemigrapsus nudus was occurring like [the] Monterey Bay Pachygrapsus (there the H. nudus is depressed to a lower level by the hordes of successful high-up Pachygrapsus, which doesn’t occur North of California; it’s never penetrated here yet; the group to which it belongs is warmwater). A few and small, often white, Hemigrapsus oregonensis, the quiet-water grapsoid. A few purple urchins Strongylocentrotus purpuratus seen even this high. Quite a few of the photopositive chiton Katharina, including some very small specimens. Mopalia muscosa was also fairly common, and we took two of the more hidden Cyanoplax raymondi. Roots of the surf-swept eelgrass Phyllospadix had a great fauna of annelids and amphipods including Brandt’s Parallorchestes ochotensis, and the isopod Pentidotea stenops. All the hermits examined were the hairy Pagurus. A pool very high up in the rocks, looked like a spray pool but with freshwater, had tadpoles, mosquito larvae, Hemigrapsus nudus! and Gammarus sp. freshwater amphipods. A high-up pool of salt water had small Mytilus, solitary Cribrina, and beautiful saddle-backed amphipods, Hyale pugettensis, that swim very gracefully. We found a stretch of sand beach almost at [the] extreme high-tide line that was heavily pitted with what looked like worm holes where the shore birds had been working. These apparently were the burrows of Talorchestia pugettensis; at any rate we took seven of these by digging shallowly here, and it was these apparently that the birds were feeding on (tho you could never be sure without examining their stomach contents). This was an area almost identical to similar stretches ecologically along the California coast. However, here there are no Littorina planaxis and nothing that fits that particular ecological niche. And as before stated, there are no Pachygrapsus here, H. nudus occupying its niche here in the north. On June 7, a walk around the north end of the island from 10 am until noon comprised the third collecting trip. The tide was coming into the lower high water, 11:25 PDT, plus 10.1′. At this point, Acmaea pelta was very large and very peaked clear up here in the 10′ level, one of the

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highest animals (of course, under these cliffs it got little sun, even if there was any to be got!). The higher it occurs on shore, the higher the peak, and this is in conformity with what Orton found on the breakwater at Plymouth, England. The higher up these beasts occur, the higher must the peak of the shell be in order for the beasts to store enough moisture to see them thru the long tidal emergence. Two littorines occur at these high north-facing levels on the vertical rock. Scutulata (same as the little fancy lower one at Pacific Grove) and sitchana (which doesn’t occur this far south) here seem to live pretty much together, but s. [scutulata] more definitely prefers the crevices (as at Pacific Grove), and the larger chunkier sitchana is likely to be found anywhere on the bare rock, high up and completely exposed. There is now no doubt in my mind but that our highest-up planaxis at Monterey Bay is a development out of sitchana (which in turn derives from the European, Atlantic, and almost circumpolar rudis), which has got itself adapted to the surf-swept, barren, wind- and sun beaten, highest granite shores of the completely unprotected coastline. A loon has been working along the shallow flats in front of the house. Robins are everywhere. During these cold and cloudy days, you very often hear the ringing tones of that fine northern thrush, I guess the russet or is it the russet-backed. In the woods near the house, a bird [that] looks like a song sparrow works around the trees. And there are bird sounds I don’t identify and probably don’t even discriminate well. Takes a good memory. All I can do is listen and appreciate. Coming back thru the woods along the trail, I saw a big Ariolima, the same beast apparently we have in the California redwood forests. Very lowtoned rusty “haw” of the crows. And another high-pitched bird voice like a creaky barn door, apparently a raven. Where I had to go up over the cliff and across the point, there was a deep fjord that extended as a cleft of the rock far into the cliff. So I had to back up and go difficultly around. Deepest part must have been thirty feet under the clear water, starfish and great anemones lined the steep sides. The entrance was only a few feet wide, but the threshold seemed to be deep. Fun to explore at very low tide from a catamaran; entrance might have Rhabdodermella or brachiopods. Where I went inland to get over this hump took, I guess, more than an hour, crawling thru the impossible underbrush. These woods are so lush as to be almost impassable, but with axe and machete you could cut a trail nearly anywhere. Coal measures set down under these conditions needn’t in any way be a measure of tropical climate.

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Weather so far cold, cloudy, usually slightly windy, misty rain early in the morning, at which time the water surface is at its quietest. Haven’t yet seen it oily. Usually wind riffles, and the waves lapping the shore. Twice tho during the late afternoon we’ve seen the sun, and yesterday you could even see the sunset. But the mountain peaks, even the nearest ones, are cut off about halfway up. They look black, and the seagulls flying past them make a wonderful white pattern. The fourth collecting trip was afternoon today June 7, plus 4.2′ tide Canadian datum, between the wharf and the Japanese village, and pretty much the same as yesterday pm. Boulders, but the shore a little more steep and the currents a little better. The rocks on the other side of the wharf aren’t so much scoured by the current, and there’s some deposition of detritus. The upper level animals are pretty much the same as yesterday, of the lowest bared level (4.0′); I took only the new things, which were numerous. Obelia longissima at some cement piling foundation. Bugula pacifica. The anemones have me confused already; I don’t know how many there are or which is which; all you can say is they’re numerous and varied. Starfish included also Henricia and Evasterias. Latter is fastest starfish next to Pycnopodia. There were minute tectibranchs, bubble shells, not yet determined. Three nudibranchs were seen or taken: Archidoris, some gigantic Diaulula sandiegensis, and the aeolids Hermissenda crassicornis. One of the tunicates has numbers of the burrowing amphipods described as Polychoeria osborni from Puget Sound by Calman, who didn’t guess its ecology, subsequently worked out by Skogsberg and Vansell in Monterey Bay specimens. One of the finest positive thigmotrops. And highly specific. Must be in contact with that tunicate Amaroucium calif. or it dies. Interesting to work out its natural history, life history, etc., to see how and when the free-swimming larva gets that way. Another polyclad, N. segnis, in addition to the sanjuana taken also yesterday. Many tunicates. The very wiggly blenny eel—at this level, black and very elongate—is Epigeichthys atropurpureus. I got better results with preserving the dorid nudibranchs than with previous chemical methods by tying them lightly onto glass plates with gauze bandages. Notes on west coast Vancouver Island literature, Nootka, Father Crespi, etc., also of Monterey, p. 76, [in] “New Series Note Book #3.” Reading Father Brabant with a great enjoyment. The first very good low tide was a 1.3, the equivalent of our even up, early in the morning of June 8. Now with a really low tide, I was able to evaluate the region. Most of the Stubbs Island rocky shores are

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bounded in deep water by sand. I spotted a couple of rocky reefs and boulder patches that went right on down, but they’re few, and the sand limitations put a characteristic emphasis on the fauna: they limit the richness and extensiveness and anastomosing of the rocky regions with corresponding pauperizing of the fauna looked at from the community standpoint. That is, what you have is a lot of rocky islands, rather than one rich contiguous area. This accounts, however, for the richness of the Cancer magister (edible crab) community. These are trapped and canned locally at Tofino. This also accounts for the lack of abalones (Haliotis kamchatkana so common at Sitka), for the lack of brachiopods, of the alcyonarian Gersemia which I’d expect to find. The presence of swirling sand undoubtedly limits the growth of some very pure-water species. Some eelgrass, but none suited to Gonionemus, and none, curiously, with the stalked scyphozoan Haliclystus. At its best Stubbs Island resembles Clallam, Pysht, and Neah Bay on the south shores of San Juan Strait near Cape Flattery. It does not very much resemble the quiet water regions of Puget Sound. In addition to the things previously taken, I found evidence of large colonies of the big red Cucumaria miniata, [a] thing Tal calls cuckoomaria. The beautiful small chiton Tonicella lineata was the common and characteristic side of the rock form at this level. One Mopalia swanii was taken, and Placiphorella velata was seen several times under rocks. Crepidula lingulata was very common. Three types of blennies were taken, the clingfish, and a bullhead-like looking cottid, Ascelichthys rhodorus. One of the Pagurus granosimanus had a Peltogaster depressus. Pugettia richii, Cancer branneri, Pachycheles rudis, and Lophopanopeus were crabs I hadn’t found here higher up, with the shrimp Spirontocaris sitchensis. The pea crab Pinnixa tubicola was associated with terebellid worms. There was a nemertean, Tubulanus capistratus, and one new bryozoan, Rhynchozoon tumulosum. One specimen was seen of the white Cucumaria quinquesemita (formerly chronhjelmi), several Pycnopodia. Dermasterias was very common, and Pisaster brevispinus was fairly common but usually in the water on sand or gravel. I kicked several of the edible Cancer, and one C. productus had a rhizocephalan parasite which seems not to have turned up subsequently. There were two of the beautiful lemon-colored nudibranchs, Cadlina marginata, and a red form similar to Rostanga pulchra. Of the blennies, the crested was Anoplarchus, and the delicate green specimens were Apodichthys flavidus.

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At 10:30 pm I went down to the float. Mitrocoma and Phialidium are going by in countless thousands, the tide carrying them out towards the open sea. This is a place of late twilight and of cold, cold rainy weather. We have to keep the fires going all the time we’re in the house. The lights are queer. You never turn them on or off. They go on when Bill starts the light plant, they stay on until the eight or eighteen cents’ worth of diesel oil he put in it is used up, then they flicker and die out over a period of, oh, say, sixty seconds, and that’s all you can do about it. If you’re in the midst of work, that’s just your hard luck. But fortunately they run until 1 or 2 am, sometimes later, and I get up early, so I’m usually pooped out enough to welcome the interruption. But withal it’s certainly a lovely place of green gold hummingbirds; I never saw so many in my life before, and thrushes always singing, and rhododendrons in bloom until you can’t see over them, and white seagulls flying by the black mountains. I can’t think of a better or a prettier place to come for work and rest, if you could get that pub to close down. Drink ’em out of beer is what I say. To p. 81, [in the] “New Series Note Book #3.” On the early morning tide of June 9. I worked from [the] Japanese town seaward against an increasing erosion gradient, with slightly steeper and more granite shores, fewer boulders, and a tendency towards increasing surf. The tide was plus 0.6′ Canadian datum. At Sitka it was minus 2.7′. The tidal amplitude here is slightly higher than at Pacific Grove, but not nearly so great as in southeast Alaska even on the open coast as at Sitka. The algae are very lush here. Reminds me of Clallam and Pysht, Straight of Juan de Fuca. It was in this lush algae that I took the first liparids, flesh-colored naked-looking little fish, representatives of a group well developed in the Aleutian Islands, Bering Sea, and Arctic, suckerbearing fish but delicate and quite different from the hardboiled suckerfish Caularchus. Liparis florae. Forty-four species from this trip have been identified already. The leather-skinned Dermasterias is certainly the dominant starfish in this horizon. Many have commensal polynoid worms; the largest and presumably the oldest, are very likely to have. A feature of this clear water granite-rock-eroding region was the hydroid fauna, seven species, almost as good as outside on Wikininish Island. Even some of the northern Thuiaria dalli, lush and rank at Sitka,

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occurred here. There were two erect bryozoa and the encrusting Schizoporella insculpta exactly as at Pacific Grove. The red and the white cucumbers both were common. I saw only one purple urchin; would have expected lots of them. Three species of chitons, the giant Cryptochiton being new. A new species of Spirontocaris. Eight species of caprellids and other amphipods. This is what you’d expect in connection with the rich hydroid fauna. Keyhole limpets of two species, Pecten gigantean— the fixed Pecten that squirts water up at you when you disturb it. Snails and Crepidula and nudibranchs as before. Clavellina and two brilliantly colored species of solitary tunicates. Crabs included usual forms plus Pugettia gracilis and a huge kelp crab. In the early afternoon, Toni went down to the float, reported pelagic stuff, and I collected or observed six species of ctenophores and medusae, but only the usual Phialidium in great quantity. Several of the wheeled ctenophores, I guess Bolina or Bolinopsis, but it’s impossible to capture or preserve these—they go to pieces in the net. On the morning of June 10, there was one of the five or six spectacular tides that I came up here for. Plus 0.2′, only about half a foot below yesterday, but what a difference that amount makes on the low part of the tide. Probably about fifty species taken, same as yesterday, but [this] included many new things. Today I worked again under the wharf, turning over boulders in this lowest accessible zone, in one of the few regions where rocks extended clear on out below the lowest tide in a continuous sequence. For the first time here, I found the long, snakyarmed ophiuran Amphiodia; took about thirty specimens occurring under rocks in the dirty, sandy mud, just as in the great tide-pool region at Pacific Grove. Took eight fine butter clams for food, then got scared to eat them [on] account [of their] proximity to [the] open ocean and the poisonous dinoflagellate Gonyaulax. Took two species of nemerteans, including a Cerebratulus occidentalis. The hydroid Hydractinia milleri on [the] shell of Crepidula. Took five Evasterias, all I saw; this active starfish finds the water perhaps too rapid here. It does best in very stillwater coves. A great number of polychaete worms, including Glycera, terebellids, Sabellaria, etc. A huge Placiphorella; these always occur under rocks in suitable substratum. Three small, living Pecten. More of the new species of Spirontocaris. I feel very good about this. When I first took it, I ran it down in Schmitt, the only reference of the sort I had along, and decided that, if not a new species, at least it was one that didn’t live in California, and which therefore wouldn’t be treated in his work. So I sent it on to Schmitt with a note to the effect [that] it didn’t

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seem to me cited in his Marine Decapod Crustacea of California [W. L. Schmitt, The Marine Decapod Crustacea of California, University of California Publications in Zoology, vol. 23 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1921)]. When the identification came thru a year or so later, it was Sp. brevirostris, which does occur in California and which is listed in Schmitt. But since then they advise me that it is in fact a new species (and that therefore it couldn’t have been treated in Schmitt); so from feeling slightly like a silly fool, I blow myself up again. Examined all the crabs I took, a considerable number of several species, for rhizocephalan parasites, then let them go. The hermits were all Pagurus beringanus, a usually subtidal brilliantly colored species, which in Puget Sound I have also found common on the lowest tides on rocky shores. I worked out the blennies. The common black elongate active one, which occurs also high up—the highest underrock fish—is XXXXX [text is crossed out]. The smaller, lighter-colored, shorter, and less active crested blenny never found high up is Anoplarchus. The delicate ribbonlike, usually vivid green, small one found in kelp and eelgrass far down is Apodichthys. A new and brilliant cottid of the lowest pools was Hemilepidotus. For the ninth collecting trip, still lower (plus 0.1′ Canadian datum, but minus 5.0′ at Sitka), we went out on the sand flat in front of the house. I tried unsuccessfully to dig out some Panope (geoduck), the siphons of which I saw rather commonly far down, but unsuccessfully as usual. Schizothaerus, the horse clam, short for horsecock clam, tsk tsk, is common, and some of the old specimens must be gigantic judging from the great siphons bearded with moss and encrusted with barnacles. Characteristic sand flat nemerteans were taken, some of them huge, but all very friable as usual, and we got home merely with a lot of fragments. One Spirontocaris taylori, and one juvenile Crago (edible-type shrimp), but too small for determining. The largest Amphiodia I’ve ever seen occurred on these sand flats, making me wonder if the underrock habitat wasn’t secondary. At least in this region, the optimum conditions must be found on the low sandy mudflats, because the specimens are huge and very plentiful. The silver launce or lance, Ammodytes, good salmon bait, and a beast I’ve taken out of salmon stomachs, occurs commonly on these flats; apparently it digs in during low tide. Polychaete worms of a bewildering variety and profusion were taken here. These have yet to be allocated to species, altho I have a list of the totals—have to get details from Dr. Berkeley when I’m next in Nanaimo. In addition to the big clams, Cardium corbis, the basket cockle; Macoma nasuta, the bent

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nosed; the razor or jackknife Solen sicarius, and the small Lucina or Phacoides annulatus were all common. On Tuesday, June 12, we went in the outboard to Wikininish Island, or rather to Echachis Island, which is part of it. 0.4′ tide. This is one of the finest collecting spots I’ve seen in many a day. The outer shore, which is much cut up with ledges and clefts, fronts on the open Pacific. Some of the channels come clear thru to the other side, and in the side clefts and ledges off these channels the fauna is very rich and varied. Eighty-three species have already been determined; we took certainly more than 100 in this two-hour trip, and I think a reasonably complete census of the naked-eye forms here wouldn’t stop short of 150 or 175, between tides. No attempt will be made to list the things taken; collecting reports for this day, and original field notes on pp. 88 etc. [of the] “New Series Note Book #3,” already cover this. Outstanding were the huge amounts of hydroids (searched thru for pycnogonids for Hedgpeth, successfully among the Eudendirum only), the hydrocoral Allopora, [and] the compound tunicates (two only species of simple tunicates were seen). Here we found clusters of the alcyonarian Gersemia such as we found at Sitka in such great profusion and which I anticipated here as soon as I saw the layout. I cited nine species of sponges in my field notes, but deLaubenfels’s determinations included only seven. For one thing, he’s lost zest and interest in these. Five species of starfish, including abundant and vividly red Henricia. Purple urchins abundant, and two S. drobachiensis were seen. Three cucumbers, including a black small species not yet determined. Six species of chitons. The hermits were P. beringanus; others and most of the crabs haven’t been sorted over yet. I can do this myself, but it takes lots of time. There were nine species of hydroids and five of bryozoa. Twelve small-shelled gastropods and clams, including the small and common Saxicava arctica (nestling clam) and Kellie laperousei. Haliotis kamchatkana occurs here but it’s rare; people take them for food only occasionally, but that may be enough to keep the few that do occur knocked down to a minimum. We saw a very fresh shell. I believe that nothing was taken here that doesn’t occur either at Sitka or Point Lobos. And usually at both places. The alcyonarian Gersemia is an arctic form [and] doesn’t range further south than this; but nearly everything else occurs also on the California coast, including perhaps the Allopora (one species occurs in California, a different one at Sitka but in identical ecological position; I can’t tell them surely apart—Fisher supposes the Vancouver Island beast is identical with [the one] that I took in Sitka). Two only S. drobachiensis were

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taken here, and that never occurs in California. But these two were strays; this [species] usually prefers very quiet water, altho in the Atlantic and in the north it’s an open coast form also. But on the Pacific, a highly specialized open coast urchin has developed, S. purpuratus, and it always replaces drobachiensis wherever a piece of open coast occurs; temperature in this case has very little to do with it, altho purpuratus is more stenothermal. The eleventh collecting trip, June 13, following the busy June 12 collection, was pretty quiet, on the pilings of Clayoquot wharf. Gave me time to get rested and oriented. The pilings are thickly coated with sabellids and mussels and anemones, just as at Santa Cruz. I examined the tubes of the sabellids for peacrabs, without success. Around the large acorn barnacles, there were concentrations of detritus with two species of pycnogonids. The heavy-bodied Pycnogonum stearnsi and another undetermined gangly species. Two species of compound tunicates occurred. There were nemerteans, Paranemertes peregrina, many amphipods, Jassa californica, and small Cancer oregonensis. The sipunculid Physcosoma and polynoid worms. There were large Metridiums in various colors. The largest of the seven sabellid tubes examined was about eighteen inches long [and] represents Eudistylia polymorpha or some allied species. On June 14, I spent the not-too-good low tide (plus 1.4, but still a minus tide in U.S. terms) on the outer shore of Stubbs, investigating eelgrass roots, etc. The crabs were the hairy hermit, Pugettia richii, and the ubiquitous Cancer oregonensis. The eelgrass [plants] had clusters of the bryozoan Tricellaria ternata at their bases just as they do here. There was Hydractinia armata on the algae. Within the roots, the usual conglomeration of polynoids, peanut worms, cirratulids, terebellids and other polychaetes, [and] the amphipods Parallorchestes ochotensis. And later on in the day, the Maquinna came by. We had reservations for Port Alice in the north of the island and return, so we [went] aboard and to our cabins, self-consciously carting [a] couple of cases of beer— you can buy only one case per person legally, but that’s one law not well regarded here. I was amused to see that even the red-coated provincial policeman put on civilian clothes and went in and got beer at Bill’s place; he’s forbidden to drink, forbidden I guess even to go in a pub, except in the line of duty, when he’s on duty. At Kakawis, the steamer stood offshore while an outboard brought out a young priest and the mail and took back some mail and freight. Very alert pleasant young fellow addicted to cigars more than I used to

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be. At Ahousat I went ashore to have a look at the rocks. This is one of the sad and dirty Indian villages. The Catholics have no hold here. Perhaps there’s no one now, I forget. The Shantymen or the United Church have now, or used to have, a man or woman here, and many’s the story told about their intolerance and unrealism. It’s here that the Gibson boys got their start; they maintain the old store here, partly I guess out of sentiment, and a fine home for their mother. I was walking along the float and I saw one of those things that moves me so much. A young Indian woman, sickish—maybe TB; the rate is said to be high here among the natives—and with an abscessed eye, carrying a baby. It was the old business of people in trouble and taking it and being wonderful— “something that happened.” I smiled at the woman and really meant it, and she smiled back in that wonderful way that Indians do; I haven’t ever seen such illumination in a white; [it] just gives you that marvelous sense of contact that transcends language and custom. Later when we got under way, the priest came over and introduced himself and said I must have been with Indians a great deal. I said no except occasionally in connection with collecting; once I spent a week or so on an Indian’s land at Cape Flattery and got to know him and his wife. The priest said that the Indian woman I saw had told him that I knew Indian people, must have spent quite a lot of time with them. Whole thing was very affecting, and I got to talking to the priest, Father J. T. O’Brien, good man who combined [the] qualities of earnestness and humor. And right now, great youthful exuberance; if he doesn’t crystallize he could go far, he could be [as] good as the wonderful Father Mulvahill who runs the school. Fellow had come out here cold from eastern Canada, [a] specialist in philosophy—Aristotelian philosophy, I’m sure; the church couldn’t stomach the unteleologicalness of non-Aristotelian ideas. Said he had no trouble in learning the language. Which I guess was true, because he always talked to the Indians in their language, and they were pleased and alert; many of the older ones have never learned English. Said it was easy enough, that apparently the Protestant missionaries just didn’t take the trouble. I thot it was fine that he seemed to pay just as much attention to the Indians in the neglected village as in his own Catholic communities. Probably soul-saving in part, but in part a real brotherhood and interest in people, I’ll bet a whistle. Not only interested in their own Indian ideas and their art and customs but actually respecting them. Other missionaries think the Indian ways have to be stamped out, or at best they’re not interested and certainly don’t respect them, however much they may respect the individual people.

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En route to Nootka, we passed what looked to be a fine collecting region near Tsowwim Narrows just before you get into the lumber or pulp camp of Tassis River. Looks like Gonionemus eelgrass with its highly specialized community. Also again at Tassis Narrows, a mile this side of Ceepeecee (originally a plant of the California Packing Corporation, later of the Canadian Packing Corporation). [George] MacGinitie had wanted me to look up a friend of his managing the plant here, but I went as a biologist not as a chemist and I stuck to my last. But this place, as all the other canneries I looked at up here, was clean and well ordered: Chinese cooks preparing wonderful meals; dormitories, cottages, dining halls, recreation rooms; and the inevitable Indian shacks. The steamer stopped here long enough so I was able to do a little collecting; took perhaps ten to fifteen species and recorded as many more, but the fauna was either naturally poor, impoverished by oil (which has been discharged here so often that the uppermost level of the littoral is at one spot blackened and dead), or not accessible due to the tide, which was only half low. The point where modern history first started on the entire northwest coast, Friendly Cove at Nootka, now is deserted except for a small Indian village. There’s a monument there, I understand, by a California historical society, if I recall, but the steamer doesn’t stop and, in order to visit, you have to take a skiff or motorboat from Nootka Cannery. It was very early, perhaps 4 am, when we got in there. Toni wanted coffee terribly, and in the ship’s mess hall the cranky night cook would serve the crew only and didn’t want to wake up one of the stewards; so she went into the cook shack of the Nootka cannery, where the charmed Chinese chef gave her coffee galore and hot cakes and bacon. When she started to pay for it, he wouldn’t have it, said no such thing, that the CPR [Canadian Pacific Railway] people had been good to them so many times, he’d had so many Maquinna snacks, that he was delighted to get this small chance at return. The best collecting center I’ve seen yet on the west coast of Vancouver Island would probably be here at Friendly Cove, if a person had a dependable outboard. Otherwise NG [no good] at all. Could collect one or two miles north at the slightly more protected Saavedra Islands; at the Maquinna Point complex about two or three miles west in a completely unprotected environment; at Bajo Point and reef about ten miles west, with perhaps some landing difficulty; at Perez Rocks, eleven miles south; but best of all at Estevan Point, about fourteen to fifteen miles south on the completely open coast, [though] landing here might be a

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very great problem. Estevan is—as nearly as I could see from the deck of a steamer standing well off, and from the chart—one of the finest collecting places for hundreds of miles in each direction. The optimum of the open coast fauna would be here—everything concentrated; you could learn more here in two tides than in a combination of six or eight tides spread around elsewhere. Tsowwim and Tassis Narrows, and Mozino Point, all would be within twelve to eighteen miles, and there are interesting nearby points. There would be the advantage that Nootka post office and store are within three miles, and all the navigational and oceanographic data is concentrated on Chart No. 1430, USHO [United States Hydrographic Office]. Jn, I’m putting lots of stuff in here of no interest to you, and of no value to the book. It’s not only that this way the account will be a lot more complete and detailed, giving you greater leeway of selection and giving you a more detailed picture, but I have for myself a great deal of data concentrated here, for which I won’t ever need to refer back to my original notes. I have [a] good carbon of all this. Kyuquot is pronounced Ky-you-cut, with [an] accent on [the] second syllable. The next fjord to the north is Quatsino, one of the deepest on the island. On Saturday, June 16, we got into Coal Harbor, where the Canadian government maintains a big seaplane base (apparently the boys use the big planes now chiefly to run down to the liquor store in the next inlet). Here a connecting road runs seventeen miles over the ridge to the east shore at Port Hardy, where most people from here pick up east coast steamers down from Rupert. East coast steamer service is fast and frequent, and there’s no problem with seasickness. Incidentally, on the way up here, the purser told us of a harrowing trip he had up here one winter. Soon as they left Victoria, it was rough; they took a beating especially rounding Cape Beale, and it took them something like ten hours to go the twenty or thirty nasty outside miles from Ucluelet to Clayoquot Sound. He says they have a regular system on such things. They put the typewriters down on the floor and tie them onto hooks run into the wall for that purpose; everything else is put in cabinets or drawers and fastened shut. They close up the office and go to their cabins, get in the bunks, brace themselves with a book, and just ride it out. He says no trouble that way; you can even enjoy it. But on this occasion he was up, and a sudden lurch threw him against a fixture. He said at the time it hurt him, but he didn’t think anything of it until, with some pain and nausea, he went to urinate and found he was bleeding. Then he got scared, knew he was hurt, but there wasn’t a thing any-

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one could do about it. [The] trip was about halfway done on the way up; there was a company doctor at Port Alice (now there’s a hospital there, and one at Tofino too, but none then), and presumably then he’d be tended to. The rest of the trip up must have been pretty bad. But when they got into Port Alice, the doctor said it was a hospital job and he couldn’t even diagnose it other than to say the guy’s kidney had been damaged and he couldn’t even say how seriously. So all the way back they had to go, four days or so thru that howling weather, and this poor guy having to hang onto his bunk a good part of the time to prevent getting further strained. And sick and in pain and scared. What a business. At Victoria they put him in a hospital, did whatever they had to do, and he was in no obvious way badly affected by it. I suppose the moral there is to stay off boats. At Coal Harbor a small interchannel boat makes the rounds [to] Port Alice, Winter Harbor, Quatsino, Holberg; loads [of] stuff on and off the steamer. While the freight was being transferred, I found an interesting gravel-and-mudflat fauna near the other wharf. Small shrimps [and] opossum shrimps (mysids) identical or similar to Holmes’s Neomysis franciscorum were working in great droves on the flats in a few inches of water; terribly hard to catch, but finally I got some along with the ubiquitous blenny, Oligocottus maculosus. This fish is the most fantastically generalized beast I’ve ever seen ecologically, but strangely enough it doesn’t have the wide geographic range (occurs from Kamchatka to Monterey but isn’t common south of San Francisco, and I believe only one specimen was taken at Monterey) that you’d suppose would go along with such tolerance. I’ve found it in the highest, violently surfswept tide pools along the outer granite rocks, where the temperature never varies, the oxygen is always high, and the salinity only varies occasionally when it rains at low tide. I’ve found it far inland on the gravelly mudflats; you take it occasionally in sand pools (and in the low rock pools also). Apparently it ranges up and down with the tides, and whether the water is clear or muddy, cold or hot, full of oxygen or depleted, concentrated or almost fresh, makes no difference. They tie up at Port Alice for the night; this being Saturday, there was a dance and a social. A sad, sad dance, not at all like the peppy and drunken country dances at Tofino. These aren’t, however, wilderness people, or fishermen or farmers. They’re town people brought up here for a contract; they hate it, and maybe they don’t even try very hard to have fun. The following day, I looked on the floats and pilings for animals. Nothing. Not even any barnacles. So then on the rocks. Nothing

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also, or almost nothing. Chemical contamination is the answer, wastes from the pulp mill[, which is] now working as a rayon war plant. The rocks, gravel, piling, floats in this chemically laden water are covered with guck, with slimy muck. It festoons on the timbers of the floats like trailing hydroid colonies, I suppose precipitated on itself. On the plus 3.6′ tide (about 1.5′ MLLW [mean lower low water], and hence a moderate medium low tide), I turned over a lot of rocks in a thoro investigation, because everything else here was right for a good fauna. Almost completely and utterly sterile. Almost but not quite. As our eyes got accustomed to the situation, we began to see quantities of minute and attenuated worms, I suppose oligochaetes (earthworms are commonest examples, many others in freshwater), wriggling about on the undersides of rocks and in the moist depressions from which the rocks had been taken. I thought of nematodes, but with the hand lens I picked up what seemed to be a metamerism, so I suppose oligochaetes. Then we saw an amphipod and then others, small and large and finally one of the gigantic pair in copulation with the female, much smaller. Then some isopods. And finally a nemertean, apparently the one Coe determined for us as Emplectonema gracile. Curious fauna that can tolerate conditions that even Fucus and barnacles can’t stand. How do they eat, how [do they] respire, how do they even live in these chemically laden waters? Wonder if it cuts down oxygen—probably almost to zero. It’s a curious thing that when marine conditions get intolerable for marine animals—from detritus as when glacial guck is being deposited, or from oil or other industrial conditions—the marine fauna is sparsely replaced by, of all things, freshwater or freshwater-type animals. The amphipods were Jassa sp., Gammarus sp.—undoubtedly new species but perhaps I didn’t get adequate material of both sexes for describing—[and] the copulating Allorchestes angustus, all animals you could expect in freshwater or very high on the shore. Again [the] next year at Arrandale Cannery [Ricketts is referring to his 1946 trip—this typescript was composed for Steinbeck in early 1948], I found freshwater or terrestrial insects, arachnids and centipedes living in the midtide rocky zone under gucky conditions that eliminated most marine animals. I guess the sea animals are so used to uniform conditions that they can hold the fort only when those conditions obtain, that when their competition is out of the way, freshwater and terrestrial beasts infiltrate, developing their special techniques as they go along. More of this in connection with the Arrandale July 1946 notes. In the late twilight, I walked up the waterworks power road. Before the dance Saturday night, we walked up the

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road about halfway to the lake thru the wet woods with the thrushes singing. A slug new to me, which I sketched; I wish now I’d taken the trouble to collect him. And the following day, I hiked all the way over there, up over the high ridge, and hurried back, worrying all the time that the steamer like a toy far below and off in the distance would be blowing her whistle and taking off without me. On the way back, a fine powerboat came out into the stream; our steamer stopped, took on a Gibson and his buddy, both of them working at liquor bottles. Outside it got rough; we stood up forward as long as we could against the wind and spray, then she started to take an occasional dash of water aboard. An engineer and I tried to estimate the sweep of the mast; I thought fifteen, he twenty degrees, from vertical. We spent most of our Nembutals keeping friends from being unhappy. Now we even [had] three grain suppositories, so no matter how nauseated, a person can still get rest. Finally Toni took scopolamine and Nembutal, went below. I [couldn’t] sleep then, so no point to it; for a while I was alone on deck, then a very drunken, a staggering and beastly, Gibson came out from somewhere, got nearly flung across deck and overboard. How are drunken people so saved? I guess he handled himself drunk better than I ever sober. We rounded wicked Cape Cook, with the fantastic monolith island just outside; the water quieted and I went below. And there seem now to be no more notes until we get back to Clayoquot, tho some things certainly happened and I had a good time. Tuesday, June 19, 1945: Back at Clayoquot headquarters, worked on Hart’s paper on Vancouver Island decapods which had been forwarded in the meantime from Pacific Grove. In the afternoon, a long walk in the rain; picked up ample Schizothaerus shells; the whole bottom of the bay must be inhabited by these huge clams. Funny no geoduck shells, but they’re light and fragile, even the wind probably could break them. Saw a great flock of Brandt geese so close I could have shot one with a pistol. And they’re supposed to be so shy: I suppose there’s a truce in the rain. Once long ago in the Chicago parks, I saw a robin huddled on the crotch of a low tree just hating the continual downpour, hating the world, hating himself. I couldn’t resist the temptation of sneaking up on him, jumping up quickly and touching his back before he could get away. A more surprised and undignified bird you never saw; for that minute he forgot the rain. When finally these Brandt flushed, a couple of oystercatchers arose with them. They’d all been working together—I tried to see on what, maybe limpets . . . no, now I recall, my notes not

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clear there. The Brandt were on the sand, the oystercatchers on the rock, where probably they had been pulling off the limpets as they’re known to do. When oystercatchers fly, they have that most wonderfully nostalgic plaintive note; takes you back to Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle.” Always amuses me to see a couple of outlanders in a bird flock; I suppose in a fright they all get up together, then sort things out later on, pretty angrily; fear and hatred of strangers work just as potently with animals as with men. The rain is heavy enough so that tide pools have a layer of freshwater, enough so anemones are closed up. On the smallboat collecting trip to southeastern Alaska in 1932, I made sure that freshwater was a limiting factor in some of the further inlets, but below the tides there’s always seawater. The rusty door sound again in the same patch of woods; could be a raven lives there. Worked on Ekman’s zoogeography. Wednesday, June 20: Worked on sorting and determining the Port Alice trip stuff. Then on [a] list of standard equipment for future trips. Ordered liquor, good, good liquor, that once a month is awfully important here. Everyone shares with everyone else; doesn’t go far; it’s a mystery to me how we make out so well. Sent insurance checks. Worked on Ekman. Packed fish for dispatch to Loren. Evening, party at Bill and Ruth’s. Thursday, June 21: Toni went to Tofino with [the] parcel post for shopping and to see if she could get vials and alcohol from the Shantymen’s Hospital. The doctor there was very good and cooperative. I was always so busy I never got to meet him, but he was certainly good to us in such matters, after I had run the store out of denatured alcohol. About 2 pm we left in the launch for Vargas Island, landing at a delightful little cove which, incidentally, looks like good collecting. Walked three miles along the trail. I should say thru the trail, since sometimes we were literally tunneling under the underbrush, and we had to crawl on our bellies. Dogs having a wonderful time. I don’t see how they cross on some of these bad places. The island used to have a couple of settlers; now they’ve moved out and the wilderness closes back in, ruining the good plank trail they built. And only a few years ago, after World War II. The footbridge is out across the middle of the marsh; you have to cross on fallen trees. Finally thru and down onto the open western sandy shore. It was a wild day, the waves were beating heavily, the wind was strong so it made your tears stream. Seven eagles were working over something on the beach; I suspicioned what it was. Ruth and Toni held onto me. Badly battered human body, apparently just washed in,

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and the eagles had the liver pretty well eaten, but everything else OK. Rubbed in the waves so the features were blank, all the hair and most of the skin gone from the wind-and-wave-tanned naked body. I took measurements in connection with possible identifications. Tried to spot the exact location; in a day or two when we got notification thru, the Canadian coast guard would handle it. We went to the deserted house in the now overgrown clearing. Ate lunch. I collected some stuff about 5 to 5:30 pm on a bad tide, with furious wind whipping the sea foam and on the burnt rocks. Friday, June 22, 1945: Sent Pycn. to Hedgpeth and wrote to him. Wired extension light to my desk. The light problem very bad here for close work. No lights at all during the days, which are often dark, but my desk is right jam up against the window. At night they pulsate. Three phase sixty; maybe this is only about thirty pulsations per second, very noticeable. Determined cottids and hermit crabs. Rolf’s paper is very very good. Arrived 4 to 5 pm. I collected on the rocks and in pools north of the wharf; usual region. Objects were to work out the hermit crab distribution and that of the porcelain crabs—three years later, I still haven’t the key! Found only a few, but got another great lot of fish. Above 5.5 or 6.0′ level, there are very few Petrolisthes. In California it’s common quite high up. H. nudus is certainly the highest crab here; Pachygrapsus doesn’t occur this far north. All the Pagurus in these hightide pools were jirsutiusculus, banded hairy legs. Tegula funebrale the commonest snail at this level. As at Pacific Grove. The finest collecting fundorts are in the mussel clusters down in the channels and crevices, where I found three polyclad worms actually among the byssal hairs, along with numerous nemerteans. I tried to bring some of them back, but I had only one tray along, and in the mix-up some of these probably, and a polychaete worm certainly (because we saw it happen), got eaten up by the cottids. Details, color notes, etc. on p. 99, “New Series Note Book #3.” The sixteenth collecting trip was in the usual place, about 5 am, June 23, 2.4′ (rather good) tide. Working down in the upper Cucumaria miniata zone. All the hermits had ivory-colored legs not banded, with red antennae; [Pagurus] granosimanus. Thank heavens for animals in which color is diagnostic! Intended to turn out all the common beasts living at the 2.4 to 3.0′ level. Crabs were Pachycheles rudis, Petrolisthes cinctipes, Lophopanopeus bellus, lots of Cancer productus. Dermasterias, a couple of Evasterias, Pycnopodia, Pisaster higher up only. The only three fish were the long black blenny, the crested blenny, and the

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clingfish. Four compound tunicates chiefly Amaroucium californicum. The usual underrock stuff. We have been seeing lots of pelagic stuff, including some large scyphozoan similar to Chrysacra, and plenty of Polyorchis. The seventeenth [trip] was to Round Island, more out in the channel, with greater erosion, and with rocks going clear down onto the channel bottom. Collected on the south shore towards the east. Altho limited to a few ledges and fissures, the fauna was little short of magnificent. Highlights were Patiria, several large, looking exactly like those at [Carmel], many solitary corals (that means very clear sedimentless water), Terebratalia, several Pectens, Leucosolenia, some new chitons, a rich hydroid and bryozoan fauna, many anemones, Henricia, three species brittle stars, a few urchins including one drobachiensis (you rarely find the two together), three or four holothurians, some pycnogonids, the usual hordes of crabs plus Mimulus. Large Cryptochiton, ten or fifteen species [of] shelled mollusks, many tunicates, fish including liparids. My notes say about 96 species. But the RCR [revised collecting report] for this and the following day, same place, show already 101 species identified, so probably we got more than 150 species in this one spot in two tides. Round Island was so good we went back there [the]following morning for the eighteenth collecting trip, Tuesday, June 26, 1945: 1.1′ Canadian datum. Highlights were a Solaster—sunstar, new nudibranchs, the fine big red anemone, two peacrabs, one at least from the tube of a green sabellid, a Betaeus. The lovely big red anemone—looked like a strawberry with its white beadlike dots, has chrysanthemum petals— was eating porcelain crabs. Cucumaria miniata is certainly a dominant animal in this whole region, occurs even on the open coast but [is] most highly developed in fairly well-protected bouldery and reefy regions. For Wednesday tide, also a 1.0′, we rowed over to Deadman’s Islets, about forty-five minutes hard pull against the tide. Another very productive trip. Specializing on small stuff, we picked up more of the new species Spirontocaris, more Betaeus (this may be still a new species, tho Schmitt says probably harfordi, which heretofore wasn’t reported north of California), the fixed cucumber Psolus chitonoides, many tunicates, including Tethyum igaboja. The last two plus Terebratalia and one or two others from here occur on rocks that are almost dead ringers for those brought in by Monterey Bay rock cod men from deep water. None of these species are ever found alongshore in Monterey Bay. Usual explanation of this southward extension is temperature, but I think surf is

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the factor. In the Puget Sound region particularly, communities of this sort occur in the intertidal zone in temperatures much higher than they’d ever encounter along the Pacific Grove shore. Took also representative specimens of hermits and determined them: granosimanus is the larger and heavier occurring at this level; beringanus is the other, beautifully marked and colored. Hermit crab data on p. 105, 109, “New Series Note Book #3,” and on collecting reports RCR [revised collecting report] for that day. On Thursday we went again to Round Island, but on the north shore, just opposite Clayoquot. A very poor place with [a] tendency towards depositing detritus, and the fauna specialized with relation to that feature. Good place for brittle stars. Again, here we took in the one spot, representative of all the intertidal species known from this part of the North Pacific shore. Also one specimen of the asteroid Orthasterias koehleri, which Fisher says is the youngest known example of the species. Lots of Nebalia. The green ribbonlike delicate blenny, Apodichthys flavidus lying in the green Enteromorpha, which it so much resembles. Spirontocaris sitchensis, the small green shrimp which up north occurs in the eelgrass beds with Gonionemus. Before going to Round Island, we had a look at the wharf fauna at the rather low 1.0′ level. Examined a bunch of barnacles, anemones, and tubeworms, particularly for examining for pycnogonids. None at this low level. On Friday, June 29, for the twenty-second trip, we worked over the (mostly fish) fauna of a sandy pool in the rocky reef of the exposed shore of Stubbs (Clayoquot) Island, at the end of the trail. Seven species of fish were taken, including the troutlike Chiropsis decagrammos and the brilliant Hemilepidotus. We had no equipment for fish, but the Petersens went along; Knute got terribly interested in a flashing glimpse we had of one of these spectacularly colored cottids. He took off his shoes and stockings and trampled around one side of the pool, driving the fish up where I was working with a coffee strainer. On Saturday we went again to the south shore of Round Island, a little east of the very good June 25–26 spot. Here it was also quite good; maybe on a very low tide, this would be best of all. Got one new flatworm for Libbie [H. Hyman], a watery transparent simple tunicate, Ascidia paratropa, the nemertean Tubulanus capistratus, etc. On July 1, we went for a picnic on Vargas Island at about high tide, after Bill took the Beegee difficultly around the unprotected shore of the island and we managed to make a small-boat landing. I took the small

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high-up littorines, which checked in as L. scutulata. On July 2, there was an air corps dance at the big base between Tofino and Ucluelet. About 10 pm I took a walk along Long Beach, picked up a few of the great hordes of beach hoppers, just as at Moss Beach, Pacific Grove. Shoemaker determined as Orchestoidea californiana. On July 4, the American captain in the Canadian engineers, Pete Ackley, took one of their big four-wheel-drive vehicles, and we drove along the beach, stopping at two ecologically identical spots on the long sand beach spotted with rock outcroppings, as at Florencia Bay (called locally Wreck Bay). Amphipods, chitons, a few cottids, tunicates, isopods, hermits, one of which was infested with eleven specimens of the rhizocephalan Peltogaster socialis, were got here. There are some fine big sand tide pools with more fish than I’ve ever seen. A few ounces of poison would turn up a fine collection. As it is, I worked for a long time with my handkerchief trying to catch some of the wild little beasts. No luck. But this would be the quintessence of tide-pool-fish collecting. We also went to Ucluelet and had a look at the midtide and high-tide fauna of the completely protected gravel flats and rocky terraces there. At low tide it might be very good. Collected and recorded about fifteen spp., including some lovely anemones, the dark green Sagartia with the twelve golden stripes, probably the same one that got introduced a couple of generations ago into the Woods Hole area from Europe and is now appearing here. Maybe with the oyster transplants. In the next few days I identified what animals I could, sorted them, and dispatched bundles of fishes, holothurians, pycnogonids, and shrimps to specialists. Did some packing preparatory to the return trip. On July 7 we took what promised to be the last collecting trip of the season, the twenty-eighth, at Quait Bay, off Cypress Bay far inland. 125,52 West, 49, 15.5 N. Should represent the extreme of quiet water conditions here on the west coast, furthest removed from the ocean, and yet with no important admixtures of freshwater. Far up many of these fjords, you can get the extreme of quiet water conditions, but usually there’s a mighty stream pouring water poisonous to marine animals into the head of the inlet in great quantity. Fair tide 1.3′ Canadian datum, scheduled for 5:46 PDST. Left Clayoquot about 3 am in the Beegee, but didn’t get to Quait Bay until maybe 5:30 due to engine trouble. However, the tide continued to run out of the little inlet until 6:10 am, so we had good collecting. I expected to find Gonionemus, maybe great beds of Terebratalia, some Stichopus, as in similar saltwater lakes on the inland side of Vancouver Island, but there was only a single Go-

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nionemus, and that was pulled up by the wash of the propeller as the Beegee dumped us in Quait Bay and raced for the channel before the tidal stream should get strong. We trampled the eelgrass beds thoroughly; looked like G., but none. Maybe on a lower tide—they lie pretty far down. No, I find in the notes [that] there were actually great beds of Stichopus—the only place here we’ve found them intertidally. With kelp crabs. Evasterias was quite abundant here, just as you’d suppose. In the deepest layers, it vied with Pisaster brevispinus, which is almost never exposed by the tide. High up, vividly colored Pisaster ochraceus. Pycnopodia. Dermasterias and Strongylocentrotus franciscanus in the channel below tide. One Solaster (but different species than Round Island—dawsoni). No Petrolisthes here whatsoever. Plenty of both species [of] Hemigrapsus. Clusters of the tubed Serpula vermicularis, as you’d expect. About fifty species determined; I suppose we took a total of sixty to seventy-five. When we started back, or anything on the way, the notes have very little about. On Tuesday, July 10, we were in Barclay Sound going towards Port Alberni. I recorded the northerly one (with the light) of a double island between Bamfield and Kildonan as promising good collecting. We were able again in Victoria to make use of the library. Towards the end of a trip, notes get scant; sometimes on the way back I write them up, but as a rule I’m content to rest. Then I got to thinking about the possible significance of a person going on a long and expensive trip, coming back with nothing but a few specimens, some notes, and lists of animals—the lists themselves necessarily incomplete and subject to error. I thought, if you can’t sum it up, what good is it? Of course [I mean] beyond the fun of doing, which is a thing of its own purity and not what I’m considering now. I got to thinking about the ecological method, the value of building, of trying to build, whole pictures. No one can controvert it. An ecologist has to consider the parts, each in its place, and as related to, rather than as subsidiary to, the whole. It would undoubtedly be good if political leaders, if there are such, would get to know that method. If they could realize no man is an island to himself, anymore than the animals are that make up a community, that make up a region, that make up a coastline, he’d be careful to look at more than his own narrow segment. At least to keep more than that in mind. But how much of a whole picture can a person build? In a sense, all I end up with is a list of animals. Some new species, many extensions of range, some little bits of knowledge that hadn’t been dug out before with reference to that particular beast. But

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even that’s a contribution towards a whole picture; it’s better than a specialist going into a region, collecting frantically all he can of a given group, reviewing them systematically [while] paying little attention to comparative abundance, to places where many individuals of a species [occur,] and [to] other places where only a few occur, [and] tying up those anomalies of distribution with, if he can, [the] physiography, physics, or chemistry of the region. The cataloguing of what we’ve got and how and where it occurs is the first step in any inquiry. Until we have that, we can’t start. And on the Pacific coast of North America, more than perhaps anywhere else in the world except the equivalent coasts of South America and Africa, we haven’t that. So if an attempt at an ecological picture shall result in nothing more than an annotated list of species encountered, even that’s better than nothing—if it hasn’t been done before, and depending on the value of the annotations. Which is ultimately a function of the worth of the system of bookkeeping, of record-making, employed. I think I will work up some dope on that, with tables or organization, etc., with designs of the way such a system can work. Methodology is not only contributory, it’s often interesting. And then I got to thinking in terms of the usages and even of the methodology and immediate aims of ecology itself. They’ve never been well defined. Some of the basic principles haven’t been stated; yet they’re obvious enough. Trouble is in the way of saying them. Ecology is the science of relationships. Of living relationships. There are three or four approaches. The first is the most superficial. But it’s also the most primitive. And it’s more or less what I’m doing now: cataloguing the beasts of a given region, but doing it quantitatively with regard to the environmental rather than the taxonomic aspects. Thus it’s not only important what occurs (tho that has to be known first) but where it occurs physiographically as well as geographically, in what quantities, and, so far as can be determined with our poor present methods, with what other animals. In such a method, the region is the large unit, and the type of shore, tidal level, etc., the immediate unit. With the second method we associate the name of Shelford, Allee to some extent, and more recently that of Gislen. Based on the work of the plant ecologists and, later, of the Scandinavians who were concerned with the valuation of the sea, attempts are made to determine the loose aggregations of several species, or associations, into which animals band themselves, or [into which] sometimes animals and plants [band]. Shelford et al. in 1925 (published by Puget Sound Marine Station) and more thoroughly in 1935 ([an] ecological monograph) attempted this

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for the Friday Harbor region; the names were based on animals which were assumed to dominate the association. Of course, it’s the business of dominance that screws that up. MacGinitie 1939 (Am. Midl. Nat. [American Midland Naturalist] 21:28–55) has shown pretty conclusively that no definitive work can be based on the idea of the association as at present conceived. Even if such a system would work otherwise, the “eury-” animals would screw it up further; they’re likely to occur almost anywhere. Only “steno-” animals are restricted to strict associations; there are always plenty of generalized forms that occur sometimes in great quantity. MacGinitie by his objections leads up to the third method, which he so much favors: that if you know the natural history, but especially the complete life history of the beasts chiefly involved, you can allocate it accurately and understand just how and even why it occurs in a certain place at a given period in its life history—to what association or associations it belongs at various times of its life, and why. You know what physical environment, or environment it’s most likely to get into at various times of the day, or [of] the season, or of its life; and why that should likely happen. Of course the difficulty there is that to work out even only the most important life histories is a terrible job; only a few fine observers have the ability to do it at all, a few guys like MacGinitie who have a pure genius for that sort of stuff. A fourth significant method hasn’t even been suggested so far as I know: that of the “feeding-habitat-niche” or the “reproductive-habitatniche” or the “protective-habitat-niche” or the “hibernation—(resting stage)—niche”; I suppose habitat and niche are redundant. I’ve noticed, for instance, that wherever I’ve been on the completely open rocky shore, one starfish, usually no more than one urchin, one or two barnacles, etc., have established themselves as sort of an ecological niche. Different animals have solved this in different parts of the world, but the animals themselves, tho widely separated, are strikingly similar morphologically, and of course they occupy an identical niche. Strongylocentrotus purpuratus gets a foothold wherever the terrain is suitable from Alaska at least to Point Conception on the surf-swept outer coast. (Similar niches free from surf tend to be occupied in the inlets by Strongylocentrotus drobachiensis at least in the northern part of that range, but that’s a different niche ecologically.) South of Cedros Island, there are identical appearing habitats where S. purpuratus doesn’t occur. But you can look there confidently and see a very similar urchin that clings just as tight, that lives, protects itself, and no doubt repro-

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duces just like the Strongylocentrotus, to which it isn’t even closely related phyletically. Same is true of Pisaster ochraceus in the northern temperate zone and Heliaster in the Panamic [zone]. All over the world, littorines and Balanus occupy the high rocky cliffs and ledges and benches; their physiological needs are similar, but the species are different. In the northern temperate zone of the Pacific, the genus Acmaea is highly developed, the limpets. In the Panamic zone, some of these niches are taken by animals that at first glance you’d swear were Acmaea, but they belong to a totally different group of gastropods—the pulmonates. All over the world, there’s a harvest for predatory animals in the flotsam cast up on the uppermost rocks. In the region from Northern California to southeastern Alaska, two crabs of the genus Hemigrapsus (nudus on the open shore and less in protected regions; oregonensis in protected areas and rarely on the open shore) fills that niche. In California and Northern California, Pachygrapsus does the job. In the tropics, Grapsus grapsus. In Europe, Carcinus. The surf-swept sand beaches have their characteristic animals, and sometimes even the form is the same. Gislen to some extent considers this in connection with his forms— crustose, etc.—but a great deal of it remains still be worked out. Of course the “answer” is that an integration of all this would give a true picture of ecology. But all these things could be tied in together by a true ecology in which the important thing is neither the region, nor the association, nor the animal itself (MacGinitie 1939, p. 30: the living organism, the animal [or plant] itself, as the fundamental unit of ecology; I think he’s wrong), nor its various stages or needs, nor even the ecological niche, but in which the unit is the relationship. And that could be an exact and a satisfyingly quantitative science in which the vectors representing these relationships—their direction, extension, and strength or intensity—would be considered and evaluated. In the plains that Alice and I investigated—for instance, that time near Blackwell Corners—the relationship between the rattlesnake and the rodent is very near and intense in a certain direction. The vector representing the relationship between the symbol rattlesnake—any given rattler or the mean of all rattlers examined (with its frequency curve by which the relation could be shown between the extremes and the mean)—and the heat of the sun, involving the midday retreat underground or in a rocky ledge, would be equally near and intense, but in a different direction. The relation would be more tenuous between the rattler and the insect that fertilizes the plant that feeds the insect that the rodent eats, but it would still be there as a measurable entity of certain importance. Or the insect that

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fertilizes the plant that shelters the daytime rodent sought at night by the rattler. Or the relation between the rain-precipitating airplane in the Salinas Valley that causes the discharge of clouds otherwise likely to flood this desert area on the other side of a mountain range. Vector analyses of this sort would consider relationships between the individual animal and others of the same species, individually or en masse, between the individual and the individuals and groups of individuals of other species—enemy and mate and fellow traveler—between the animal and its inanimate environment, and would consider similar clauses in connection with the whole species under treatment. And as many of these things as can be, should be considered continually, but the first thing is to know what we have to work with, and even this first step has still to be completed before the others can be put in place.

Journal of the 1946 Trip Left Pacific Grove Wednesday, May 22, on the Del Monte [train] 8:30 am, after having sent seven pieces, 609 pounds, [of] baggage [the] Sunday nite before, leaving [the] Ferry Building on the 5 pm Cascade, Seattle King Street station, 5:05 pm Thursday, half hour late after the Railway strike was on. Dumb gal in [the] baggage room (this is the poorest and slowest I’ve ever been in, as I noted last year too) gave me transfer tags for my seven baggage checks without making sure the items had arrived at that depot and without assessing storage charges if any. Taxied to Coleman Rock, exchanged transfer checks for Black Ball Victoria checks, went to Alaska SS Co [Steamship Company]—closed—library, dinner, and sweated out late arrival of baggage by several phone calls, finally got it by special trip, with storage charges, got off OK about midnight [on the] international ferry route. Library notes, Seattle, p. 63, “New Series Note Book #4.” Restaurant notes, Seattle, San Francisco, p. 63, “New Series Note Book #4.” Collecting notes, Puget Sound: For Gonionemus, take a boat alongshore a few miles south of Day Island, just south of Tacoma. Arrived [in] Victoria [at] 9:30 am, almost an hour late, Friday, May 24, after breakfast aboard. Went thru customs with hand baggage, filling in forms for camera and microscopes (which forms must be turned back when we go out) and checking in at the Empress, where the SF CPR [San Francisco Canadian Pacific Railway] office had got us reser-

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vations after all. Lunch very late after great difficulties (crowds, reservations, Empire Day) in [a] funny little tea room near Empress (old Victorian home). Victoria Public Library notes, p. 64, “New Series Note Book #4.” Got British Columbia liquor permits (which take ordinarily several days to validate) and by going thru some trouble, and over the head to the manager of a snippy spinster, had them validated at once. Each one good for two quarts whiskey. Got Canadian Club $4.25 per fifth (twenty-five ounce) dated 1940. Tide tables. Fine celebration last night and tonight—Empire Day. Visited Jo and Mary. Mary’s [an] awfully pretty gal, and to our certain knowledge there’s only one or two others in Victoria; I never saw so many unappetizing women. Got off Saturday, May 25th [at] midnight (11 pm standard time) on the Princess Norah— the Maquinna [was] laid up for painting. Captain MacKinnon, however, [was] commanding, as he commands the Maquinna usually on this run. Sunday, May 26: Arrived [at] Bamfield, middle morning. Tide was at the lower limit of the Fucus of the upper Fucus zone. British Columbia Packers plant, perhaps one also of Nootka-Bamfield company—there must be, tho I’ve never seen it. Water clear but dirty—now that doesn’t make sense; what could I have meant? Mytilus edulis commonest, anemones next, including (lower down at least) fine Metridium—in other words, the same the world over in the northern temperate zone in equivalent ecological stations. Maine, England, Norway, Siberia, Sitka, Bamfield. Addition of Eudistylia here, which is best developed of the world, probably, on the British Columbia coast; and these tube worms [are] characteristic of the northern Pacific littoral. One Aequorea at surface. One Hormiphora (the round Pleurobrachia) halfway down the eight-to-twelve-inch bottom. The usual fresh fish barge of the Kyuquot Trollers Co-op. I wonder if it’s the presence of so many Indians along here that lets the co-ops get such a wonderful influence. Didn’t stop at Ecoole. At Kildonan midafternoon, many halibut fishermen tied up at the float of the fine big British Columbia Packers plant. Thousands of small, slim, rather prettily marked (black-and-white) fish, but I couldn’t catch a single one. Larger fish intermediate, probably embiotocids. Which reminds me, I must save representatives, [on] the next trip, of all the embiotocids I get for Tarp at Hopkins Marine Station, who will do this group perhaps as carefully as Bolin did the cottids. Huge fish on the bottom. Franklin Road and then Port Alberni until 1:30 am, where we took a long walk. Sunday, so both movies were closed. As I did fourteen or fif-

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teen years ago, again I tasted the water: practically fresh. Looked up Railway and steamship schedules; checked roads: fifty-two miles to Nanaimo. Schedules: Train leaves Point Alberni 10:20 daily except Sunday; at Nanaimo connects with 2:45 steamer for arrival [at] Vancouver 5:15 pm. Uchuck leaves Point Alberni very early, I think 7 am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Arrives [at] and leaves Ucluelet about 3 pm, arrives back [at] Point Alberni about 8:15; fare about three dollars one way. Seventy-five-foot passenger and freight boat, diesel. Saturday schedule different, often runs to Bamfield and back, early until late. Monday, Port Albion, Ucluelet Inlet very early, and Clayoquot that same afternoon. First collecting trip was that same night, fishing over the tide rip from 7:30 pm on in the drizzling rain. Got four salmon from three to five pounds each. The largest, which we took home to eat—first fish Toni had ever caught and she was a thrilled gal—had a silver lance, Ammodytes, undigested in the gullet. The flesh of these young salmon is poor, looks wonderful, vivid red, but no taste, just like eating watery and tasteless meat. Tuesday, May 28: Took the trail to the outer shore of the island, and walked back along the rocks of the south shore, prospecting as we went. Took freshwater amphipods and isopods from a little rain pool just above high-tide line. Considering the heavy local rainfall, most of the high-tide marine animals must be practically freshwater beasts too in order to get along well here. Determined that the common little cottid Oligocottus maculosus will eat chunks of limpet and of Mytilus californianus whenever presented with them. We took small Acmaea from their shells and dropped them in the pools. Eventually one or several Oligocottus would gather around and grab at the meat, eating it at a gulp or two, even tho the chunks were almost as large as the fish that ate them. Sometimes a fish would get a chunk too big, worry it awhile, thresh around with it, shaking it furiously, and then abandon it for a while. When we came to the wharf, a Canadian dragger, the seventy-fivefoot Western Ranger, had come alongside for shelter, the water outside being too rough for continuing its outer trawling. The refuse they dumped over the side brought in hordes of the little silvery smelts (Ammodytes) that the Indians call “lance”—the same beast I found in the gullet of the salmon.

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On the afternoon low (4.0′ Canadian datum), I poisoned a tide pool about twelve inches deep with the entrance perhaps a foot above the tide line at the time. Used perhaps a one-ounce jar full of powdered Derris Root, of which the active agent is the substance rotenone, a commercial insecticide. After [a] half hour or so, the fish come wiggling up to the surface. Actually seem to be trying to crawl out of the pool. There were no O. maculosus in this particular pool, altho the ones higher up were full of them. But we took a couple of O. snyderi, several Aselichthys rhodurus, and one of the vivid green blennies, Apodichthys flavidus. About 10 pm we picked up some pelagic stuff with a long-handled net by flashlight off the float. Amphipods, isopods, and other crustacea, some syllid worms all swimming frantically under the light of the flashlight; several medusae. Wednesday, May 29: Little before noon we saw a fabulous swimming beast, bright orange, several inches long, wiggling, and I couldn’t tell until we belatedly got a boat and, after [a] search, netted it, whether it was fish, annelid, or crustacean. It was Berkeley’s beautiful big pelagic syllid, Autolytus magnus, full of eggs. And another one smaller, in polybostrichous stage—the first was sacconereis stage—what a complex business. Swims like a snake. The naked hydroids Syncoryne on the barge were giving off medusae, full of Corophium (amphipods). Quite a colony here, with Nereis and brilliant limpets that Haas says represent a cross between Acmaea pelta and A. digitalis. The inviolability of the species concept falls down pretty badly with the invertebrates. It’s just as Fisher says: the species concept was built up around the vertebrates, especially about birds and mammals, where it works fairly well, and our whole system of taxonomy is adapted to these animals. In groups to which it isn’t so adapted, it doesn’t hold up so well. A man-made rather than a god-made thing. Again in the early evening we came down here to the float with nets and trays, picked up a great variety of pelagic beasts, usually the same things we pick up rarely, and in great concentrations, in Monterey on the rare pelagic runs. Here they occur all the time, but not often in concentrations. When the tide runs by strongly, it’s fun to stand on the float at night, focus the beam of a flashlight down in the water, watch the animals go swirling by and see how the sexual stages of the nereid worms are attracted to the spot of light. I wonder what possible significance that can have in the natural history of the beast; under natural and wild conditions it can’t ever experience a focused light like that at night.

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On the early morning low of Thursday, May 30, Toni, Ed Jr., Betty Farmer, and I went over to Round Island in the kicker, which Betty claims to be able to keep going (but I notice it stops for her pretty nearly as frequently as for anyone else). Tide was .5′ Canadian standard; very good, about our -1.5′, but still not equal to the beauties about to happen here. About the same as last year, except that we took one of the brilliantly colored lithodid crabs, Phyllolithodes papillosus. Really something to see one of these. This one had a smooth, beautiful ivory carapace, the big claws vivid burnt orange with gray fingers. The walking legs were olive brown with one band of ivory crossing the next-tothe-last segment. And all the colors were clear-cut and brilliant. If there’s anything to protective resemblance, this crab pays a high price for his beauty; you can see him a long way off. Great ohs and ahs from the gals when they found him. And more when they dug out a great octopus. Some beautiful, beautiful nudibranchs that were new to me, many flatworms, small holothurians. Solitary corals as last year. And this time I noted particularly the vivid Corynactis anemones exactly as at Pacific Grove. And occurring with the solitary corals identically. A new species of anemones (the Corynactis) known for years at Pacific Grove and known to be (now that Carlgren’s seen it) a new species. But no one will describe it. A beautiful white-beaded red anemone also, apparently the same one we get in Monterey Bay deep water. About sixtyfive species determined to date. I suppose here today again we took close to a hundred species, including a number of things not got last year here. For the fine low of May 31, early morning, Ed Jr. and I went out on the long sand flat between Round Island and Deadman’s Islets, the one that makes the steamer detour all around Round Island, going between Clayoquot and Tofino, even at high tide, but which in the Beegee we scoot right across on all except the rather low tides. Ed Jr. and I almost got ourselves into a jam on this one. We had walked out perhaps a mile over the flats away from the high land at Round Island. I was starting to get a little nervous, but the flats at the far end, where they go off into the deep channel suddenly, were so interesting we couldn’t pull ourselves away when we should have. Came near to doing a “Jesus walk.” By the time we had got to higher ground again, we were almost panicky; considered throwing away our collections and stripping off our clothes. But we made it by getting soaked and by being patient. It’s slow going when you’re wading almost up to your hips, and your morale is ruined by realizing there are deeper crossings yet up ahead until you get in. Our

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boat fortunately was well moored and anchored and we didn’t have to worry about that; but how we wished we had it along. Afterward we discovered that we had been seen, reported to the Coast Guard station, and they had a boat all ready to launch to go after us. And Bill on the island had been notified by the Canadian government phone, and he brought out the Beegee also. All this not needed. But it damn easy might have been if we’d have lagged even another fifteen or twenty minutes. That tide comes sailing in; it has great heights to cover and huge expanses. Funniest part of all was that the child who originally reported us to his mother said that he saw me walking over the covering tide flats followed by Danny (Bill’s big dog, who often went with us). What he saw was tall Ed Jr. striding along in front, and short I following him and almost submerged. All this reminds me of Toni’s Jesus walk, which probably we’ve mentioned to you already. Reports of it went up and down the coast like wildfire, and people who’d never heard of us, [a] hundred miles upcountry, knew what we were famous for. When we came back one night in the captain’s jeep from the Ucluelet airbase, where the captain and his wife and I had been drinking (I don’t know where the army gets all its liquor under rationing) but Toni had been wagoning, we told Bill we’d save the heel of the bottle for him. When, on the dock waiting for him to come over, we were considering whether maybe the heel was too large, and doing something about it, along comes a provincial policeman that Pete had had trouble with before. Drinking in a public place is against the law in British Columbia and frowned on socially in addition. Pete was angry at the cop and told him if he didn’t quit annoying him, he was going to throw the cop off the wharf. And he’d have done it. Well, Toni, being sober, was embarrassed by such low wrangling, so she walked along the float to where Bill had parked the Beegee, half its length extending into the dark water beyond the float. Toni calmly walked into this dark part beyond the float and it was in fact water: she had walked right off into space, saved herself from a fall by the fact [that] water was occupying that space. I came to in my drunkenness to see her struggling in the water with such a puzzled expression on her face I started to laugh [and] asked her what she was doing down there. She started paddling dog fashion [and] came back to the float sputtering; the cop and I helped her up, ruining her legs just a little in the process and wrenching her arm somewhat. So she said, Isn’t that lucky, all I lost was my purse and the dress I was carrying. Her dress and purse went floating by. Peter picked up one and I the other. Bill never did get

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his heel. Toni was shivering then; we had a boat trip over the cold water, then it took me a while to get a fire going in our house, dry her out, and feed her hot toddy. After which she was sore for a few days, had a bruised leg, but was otherwise no worse whatsoever for the wear. Well, I worked out the differences between the surface appearance of the four clams commonest on these flats, the little Macoma highest up with the ivory white, long siphons widely separated thruout their length; the short differentiated siphons of Saxidomus, the butter clam, with the ends fimbriated; the calcareous flap enclosing those of the long and deep horsecock clam, Schizothaerus; and the longest of all siphons, together in the neck, but far apart, of the geoduck. Collected examples of each except Panope, the geoduck, for examining for peacrabs. The gulls were digging up jackknife clams, and I suppose now that these birds are the greatest hazards in the clam’s life. The June 1 tide was the lowest of the series; it was a minus even by the Canadian datum, and the lowest in my collecting experience. We made another trip to the very fine Wikininish Island at the entrance to Clayoquot Sound. We collected both on the sheltered but particularly on the open side of the island; had a magnificent haul. One hundred sixteen species have already been determined from this one tide; certainly we collected, or specifically noted, more than 125 species, and I must have missed a good many working at this fever. Highlights are too numerous to specify but include a perfectly enormous octopus, many many compound tunicates, including Clavellina, a canyon wall just plastered with Rhabdodermella, Leucosolenia, solitary corals, hydroids, bryozoa, encrusting sponges and with fixed Pectens, Hinnites giganteus, themselves plastered over with encrustations. In a channel on Echachis [Island, we found] a large wild animal working in the kelp. Between a mink and a fox in size, fairly flat but very slim, beautiful gray fur, short legs. A wonderful looking beast that scuttled away—where, I could never make out—when I appeared. Apparently a land otter, but there’s just one chance in a thousand it may have been a sea otter (which are reputed still to occur on these rugged offshore islands here and in the Charlottes [those in the Charlottes aren’t ever visited to this day]) on one of his rare excursions ashore. In California they never are known to go ashore. In the old days they used to. And here they may still. On this trip, we made a point of picking up representatives of all the different-appearing small starfish, the Leptasterias. Fisher told me that along this coast pretty nearly anything could occur, that there was a fantastic mixing of the starfish, and in many cases even he, the world

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authority, and a very disciplined, considerate man, couldn’t even work them out. Specimens taken here were determined by Fisher as L. hexactis forma plena, which occurs from southern Alaska to Puget Sound, but others of this sort were given up as a bad job, an impossible job, with a reference to Dr. Fisher’s remarks (1930, p. 108): “It is necessary to repeat that among the numerous small 6-rayed sea-stars of the nw coast of America, specific lines are exceedingly difficult to draw; but nowhere is there such a confusion and intermingling of forms as in the sounds of Washington and British Columbia. Specific lines which are fairly distinct elsewhere here break down and one of the reasons is probably hybridization, as suggested by the presence of a minority of intermediate and freakishly aberrant specimens. Hybridization would be likely and simple enough if the breeding seasons coincide; but it is difficult to prove that it takes place.” Elsewhere he speaks of the taxonomic situation here as an “almost hopeless mess of 6-rayed forms in the Puget Sound region.” Everything about Leptasterias is difficult, and hexactis is particularly unfortunate in that Stimpson in 1862 picked up, for describing the species, a particularly rare and freakish aberration. Several genera of the more highly specialized starfish, Pisaster and Evasterias, in addition to Leptasterias, and Henricia among the more primitive forms, seem to be in a particularly unstable state in the Pacific Northwest. During these years characterized by the presence of the human race, an inquisitive beast, in this region Leptasterias particularly seems to be most actively proliferating in an evolutionary sense, pushing off tendencies towards new species in all directions. A few remarks in this connection mightn’t be amiss at this point, since a situation certainly interesting and perhaps significant, is importantly involved. The actual dispersal center of several of these confused genera is in the Kamchatka, Aleutian, Bering Sea region, but plenty of confusion gets clear down into the Vancouver Island region, and Fisher handles it in a novel fashion. Some of the species are so variable and difficult they cannot be described except in terms of discrete formae; certain given formae of one species resemble more nearly the corresponding formae of other species more nearly than their own related formae within the same species. The genus Leptasterias, for instance, one of the most actively proliferating, has to be considered in terms of three subgenera, twentyfive species and subspecies totaling fifty-eight formae, etc. It will perhaps be a good point of departure to quote some of this stuff in Fisher’s own words (1911, p. 268):

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All attempts at classification are to be regarded as provisional, but in the case of Henricia especial emphasis should be directed to this fact. The more diverse individual and other variations become, the more difficult it is to limit precisely the species of a genus, and the more must personal equation and fallible judgment figure in the final decision. For this reason it is probable that another worker, with the same collection would differ considerably on his results. The problem resolves itself into observation and interpretation of not very obvious evidence—evidence in which many important gaps are present and evidence which may be construed in several different ways. So great and numerous are the variation in most of the species recorded below that each is to be regarded more as a center of variation, deviations from the type proceeding in many directions until they meet and often merge with aberrant members of nearly related forms. This will very likely hold true in many other genera when enough specimens from numerous localities are examined. Another way of stating the idea (which is not new) is this: So-called species [I like the use of the word “so-called” EFR] of starfishes intergrade in various ways (geographically, bathymetrically, and by individual variation, and perhaps also by hybridization) with neighboring and sometimes also with accompanying forms. Many species seem well marked only when we have a few specimens. Furthermore, wide differences in outward structure form no barriers to such intergradation, which may be accomplished from one species to another through a series of intermediate species or races. With deliberate inconsistency, I have called the well-marked types species, disregarding certain indications of intergradation . . . ; and I have called subspecies certain small species which are obviously closely related to and were found to intergrade with. . . . Certain of these cases I feel sure are due to hybridism. When two or more species range together, “freaks” and aberrant specimens immediately make their appearance. It is sometimes impossible to classify these; they are very baffling. . . . Hybridization is possible and in some cases probable.” [In the first place, it’s shocking to many people for them to learn that there can be such a thing as hybridism between two different species. They regard the discreteness of species as sacred. Funny old women who cherish very much their pet male dogs mustn’t admit such a possibility; folklore however is full of it.] I am not convinced that the terrestrial subspecies has an exact counterpart in the sea, nor the extreme and baffling variation of the Asteroidea a counterpart in any class of vertebrates.

[From] p. 270: “Perhaps the sum of this rather lengthened apology for what follows is this: That a system of nomenclature perfected for a rather limited set of animals (the higher vertebrates) may not so well meet the requirements of a different class of creatures which have evolved under very different conditions, and have been subjected to possibly fewer, perhaps more numerous modifying factors. If this system of nomenclature, therefore, is not rigorously adhered to, but is just

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a trifle altered in order to make it less obviously the awkward instrument that it is, no serious criticism should follow.” Referring to the very common and puzzling Evasterias troschelii of Puget Sound and north, Fisher (1930, p. 139) remarks: “The variations are so numerous and confusing . . . that no attempt will be made to describe the species. Rather the chief formae will be analyzed as well as the material permits.” And again on p. 140: “. . . one of the most variable among the many variable species of the northwest coast. Its forms clearly parallel those of Pisaster ochraceus, and many specimens when preserved resemble slender-rayed examples of that species.” [From] p. 144: “Forma aleveolata is far from being homogeneous. It is a convenient pigeon hole for a large number of small varieties.” [From] p. 145: “It is not possible to describe this forma with any degree of precision. The principle variants will be indicated by means of figures. In Leptasterias aequalis, which is our common large L. here at Monterey Bay, Fisher recognizes three formae, but they perhaps intergrade, and there seems to be no geographical or ecological differential yet discovered. “This lot of specimens is easily separable from vancouveri, yet any specimen from the San Juan Islands must be viewed with extreme caution. Something connected with environment plays havoc with specific boundaries.” Compare L. alaskensis forma shumagensis (p. 129): “It is none too homogeneous.” Very evidently there are such things as eury and steno species and formae; varying and fixed species. This is highly varying, a eury forma. [From] p. 94, of L. camtschatica dispar, in three formae: “These three phases are morphologically equivalent to formae found in widely dissimilar species. For example, they correspond, in the order named, to Pisaster ochraceus forma ochraceus, f. confertus, f. nodiferus; or to Evasterias troschelii f. alveolata, f. acanthostoma, f. troschelii.” [From] p. 103, referring to L. aleutica: “The really problematical specimens are small. It must be remembered that all young Leptasterias are peculiarly difficult. Forms which are easily separable in the adult phase may converge in the young stage so that exact differentiation is impossible.” [From] p. 115, etc., of L. hexactis vancouveri, which he find separable into three discrete classes: “Some of the specimens of Class 3 . . . are L. hexactis forma hexactis for ordinary purposes, and no diagnosis can be given which will separate them effectively from the types of L. hexa-

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ctis. Yet some of Class III are undoubtedly the young of Class II. . . . The logic is . . . that some of the specimens of Class III are genetically quite different from L. hexactis, although so similar in appearance.” Of Pisaster brevispinus, p. 181: “There is a complete series of intergrades between the extremes. It is convenient to recognize two formae equivalent to the old species brevispinus and paucispinus.” Referring to the fact that the vividly blue P. ochraceus forma confertus is confined to the quiet bays and sounds of Puget Sound, British Columbia, and southeastern Alaska: “It is difficult to escape the interference [sic] that the characteristic small spinelets . . . are correlated with quiet water, but that this is not the only factor is evidenced by the presence, along with confertus, of forma ochraceus and nodiferus, the latter found on open coasts. . . . There is nothing approaching a sharp lack of distinction between ochraceus & confertus”; and later on, p. 167, in connection with f. ochraceus, he says: “It is absolutely impossible to allocate all specimens since the differences between the formae are relative only.” In connection with p. 177, the southern race, capitatus of P. giganteus, it is worth noting that this is paralleled exactly by a southern race of ochraceus, the subspecies segnis. This mass of evidence, based on the work of a man who has too much integrity to make things fit, for convenience, that won’t fit in fact, ties in with evidence from other groups. The anemones, for instance, apparently can’t be straightened out adequately even for any given single region, let alone coordinated into a world picture. The sponges, even some of the mollusks such as Acmaea. When I first started thinking about this, it seemed absolutely hopeless. It seemed terribly unfortunate; if you can’t be certain of your units, where can you get [sic], what can you do with them? Then I realized instead that it was actually very fortunate. Because it forces a person to accept underlying unities. Of course, it does add to one’s confusion. And most people hate to be confused. If only everything could be clean-cut, the distinctions between the related species definite and unvarying—how lovely! That they aren’t may easily drive you to distraction. Or to understanding the fundamental unity of all animal life. You can’t consider Leptasterias hexactis or the more northern hexactis without realizing that it’s in a state of throwing off species, but that the species are merely hints, potentials, most of which won’t be realized. A few thousand or a few hundred thousand years from now, everything will be cleared up nicely. Out of the many possibilities, a few well-stabilized species will have emerged,

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well adapted to their environment and fairly nonvarying. A small percentage only of the variations being thrown off now will have crystallized into definitely classifiable species. Others will have perished. And minute variations around a matrix (around several matrices, that’s the worst of it) no longer will be thrown off. The North Pacific, the Aleutian–Bering Sea region particularly, is certainly the birthing grounds of the forcipulate starfish. There are more species here, and incomparably more individuals too, than anywhere else in the world. They’re everywhere, all colors, sizes, shapes, and with equivalent variations in the pedicellaria and other structures by which systematists classify them. The only clear-cutness you can get in an evolutionary picture is if you can get your knife of time to cut across the tree after the forks have been thoroughly established. To cut thru the swollen nodes is a heavy and a thankless task. But if we belong to that time, we have no choice. Cut across at a-a and you have a small mess, but that was long ago. At b-b the main lines had been clarified, no trouble. But this is past too. The line c-c represents the present situation for the genera Henricia, Leptas-

Figure 16. Original sketch from the “Outer Shores Transcript.” Courtesy of Ed Ricketts Jr.

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terias, Pisaster, and Evasterias in the North Pacific, and it’s a major headache. In the future, d-d will be fairly easy. But whenever the sector cuts across where species are actively proliferating, the cross section is pretty muddled—which is all that we who are in it can see. Observers living then either go crazy or glimpse the underlying structure. They must either understand nothing, or thru the muddle come to grips with one of the most ultimate and fundamental ideas: that of essential unity. Well, to pick up where I was so rudely interrupted by the speciology business: For the rest of June 1, we picked up more medusae in the pelagic stuff off the float. I made drawings of several of these, since they preserve so poorly. Also one huge Cancer magister preserved, out of a lot of smaller for food, and some C. productus. On June 2, Ed Jr. and I collected again on the Clayoquot flats and at Devil’s Rock. The most obvious difference intertidally between the British Columbia coast and the California coast is the absence of Pachygrapsus from the former, and the presence in the latter of Cucumaria miniata, which substantially doesn’t occur in California. Clayoquot is certainly the home of the geoduck and the horsecock clams and the edible crab and the big octopus. Once we were on the wharf at about half tide, and a perfectly huge octopus went drifting on by right below us, outlined plainly in the shallow water over the rocky flat about four feet under; they swim very beautifully and gracefully. At Devil’s Rock there is a big one [who] lives in a rocky cavern just about dry at 0.0′, Canadian datum. Could get him out with a crowbar or maybe have to blast one of the rocks away with a bit of powder, but I don’t know the point of it, and we’d better keep still or some righteous octopus-fearing human will devote a lot of energy to killing him. There are several of the big kelp crabs, Pugettia producta, here, and we got also one of the masking crabs, Loxorhynchus, but otherwise this isolated rock at the end of the sand spit has just about the same stuff that the Clayoquot wharf region has. On the sand flats, I frustrated myself, as usual, trying to dig out whole, and with the animal intact, what I take to be the tube of Chaetopterus, a large annelid. Also lots of tubes of what I take to be phonodids. And a good many other worms which break so badly you don’t bother to collect them. The basket cockle, Cardium corbis, good to eat but a bit tough, is common here, and two species of Macoma, the smooth-shell small clam, and the sand-flat mussel Modiolus flabellatus, one of the horse mussels. Butter clam, etc. and a good many other things in addition to the large snaky brittlestar Amphiodia as before.

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Now already I have more than 130 vials and jars of specimens in addition to some large items still in trays. Takes a lot of containers. Candles tonight. Last night darkness only, but tonight we were ready. The generator broke down. Bearing trouble. A severe storm. Rain, driving heavy rain that almost scares you. Makes you think of biblical stories of the flood. Makes you fearful to go out in it, thinking if you slip and fall you’ll drown. Like a deluge. Occasional high wind. Some lightning. Most people have no conception of what rain and storm can be. The winters must be terrible here. Bill says he doesn’t think he can last out any more. They take too much out of you. Not very cold. Just concentrated storm and wind, and darkness. I think the most powerful muscle, the most resistant animal flesh I’ve ever seen, is in the retractor of the operculum of the great moon snail Polynices lewisii. Three days ago I brought in several of these great snails. The day after they were captured, I cut out most of the tissue at a favorable time, finding them open and working fast. The flesh remaining immediately drew in and pulled the operculum shut behind it. Stayed this way without dying or losing hold, for two more days. Then I reached in with a narrow knife, cut away enough of the muscle so I could pull the operculum out, and cut it out of the flesh. The flesh still attached to the operculum was so tough I couldn’t cut it or scrape it away, so had to put it aside again until it should rot out! On June 3, we went back to the same sandy-mudflat station, determined to get us a geoduck or two. A curious thing worked out. I’ve tried to dig a lot of Panope, have succeeded not very often. When I mentioned to Betty that on a couple of tides Ed and I had tried to dig one out, she said, “Why, I never heard of such a thing. Miles and I will dig out several for you tomorrow,” and she said they two could get one in two or three [minutes], certainly in five minutes, that they got them all the time for chowder, much preferred them to the horse clam for that purpose. (Subsequently she told me she thot that I must be a lot weaker than I looked.) So I thought, “Well, these people live here all the time, they ought to have some shortcuts and maybe they can dig one out so fast.” Anyway I urged them to come along next morning and give me a hand. I said if they could dig one out in any five minutes, or even ten, I’d have to revise my ideas on the subject and I’d certainly have to revise what I’d written about them. I wanted terribly to get a specimen or so preserved in alcohol, because not many are extant in museums. Dr. Haas wanted one at [the] Field Museum in Chicago, and he told me the anatomy hadn’t even been worked out.

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So we went out, a whole gang of us, about eight including the hired man, Miles, and all the shovels we had. Betty asked me to pick out a nice big one and they’d rout it out for me. Instead I picked out the smallest siphon I could find, and she and Miles and then some of the others of us went to work on that. Time passed and they were puzzled; Betty said, “I’ve never seen one to go so far down.” Finally I took off my shirt and coat in the rain, laid down on the muddy sand and put my arm down in the hole and held onto the animal’s siphon while the others took turns digging, because I didn’t want either the shell or the siphon broken. Finally just as I was about to lift the beast out of his guck, the pressure from a shovel at one side got too great, I felt the shell crush, but I got the animal out anyway in a slightly broken condition. Then Betty said, “Well, there was something wrong then; now we’ll pick one.” So they picked a nice big siphon; she and Miles went to work and, sure enough, within five or ten minutes, there the great beast lay dug out and uninjured. But I called attention to the fact that it wasn’t a geoduck, even tho it was larger than the small geoduck we already had. And the differences were apparent once they’d been pointed out. So then Betty asked the name of the beast they dug, and I said, “horse clam,” But she said no, the horse clam was a different animal, lived differently, looked different in flesh and shell and wasn’t as good in chowder. And she proved it by digging one of them. Then we had three obviously different very large clams. The first one, so far down, I knew to be Panope generosa, the geoduck. The other two were both Schizothaerus, the horsecock clam, but now I could see a possible answer. That two species of Schizothaerus were involved, and both of them occurred at Clayoquot. Then I was eager to get to my references to dig it out; one of them showed a subspecies or variety different from the regular horse clam, but the others all considered that only one species was involved. So then we got together, and all went to work and succeeded in getting out a larger true Panope in perfect condition. But we certainly worked at it. As it developed, no one at Clayoquot had ever seen a true geoduck before, tho they were surrounded by them and (presumably) had been digging them all their lives. I got busy and determined the structural differences between the two Schizothaerus, but unfortunately I didn’t realize the full significance of the thing until I got back to California: that there were three large edible clams on the outer coast of British Columbia, where only two had been reported before, [and] that the third was either a new species, or that one of Brandt’s old species from Sitka, which had been synonymized, would have to be resurrected. So now I

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have that still to do: to make careful comparisons and photos of both the shell and the soft parts, and to determine the ecological differences, if any. Betty and Bill thought that the two burrowed differently, that their orientation was different, and that they occurred perhaps in different sand-mud admixtures, but there was no certainty and not much agreement, so it has still to be worked out. Anyway, my stock went back up, and instead of [being] a weakling I was respected for digging strength as well as book learning and observation ability, so all was well. Notes and measurements on these, with data on some of the tubes and the large worms occupying them, are on p. 76–77 of [the] “New Series Note Book #4,” to p. 79. On Tuesday, June 4, Ed Jr. and I went out on the sand spit again. First [we] went way out to Devil’s Rock [to] check to see if the big octopus was home. He was. Surrounded by a group of fish. I couldn’t catch any, but, if littoral species, they may have been either Aselichthys rhodorus or the little liparids. We devoted most of the time, however, to digging out, or I should say to attempting to dig out entirely, some of the big worms with which this flat is populated. Some go quite deep, eighteen inches or more, and worst of all, the tubes are very fragile. Determined that the largest membranous tubes with fimbriated ends were occupied by what at the time I recorded as a sabellid. Berkeley, however, identified them as terebellids: Pista pacifica Berkeley. We took three entire specimens, even tho the tubes may not have been got entire. None yielded any pea crabs, tho we searched for them specifically. Another membranous tube had a very elongate, very fragile worm; we never did get a complete specimen. Anyway it fragments very badly in preservation. Another very thin, strong, long jointed tube: we never did get anything out of; it went down too far. We tried all sorts of fancy tricks, such as cutting a tube suddenly from the outside as far down as we could reach with a single fast stroke of the shovel, but nary a bit of the worm could we get, that way or any other. A number of flatfish were got, flapping about on the sand. Small specimens identified not certainly by Field Museum as Parophrys vetulus, the pointed-nose sole, an important food fish north of California, adults averaging eighteen inches. Wednesday, June 5: Ed Jr. and I went in the pouring rain to the outside coast of Clayoquot and poisoned a tide pool, got eight species of tide-pool fish plus another too small to identify. Interesting thing here was the ecological segregation. All the liparids (Liparis florae) came

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from the kelp of a tide pool lower than the one we poisoned, from Egregia or Nereocystis hung on the sides. Most of the green eels, all but one as I recall, came from the vividly green eelgrass Phyllospadix (Apodichthys flavidus—this one comes in a handsome brown, too, occasionally, but I’ve never seen any other colors, and they’re always brilliant and clean-cut). Ninety-five to ninety-eight percent were of the one species, Oligocottus maculosus, highly colored and with [a] green belly; large and, I suppose, adult specimens were occurring at this level; they are very different appearing than the maculosus juveniles higher up. Got no black or crested blennies, no Aselichthys, no Caularchus; these are typically underrock species and from higher up. Now we have almost two hundred containers. Already annoying to handle; we should have a system of drawers for holding them. On June 6 we collected in the usual place near the wharf; not very good tide and with only fifteen or so species identified; probably had in mind collecting some specific items, but what I can’t imagine, nor do the notes indicate I did any good for ourselves. Maquinna was in from 3 to 4 pm, and since it is likely [that] Captain MacKinnon made a beeline for my place, and we had as many fast ones as he cared to keep the vessel docked there for, maybe the explanation’s there—[the reason] that I forgot to mention in the notes what I was up to. Altho that also doesn’t sound like me. Well, hell. The same forma of Leptasterias hexactis, plena, occurred here that we took on the surf-swept rocks at Wikininish. The chitons at this level (about 3′ Canadian datum) were the handsome Cyanoplax raymondi. I wish we could get someone to determine the isopods; there must be fifteen species unidentified; I’ll have to do it myself. Poorly better than not at all? Later on in the day, Pete and Ed Jr. went out fishing, brought in one small salmon from which I took a copepod—doesn’t seem to have been reported back from USNM [United States National Museum of Natural History]. June 7 is missing. About this time I was actively planning the Queen Charlotte trip, and I was working also on a two-or-three-day trip we expected to make to Point Estevan with Bill on the Beegee. Catholic priest at the mission tells an amusing yarn about the Indian village five miles inland. Start of the war, fear of invasion was running high, especially here on the unprotected and open outer coast. Great series of alarms one day at the village; Indians ran into the woods in a fine state of fear, chased out of there as fast as if the Japanese were shelling them. Come to find out afterward, they were. A Japanese submarine shelled the

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Point Estevan Lighthouse for quite a while; the shells came over, fell near the village, exploding and scaring the pants out of the Indians. June 8: We took the trip to Warn Bay, to Coscena Mine, that had been planned for yesterday, to deliver a scow load of freight. We had actually started out the day before, got halfway up there, [when] something went wrong with the exhaust cooling system. It wasn’t pumping, and in taking off the pipe to find the trouble, Bill broke a connection so that seawater from below the water line kept pouring in. We had to use the hand pump. The motor pump was somehow haywire (they always seem to be when you have to use them in an emergency). Had quite a time getting back, pouring seawater over the hot exhaust by the bucket full, then keeping the hand pump going to bail her out. But finally we got in at half speed (fortunately all this was in quiet waters far inland), and Bill fixed it in a hurry once he got into the float. Warn Bay is about fifteen to twenty miles inland, a good three-hour trip by towed scow. You time it so that you go into the beach at extreme high tide, and have to unload the barge at once, all hands working at the mine also, before the tide goes down and leaves the heavy scow stranded there. Then they drag the freight up from the beach by sled pulled by the caterpillar. Very efficient. Now building a three-quartermile cat road to where the workings are. The men live very primitively in floored tents, fighting the rain and the black flies and the mosquitoes. They have no sugar and no butter and of course almost no liquor. The camp is on an old kitchen midden of the Indians. (I understand there is some conflict now between the Indians and the mining company as to the use of the land: Indians claim it. Mining company as usual claims: “No use; they can’t use it, we can,” and I suppose they’ll win.) Tons of shells of the rock cockle, Venerupis staminea (Paphia staminea), which is presumably the clam whose burrows can be seen still under four or five feet of water. There were also found in this same pile of junk on the beach a number of great bones. A long bone about three feet, which I couldn’t identify (naturally, knowing nothing about such things!). And some huge vertebrae of which three drawings are attached to p. 84 of the “New Series Note Book #4.” On the beach, we found also shells of Cardium corbis, Mytilus edulis, and the carapaces of H. oregonensis (abundant) and H. nudus (few), and some Pugettia producta. There were barnacles all over the high rocks, including some which even at this high tide (10.5′) could have a submergency expectancy of no more than fifteen minutes or half

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hour. Some of the high-tide Fucus. Tasted the water, which was, as I expected, quite brackish. I checked the peak of the flood (which in such a place is very easy to do with stakes or even with stones; there’s no wave movement to the water). Exactly 9:25 fastime [local time]. Since the tide was 8:05 standard Pacific time, within Clayoquot at the reference station, the lag here even so far inland was only 20 minutes. Saturday, June 9: The fact [that] we couldn’t go to Point Esteban as scheduled was a disappointment. But as it turned out, it was a lucky thing all around that Bill dropped that freight on his toe to bring on an attack of gout, that the Beegee was out of kilter, and even that we didn’t go in Pierre’s new (and perhaps untried) salmon boat instead. We’d have been hard put in the intense fog and in the bitter storm that followed— rain in sheets such as I’ve seldom seen even here and wind in dangerous gusts. We certainly couldn’t have made Point Esteban, [would have] had to put in somewhere en route and sit out the storm several days on a wet cold beach without shelter or sufficient food, or ridden it out at anchor also without enough food and bouncing around dangerously, fending off [the] rocky shore and seasickness and cold and hunger. As it is now, perhaps I’ll not ever collect at Estevan, which has so long tempted me so greatly, but it’s just as well we didn’t even try it this time. Collected today at the 5′ level in the usual Clayoquot wharf region. Investigating the anemones, the hermits, the flatworms, the chitons, and the Petrolisthes at this level. The anemones are hopeless, no use even considering them; there are five well-marked types. Metridium, Epiactis prolifera, and three or four bunodids. Glassell says that, in Petrolisthes cinctipes, the color [at] the base of the moveable finger of the cheliped, when opened, is a deep rich red; of eriomerus, blue. According to this, all the porcelain crabs at the 5′ level here are cinctipes, same as we get at Monterey. The chitons are all Cyanoplax raymondi. Sent twenty-one flatworms to Libbie. She says that fourteen are certainly Notoplana litoricola, the other seven, immature, are probably the same species. When she gets out her Pacific coast monograph on the polyclads, if ever, I’ll certainly have provided her with a good cross section of the commonest littoral species. The nemerteans were Emplectonema gracile, that fine generalized beast, which, in contrast to other generalized forms, occurs in great quantities. The greatest quantity [of] beasts are usually the specialized ones that exactly fit their environment and so exclude others. How to get across the idea that in zoological distribution it isn’t so much the factors of physical environment, so much the seawater temperature, etc., as it is the social factor that keeps the exotic beasts

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out? If another better adapted urchin and starfish, etc., wasn’t already occupying that given niche in the Panamic zone, it’s certain to me that S. purpuratus and Pisaster ochraceus gradually would have infiltered into all the suitable ecological levels despite the higher temperatured water. In Puget Sound inland waters, Pisaster has no trouble holding on despite some very high temperatures. But there, there’s no other more suited beast in that niche to compete with it, and one, moreover, that’s already established. The pulmonate Onchidella occurs at this level. The terebellids are Thelepus crispus. The hermits I haven’t yet worked out. Probably hirsutiusculus. Monday, June 10: Maquinna due in this pm on her way south, so I spent most of the midday wrapping packages, writing letters. Sent to Dr. Haas one fine perfect alcoholic Panope and another broken formaldehyded specimen, also another clam; turned out to be Paphia tenerrima, only one I’d ever seen; took it with the larger clams on the Clayoquot flats. Also sent Loren all the fish to date, and pea crabs to Glassell. Early evening I walked along the north sand spit. I estimated the tide at 6′ level. Just above the water’s edge, I dug with my hands trying to see what was making small burrows. Uncovered quite a fauna. All minute. There was a very very delicate white-shelled clam; had a great time getting any perfect specimens. And many harder but still more minute red clams. Macoma balthica. Mactra californica. And a very minute, beautifully marked snail: Olivella baetica. Olivella occurs in this niche apparently all over the world. In Santa Cruz, a larger, different species. In [the] Gulf of California still others. Some amphipods with very hairy feet dug so proficiently I had trouble capturing them: a new species, perhaps new genus of the family Phoxocaphalidae; or at least Shoemaker was able to determine them only to the family. And then several small and a couple of small adult Callianassa californiensis Dana 1854, one being an ovipositing female. With a small Nephthys caeca (cosmopolitan worm) accompanying one of the ghost shrimps. It was raining as usual, cold and windy, sometimes with driving rain. This combination of feather jacket with plastic raincoat, and with sou’wester hat, is very very good: light enough so you can get around, very warm, and completely waterproof. On Vargas the surf was piling in thru the channel, beating on some rocks fairly well in. Black flies have been bad lately. Fortunately we haven’t been bothered, but Betty’s pretty bitten up. They itch intolerably. The army insect repellent is pretty good.

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On Tuesday, June 11, stimulated by the find of Callianassa, which I had never taken here before, I walked out to about the same spot as yesterday, but got there in time for the afternoon low, which, tho higher than yesterday, let me get down further since today I was on time for the tide. By walking in the sand along the edge of the water, I scared up considerable numbers of very characteristic fish which were new to me, Leptocottus armatus, and by dint of great effort I caught a few. Method was to watch where they hid in the sand under a few inches of water, flip the shovel suddenly under them, and throw them up on the shore, together with the sand in which they were hiding. Then to grab them before they could wiggle back down. Considering the numbers present, I got darn few with great effort, but [the] main thing was to get enough to determine them, then, using that name as a fulcrum, find out what I could about them. Little enough, probably. Rolf and a few others will know them systematically, yet no one will have worked out even the most fundamental aspects of the natural history of this highly common beast, which certainly dominates this whole environment in the sense the ecologists use the term. These look a little like sticklebacks; the underside is very brilliantly white in the preserved specimens. I also got a few more juvenile flatfish—the sharpnosed sole, Parophrys vetulus, by this same method. From the rocks, I took some Mytilus californianus, one of which had, just like their California relatives, the commensal crab Fabia subquadrata. The mussels were very large. On this same patch of rocks, there was quite a rich though localized and highly specialized rock fauna. The porcelain crabs in the interstices of the mussels were P. cinctipes. The huge and clean-cut hermits were P. granosimanus. Underneath there were huge brown Metridium (this never occurs in California alongshore except on the wharf pilings; I wonder why it can’t get by on the rocks there as well as here; the pilings are identical in both places). The usual pink crystalline Evactis or Epiactis. And a brown Epiactis— large and lacking brood pits—which, however, I assume to be E. prolifera. Below the surface of the water, [a] huge solitary Cribrina just as in California. A few odd looking small Acmaea which I took along were determined as A. pelta. The usual Pisaster. But here in sandbanks, I found plenty of what I came out after: large Callianassa. This whole area is honeycombed with them, yet no one I talked to around here ever saw them before. Digging in the sand elsewhere, I got a fine Chaetopterus almost complete, Mesochaetopterus

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taylori, one of the brilliant membranous-tubed (with the fimbriated openings) terebellids, Pista pacifica, the usual Nephthys caeca. And, by trailing it down thru the sand, I got a beautiful velvety black nudibranch about a half inch long. If I’m going to get to find out anything about these tectibranchs (and nudibranchs), apparently I’m going to have to call on MacFarland in person. He’s an old man now. I’m fearful that, before I get to it, he’ll die and his knowledge of this group, unique in the world, will die with him. Cooperative as hell, but he simply won’t get busy and identify the beasts I send him unless I turn up there personally. He hasn’t even yet finished with the Sea of Cortez stuff. Since he’s retired, and from the presidency of the California Academy of Sciences as well as from his Stanford professorship, I supposed he’d have time for more work, but all he does is be more perfectionist. This whole business of the specialist is the greatest fly in my ointment. I have to spend a large bit of energy and develop tact the like of which was never seen on sea or land in order to get anywhere near complete lists of determinations. I made a ten-day round-trip of the Los Angeles region before the Sea [of Cortez] was published in an attempt to speed up some of these; and even so, the list as published wasn’t near complete. Wotta life. About midnight I walked along the sand spit extending east of Clayoquot Island, with a flashlight. On the inside (south) shore, there were very few of the large red-tentacled beach hoppers Orchestoidea; I had to search a long time to get only six. But after rounding the point, there were more, with a smaller species also less abundant. (May have been juveniles, since all the determinations at this point came back marked O. californiana.) Picked up also a rove or a tiger beetle larva. On many sand beaches, these insects are important in the intertidal economy. Elsewhere I saw a rove beetle eating the carcass of a big Orchestoidea. Or at least working at it. With a smaller beetle trying to horn in. June 12, 1946: Worked part of the day posting identification reports to last year’s collecting reports, a big task, in the groups determined to date: i.e., tunicates, fish, sponges, shrimps, brachyura, shells, chitons, flatworms. Later cut some wood. Cracked two Cancer magister. Ed in the meantime caught by hook and line, using limpet as bait, a large almost black embiotocid (live-bearing “surf-perch”). The gut was crammed with barnacle shells. This is a highly specialized method of feeding. These big black embiotocids, with pavement teeth, chew the barnacle encrustations off the pilings for food. What a marvelous tough gut they must have. On the skin just above the tail, there was an argulid

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(Copepod) parasite, lost in the sink in the shuffle, but I resurrected it for a subsequent determination of Argulus pugettensis. On June 13 I went over and visited with Father Mulvahill at the mission, or is it Mulvihill—no, looks not right. [The correct spelling is Mulvihill.] A very good man. Suggested last year that I come over and spend several days. And meant it. Don’t know if I could keep up with (this is just between us and not for publication) that man in a drinking bout. I know just how he feels about it. Says that anything that adds to the value or beauty of life—how does he put it—and doesn’t hurt man or break god’s law (I forget even if he includes God; he’s a pretty sensible guy) is OK. Says he likes to drink about as well as any man living, but doesn’t do so, solely because of the Indians. If they see him do it, they’ll go out and do likewise, and they carry it notoriously poorly. Father Mulvihill is another of those people I agree with thoroughly. Thinks there shouldn’t be any putting of the Indian on one side and the white man on the other. . . . That under conditions of equality, there might be a generation or two of trouble, but that it would iron out all right. It would be fun staying there alright, because the Indian children love him and he loves them. And they have a beautiful regular orderly life with lots of security, both inner and outer. Wonderful food. Everything made there; their kitchen is a delight. That beautiful bread just out of the oven. Gave us a loaf to take back. A sweet, not very bright, sister knows only a few things: knows how to run a kitchen, knows how to cook, likes to do things for people. Talking to me about how it was before she “became a religious.” The shy little Indian children who ordinarily look so terribly grave and dignified: they look so wooden you’d think they could never smile or cry. When Father Mulvihill comes out into the play yard, they run hollering around him, laughing, taking hold of his hand, pulling at his gown, laughing, laughing, just so happy you don’t see how the world holds it. They aren’t the same people. With me they’re shy. At first anyway. The lovely, and I mean she is really lovely too, sister who teaches art there has some fine ideas, gives the kids their head, but keeps helping them toward regarding well their own art history; the white man’s art isn’t everything, it isn’t better, it’s just different. And they do have their own. And the old dull colors have something, not better, not worse, just different than the gaudy rainbow dyes they’re so crazy for. Their own things distinctly aren’t to be scorned. The two priests and the sister who teaches art are agreed on that. And how the children respond. They wanted to give us some of their paintings. I insisted on leaving them a couple of dollars;

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what was it Father Mulvihill said they’d send away and buy in the states—was it funny books? But, says Father Mulvihill, it does only limited good for us to encourage them here in their own sturdy primitive art. When they get back out, what tourists they see will search out and buy the shoddy, gaudy, highly colored things. So then they serve us a snack in the private dining room under the picture of stern good Father Brabant. Toni and the Father keep smoking cigarettes. The Father talks to me about shamans (he really believes in them), about how few Indians go on even to high school, none become doctors, only one became a priest. We talk about the theft of beer from Bill’s warehouse. Father Mulvihill, I suspect, knew all about it right after it happened; those people, I suspect, tell him anything he wants to know, probably things even he doesn’t. As that. When the red coats come around to enquire what he knows about it (Bill had to report the robbery, something about tax, or accounting, for alcohol), I imagine the good father has some way of keeping lined up with his own integrity (he’s nobody’s man but his own), with the law, and keeping faith with the natives. The robbery was really very clever. I was sleeping within a few hundred feet, and I sleep really lightly. There were two dogs, one of them a fine watchdog and roaming around at the time. Yet the Indians did come onto the island, they had a boat or boats, they sprung one of the hinges of the heavy warehouse door just enough so that a very agile person could get inside by squeezing. Maybe a boy. And he passed out a lot of cases of beer. Of course the payoff was that those same Indians just the summer before admired that big watch dog so much they offered to take him over to their village and teach him a few tricks: Recognition at night being, I bet, one of them! So anyway the authorities expected there’d be no trouble picking up the thief or thieves, because in the affected village there’d be a big drunk, some fights, maybe a murder. But there was nothing. Just the usual drinking of Listerine and of bad homemade brew. One other amusing thing I recall, Father Mulvihill said that one time he met the Shantymen’s missionary, or maybe the medical missionary, and Father Mulvihill was smoking—he’s always smoking. Later got quite a blistering letter from the guy, to the tune that “We men of the cloth should set an example, not go around making chimneys of ourselves, smelling up god’s good air.” Father Mulvihill says, “I like to smoke, I can’t see any religious or social reason why I shouldn’t, and I will, and to hell with so-and-so,” or words to that effect. Well, and then back on the island, I posted polyclads, fish, and tunicates to the survey cards. Tonight there was as nice a display of pelagic material as you could want to see. During the day, there had been

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Aequorea and (I guess) Phacellophora. Now there were three other species of medusae and at least two of ctenophores. And occasionally some fabulous beasts going by, phosphorescent and just out of reach, and never to be seen again. According to the tidal information Ed Jr. has drawn up, the space between 6 and 8′ is uncovered by every low tide, and covered by every high, throughout the year. This is important information regarding the animals. Animals at this level are always uncovered and covered twice a day. This is the upper Fucus zone. Corresponds to our Pelvetia zone on the California coast, I’d suppose. A tidal classification ought to be arranged, based not on the heights in feet, but on the degrees of highness in percentages. Tidal curves should be drawn for many regions, inside and outside, at several different points up and down the coast, especially where the range of tides is different. If these curves are substantially the same—as I think they might be—then a mean curve could be drawn, the data from it extracted in terms of percentages, and a person then instead of speaking of working at the 6 to 8′ level (which on the California coast doesn’t exist—the tides don’t go that high even if the information were translated to mean lower-low-water figures) or at the corresponding 12 or 15′ level (as in southeastern Alaska), he’d merely be working in the 80 to 90 percent air zone, which would be interpretable in any range of tides. Here at Clayoquot, this 6 to 8′ level above the Canadian datum must be terribly important. No low tide is ever (or most, most rarely) higher than 6′, and no high tide is lower than 8′, usually 9′. On Friday, June 14, we collected near the mission at Kakawis. Ed Jr. and I, I guess in the kicker. Doesn’t seem we’d row all the way over there. A cove between Mission and Schindler Points. A very curious and a very lovely place, deep water right into shore. Only place I’ve ever collected along this coast where there weren’t any holothurians—only rocky place, I mean. No hydroids, no tunicates. But snails, snails, all over the place. Small chitons. Flatworms. A pycnogonid. A shrimp, probably Betaeus. No ophiurans, no echinoids. Leptasterias hexactis, f. plena again. The small chitons at this low level (1.8′) were immature Cyanoplax raymondi. The flatworms were Notoplana litoricola. Diaulula sandiegensis, the large dorid nudibranch was observed in the act of ovipositing. Evasterias very common. There was a Tegula, pulligo, looked exactly like brunneus. This cove was practically stopped up with large kelp and represented a new environmental factor: it was a blind street, a depositing point tho rocky.

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Advantage of steam travel is that you can be decently isolated for awhile. The phone can’t ring. Trip of a few days, acquaintances are so few and so tenuous that you can rest or do your work uninterruptedly. Trouble in this case is that it takes a couple of days of intense traveling to get over to Vancouver, where the ship takes off. Bill took us to Tofino in time to catch a funny local bus that runs three times a week, delivers packages, messages. We had a great time loading my big chest onto the Beegee and then, at low tide, getting it up onto the Tofino wharf. At Ucluelet we got the Uchuck for Point Alberni, arriving about 9 pm, staying at the very nice hotel and taking off by train the following day for Nanaimo. Thence steamer to Vancouver, arriving in very close time for our Union Steamship connection. CPR [Canadian Pacific Railway] runs on Pacific standard time; but the Union on fastime; little problem getting them coordinated. The Cardena, flagship of the Union Steamships, and that isn’t saying much, is a vessel of maybe 1,200 tons (the average ocean liner is 10,000 or 15,000; Queen Mary, etc., run 60,000 or 70,000). Terribly crowded, the decks strewn with cargo, drunken Indians, Chinese. I don’t know where they can put all those people [in] steerage. None of the office people of the USS Company have ever been to the Charlottes, and, as it develops, none on this particular steamer, which is just taking us to Prince Rupert for transshipment there. Ticket seller here, particularly, knowing me from reading correspondence regarding the trip, particularly washes his hands of the whole affair. Asked me first why in heaven’s name we wanted to go to such a place, then if we knew anyone there, and end[ed] up by saying, “Well, all I can do is to sell you the tickets.” The three-or-four-day quiet trip gave me [a] chance to work out some things bothering me, and conceptually. Relation between nostalgia and conservatism as exemplified in lack of progress clear thru to reactionaryism. Toni spiking me when I’m expanded versus more womanly women actually glad to expand a person. Yet Toni good and disciplined and significant versus some of the other kind who aren’t. Salt. And what the Catholic Church has, does, stands for. I felt wonderful today during the lovely train ride and after the lovely small boat trip yesterday. I suddenly saw a specific type of relation between nostalgia and lack of progress. Because I liked that old-fashioned train, I was reminded of similar things when I was a child, knowing those things were good things—the hammocks and the old-fashioned nonprogressive ways— and wanting them perpetuated to the exclusion of the more modern im-

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provements. Discussing it with Toni, I mentioned it perhaps too exuberantly or sentimentally, and she pulled me down quickly, saying, “Oh you’ve often talked about that, you discovered that a long time ago.” As it worked out, I had previously discovered only another ramification of that thing: the relation between nostalgia and conservatism, in this case as it resulted in the bitter conflict between representationalism and abstract art. I felt deflated, that it wasn’t so consequential after all, that I hadn’t in fact discovered much of anything. Then I thought that some women have almost a pure genius for deflating a person, and maybe it’s OK. Salt. My mother with my father (who was a fool, but his condition certainly wasn’t bettered by Mother taking him down a peg; didn’t help his self-confidence and ability and aggressiveness, all of which could stand a lot of improvement). She was realistic. She had salt. And, as such people think, a woman without salt is insipid. Yet a sensitive person is already a sufficient critic of his own actions. He doesn’t need someone to take him down; he’ll take himself down plenty; already that’s too much the trouble. What he needs is building up, help him to expand, give him a not pollyanna confidence. Expansion is relaxation, and too many sensitive people are already overtightened by selfcriticism and by imagined or real criticism from others. Salt irritates tender skins. If there are any actual lesions, it’s outright dynamite. But then on the other side, so many women who help a man to expand are themselves no account, even wishy-washy, all things to all men, and therefore not themselves integrated and developed; shallow, undisciplined. Because already they get what they want so easily. Men are so grateful to them that they shower them with every gift in their reach. The salty woman keeps beating you. She’s honest there. Either you fail in the struggle or get tough-skinned coming through, losing some of that good sensitivity. Or the struggle is so hard it takes all the energy and you don’t develop any decent personality. Competition is too keen, you have to put everything you’ve got into the struggle for inward existence. But with the expanding type of women, maybe a person gets soft. Still, sensitive people of inward drive don’t get soft. They can’t, they’ve got their own work to do, and they’ve got plenty of their own brand of unrest inside of them. They want the outside as restful and secure as possible because the inside is so frightfully insecure. Thing to do is to develop the idea, get it past the delicate easy-to-wither stage before you trot it out for the inevitable saltiness of criticism. Despite the west wind, which agitated the surface of the water at the mouth of Johnstone Strait, and which would naturally send all pelagic

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life down into the depths, there was a fine display of jellyfish at Shoshartie Bay. It was near here that Jack and I found such a magnificent lot of thin Aurelia when we came up by small boat, but I couldn’t see what they were from the deck of this steamer moored to the anchored fleet. Water was too dancing. This is one of the lonely places. A caretaker living on the float in a small shack, which was also [the] receiving-barge for co-op fisheries. And receiving a little freight and a mailbag for some of these lonely settlers. Maybe a dozen in a coastline of 50 or 100 miles. And they come in all this weary way by gas boat, waiting for favorable weather to get their mail and supplies. Off to the west is one of the loneliest parts of this coast. Between this furthest point reached by the inland passage steamers, and the furthest point north reached by the Maquinna on the outer coast, there’s a stretch of maybe a hundred, 150 miles of jutted coast where no scheduled transportation reaches. North of Quatsino Sound, clear around the north tip of Vancouver Island, there’s nothing except the boat of an occasional fisherman. Yet I’m sure some settlers live here and difficultly bring up families. At Alert Bay just below here, the wife of the headmaster of the Church of England school for Indians got aboard with a few of the elder girls. She is really an intelligent, cultured woman, and I spent many hours talking to her. We wrapped ourselves thoroughly in blankets and sat out of the worst of the biting wind in the stern shelter on deck, everyone else below, while we came thru upper Johnstone Strait and crossed part of Queen Charlotte Sound, where it’s always rough. This one thing more than anything else to date put my mind in order with regard to the Indian missionary school business. The innate and the developed culture in this woman was far beyond that of Father Mulvihill. She was sharp as a whip. And liberal. But she didn’t know as much (in some respects) about those Indians, about their culture, as even I did. I told her some things which perhaps she might believe because she respected me, that she hadn’t known from the Indians themselves, altho it was there, and Father Mulvihill knew it. She just knew the Americanized side, the civilized side of the Indians. If an old, old Indian had sat for hours in the cold wind against an open fire and told her about things that happened that he couldn’t be sure were true or were dreams, she wouldn’t hear. She wouldn’t get herself in such a position in the first place. The culture of the Indians she had no real respect for (tho I’m certain she’d pay lip respect to the idea). Some of their carvings she’d probably say were interesting, or quaint, or carefully done. But it just simply didn’t register. In other words, the Indian thing of the Indians she

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didn’t know about, or knew cursorily and didn’t respect. Only things she respected were the white-man things of the Indians. She was training them to be perfect imitation white men. The Catholics trained them to be people—within the slightly ridiculous framework of the Catholic faith. This woman’s religion wasn’t even slightly ridiculous; it was intelligent. But it wasn’t a religion at all. And darn small comfort the Indian children would have got out of it. An unheartened substitute for their pantheism, which was at least exuberant and real. The kids must have liked her, tho, as a person, and they certainly would get from her a real respect for the superior ways of the superior white man. The pupils were clean, intelligent, and lively. Oh yes, and I mustn’t forget, the younger woman who bade them godspeed at Alert Bay was beautiful, actually most charming, I mean lovely even in a sexual way, and perhaps even a little dedicated, in a sensible way. Now I’ve had several glimpses into the education of the Vancouver Island Indians. (None of this is done by the state; three churches have it, and a fourth, the Shantymen, maintain medical missions and try to bludgeon some of their intolerant and revealed-religion ideas into the natives along with very good medicine.) Knowing what I do, and thinking as I do, if I were an Indian parent in this country, I would prefer my children to be handed over to the Catholics than to any of the other religious groups here. At Kakawis, Father Mulvihill and the sisters there are not only highly dedicated, but they’re also selected out most carefully. Certainly none but the most suitable are invited to join in the first place. The sort of thinking that a woman disappointed in love will be accepted as a nun is, I suspect, groundless or has little ground. They don’t want such people; they want fine, dedicated, well-balanced people to start with. The church doesn’t take just anyone. Altho some misfits get in, just as some rather clever but unscrupulous people get into medicine despite all the hurdles. (When I was coming back to Victoria once, the mother superior was aboard with one of the Kakawis nuns; a young woman, she couldn’t stand the life and the country—sort of a Black Narcissus situation—but at the first signs, they packed her out, out to some safer spot.) After the sense of dedication and the careful selection, then they’re part of a brotherhood that endows them. Their church endows them with something that I think no other church has. Even if the Episcopalians were able to be so selective, had beaten the drums so much as to make religious participation desirable and so had a great group to select from, and were able to select so wisely for its priests and teachers, it couldn’t ever throw over its selectees the cloak of supraper-

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sonal spiritualness with which the Catholic Church endows its selectees. Tho of course that isn’t always true. Maybe it isn’t even often true. I’m thinking of the narrowness of the Catholic Church here and in Salinas. The conservative Father Rudolph (son of the founder of the furniture store here) and how Toni and I, and I thru Toni, have fought them on the questions of sex education and liberalism in the local high school. It’s a curious darn business that I always seem to get into such a spot. I automatically reject the reactionaryism that’s so often associated with the Catholic Church. And I especially object to the idea of missionaries. Yet in a place like the west coast of Vancouver Island, I find myself liking most of all the man who is at once the missionary and a Catholic. Well, I suppose it’s to some extent the man rather than the Catholic I like. Still I like the Episcopal woman (tho I saw her once being short and nagging with her charges, exactly like a frustrated woman scolding her children; I can’t imagine Father Mulvihill doing that). And after all, the Catholic Church is correct in assuming that it provides its fold with a comfort, a cloak. It’s a truly real thing too, tho not a physical one. And it’s certainly more than, greater than, any of its members. Perhaps greater than its sum. Or anyway different than. But it’s a man-made thing, it arises out of man instead of out of God. They are correct in knowing that they’ve got something. All the ritual and mumbo jumbo is in fact merely a vehicle on which something can ride. And often does. They think it’s God’s grace. Actually it’s the grace thru man which is greater than individual man. They’ve created something and it merits respect. (Of course they’d say it’s not their creation, that they’re merely open to something outside. Well of course it’s outside individual man, but not outside collective man, the collective man of the Catholic Church.) Of course another alternative would be a redefinition of God: that what we have named God is that thing I’ve just considered; it’s greater than Man but it arises thru Man. The god in man. And there Father Mulvihill and I would be in agreement. Except that he’d say the definition wasn’t acceptable. The help comes from outside of man, a separate spirit’s help, guy named God. I’d insist it was a suprapersonal framework of spiritual relations. Their (platonic) thought would be that it’s within them the rebirth of a primitive and perfect spiritual archetype—God, the ultimate, the good—a discovery but the result of openness and hard work. And here again we’d agree except in definition. Well, I suppose the Catholic Church and the Communist Party are together on a lot of things like that: they both provide a framework of faith, the one spiritual and the other environmental, a thing to believe

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in. Once you’ve accepted it, then you put a lot of other things strung onto that, except that now, after many many years, the Catholic Church has got tolerant enough so that a man in it can have his own integrity too, if he doesn’t want to lean too much on the pattern provided. I don’t think the Communist Party, in Russia at least, dares to be tolerant. Well, Jn, I got interested in this connection, and I even thot I’d quote some stuff out of La Pérouse in this connection, but it’s too long and I’ve considered this till I’m tired anyway. But La Pérouse is fine. He visited [the] Carmel mission in 1788, and it’s fine to read what he says. Clear and kind, pulls no punches. A true scientist at his best. I have it in French. If you’d like to see it, if you read French well enough, let me know and I’ll take it along up north. Incidentally, I asked you earlier in these notes to dig out the wave shock paper (the inland passage small boat trip, 1932). Now no matter. I finally found my own copy. Just one thing I must quote out of La Pérouse (speaking of how the Spaniard has crystallized in the hundred years preceding 1788): “To the old enthusiasm, the cold calculation of security has succeeded.” And a final thing about Indian education: the most vital gift in the training of children seems to be love. They can be raised in the most foolish or doting (or in the most rigorously dutiful) home with love, and still be ahead of the wisest and most balanced training without love. The British Columbia coast country is a most strict and spare land of the extreme of erosion (as I think it was here I remarked that, in Greenville Channel, when we came thru in a small boat) and of ravens and eagles and waterfalls. For weeks on end, you never see the tops of the near peaks; it’s always bleak or raining. I was wrong about the Cardena: just ran onto the figures again, 1,578 registered tons, 220 feet long; when I asked the chief, Mr. Arthur, we were making 12.5 knots, about 15 mph. Mr. Arthur is a good man. All the better because, tolerant, he comes from a most limited and intolerant class; intelligent and well read, from an unaspiring and I’ll bet uninspired family. Or so I gather from his words. Uneducated but wonderfully self-taught. He knows a little about even such things as geology and colloids and history. Barry at Tofino is another good guy, and Pierre Malon or Mallen, and of course Father Mulvihill, and the other younger Father maybe sometime, and Captain MacKinnon in spite of the curse of drink, and Betty, but not-yet-arrived Betty. Everyone’s upset about the Queen Charlottes. Dire forebodings. Typical: “Queen Charlottes; h-m-m-m. Where in the Queen Charlottes?”

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And we say Masset. “Ever been there; know anyone there?” “No.” “Hm-m-m.” Then a long pause, usually, and the conversation ends when the guy says, drawls out, “Wellll,” or else looks thoughtful and walks away. Anyway my springname this year was “Rose Point Gasn’ Whistle Boy,” and so I signed my letter to Tal [Lovejoy]. Rose Point is the northeast extremity of Graham Island, the largest and most northerly of the Charlottes group. Saturday, June 22, 1946: Yesterday was the longest day of the year. It wasn’t ever completely dark. When we disembarked at 12:30 fastime, Prince Rupert, the sunset was still dim in the Northwest, moved around a bit to the north and when, at 2 am or so, we got away on the Cassiar, the sky was red with sunrise in the northeast. The question of ecology isn’t so much animals versus environment as it is animals versus other animals. They’re pretty wise things; they can overcome pretty nearly any environmental hazard (vide hot springs, bitter salt pools in Death Valley); [the] only thing they can’t do is to overcome environmental hazards in the face of other animals who got there first and who fight every inch of the newcomer. Which is why Gislen wisely refers to this subject as marine sociology. The SS Cassiar is nine-hundred-odd-tons registry. A very old boat, forty years someone said. Rebuilt sometime early in the 1900s according to a plate in the dining room entrance. The men’s toilets are wonderful old funny things, thrones literally, two steps high. Like that wonderful thing in Guaymas. The two great marbled washbowls came from Scotland. The hallways and rooms downstairs are high ceilinged, oldfashioned. The wiring secondary, not built in. And the aft section looks and smells delightfully old-fashioned. After breakfast (it’s only ninety miles over here, and we should have been in by 9 or 10), the ship slowed down still further for the dense fog, finally stopped completely for a while, then prowled around for a while, as it seemed to me, even retracing the way we’d come. Very evidently the skipper doesn’t know where we are, whether we’re close enough to chance the narrow channel thru the shoals and then into the tidalcurrent inlet. So we drift, have lunch. Now 1 pm. Suits me fine. No tide tomorrow, the food’s fairly good, I have lots to do, the groundswell isn’t enough to bother me. Then the captain I guess gets impatient, fog shows no sign of lifting. He calls for another sounding. (By hand aboard this ship.) I watch the guy, figure about thirteen, and he confirms, thirteen fathoms. So I’ve got a chart too. The only place that shows thirteen far enough offshore to be safe is a long, long way from where we should be,

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in fact about nine or ten miles overshot the entrance. And close enough to land we’ll have to go back out in order to clear the channel. Then some Fucus drifts by and I know we’re close into land. Finally when the fog clears, there the land lies beautiful in the sunlight. About the only time we were there [that] I got to see it fully. Oh yes, and here came also some Aequorea, a jellyfish that never goes far from land. And then it was proven how far we were off, clear over by Naden Harbor. Now, how could that happen even by the poorest of dead reckoning: nine miles or more off in a ninety-mile trip? So out we go further into Dixon’s Entrance, backtracking towards Prince Rupert, then into the channel correctly this time, and arrive at the New Masset new wharf at early evening. While we were off Naden Harbor, a fellow who had lived there told me the cows and deer in this barren region often have to feed on seaweed. Said he counted over a hundred deer one early morning [at] low tide filing up from the shore where they’d been scared away by [a] boat coming in. So now we’re in the Charlottes, and I’ll break and get our [stuff] out. Masset is a community of perhaps fifty, seventy-five, even a hundred houses, several hundred people, a couple of miles south of the Indian village of Old Masset, which is just inside Masset Inlet. There is a post office and general store, and another co-op store. There are several small diesel-electric or gasoline-electric plants; otherwise there is no central power, there’s no waterworks, no sewage. The community has no doctor, no dentist, no baker, no shoe repairman, no barber. There is a small hotel, a community hall, a school. The community isn’t incorporated; apparently it just runs itself. The government is represented by a provincial police with a small station, by the postmaster who is also the customs man, by the Indian agent, and by a road superintendent. There are several miles of streets and roads, one extending to Old Masset, and another, a plank road, running out along the shore for ten or fifteen miles, where it gets onto the beach, and for miles at low tide you can take a car or truck at almost any speed safely. There are only two cars in town, both owned by the taximan. There’s no garage or filling station. People get their oil and gas by drums from the mainland and do their own repairs. There are several trucks. At Old Masset, there’s a cannery owned by Nelson Brothers which is leased out to the co-op. The co-op shares the cannery with a private enterprise outfit, and what the working arrangement is, I can’t imagine. The private outfit packs crab, and they have a very fine collecting boat, about a fifty-foot job I’d say, diesel. The co-op is Indian-white; it cans razor clams, and on the low tides most of the town turns out, men, women, and children, In-

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dians and whites (altho there’s something of a color line here, not much), and get into trucks to the clamming grounds; everyone gets busy with shovel at piecework rates. The only other local production is from the fisheries. Out in Dixon’s Entrance during the salmon season, there’s a good deal of activity; the fish are landed at a collecting station called, as I recall, Seven-Mile Point, where a tug from Prince Rupert picks them up; also I think there’s some halibut fishing. But this is all outside, the boats are mostly from the mainland, and the pickup is from there, so there’s little local contact. Even the fishing boats, except the few locally owned, don’t come into the inlet and tie up at Masset float very often; the tidal currents are very heavy, and even the fully powered craft have to plan their runs in the inlet. Mail comes in every two weeks. There’s airplane service from Vancouver once or twice a week, but no air mail. Some of the local residents who know the pilot get him to post their letters in Vancouver, but he has no mail contract. Between Masset and the rest of the Charlottes, there’s very little contact, except thru Prince Rupert on the mainland. The steamer, however, goes from Masset down to Port Clemens in the inlet, about 20–30 miles, and comes back the next day or that same day, depending on the tide. The Masset people are settlers, fishermen, a few local workers (a young contractor and, I guess, architect who was educated in England or Germany, son of the Indian agent), some retired unusual people. An ornithologist who used to be a red coat; fine huge man has a collector’s permit and sells bird skins, etc., to museums. Mostly English and Scandinavians, and mostly old-timers; forty or fifty years ago, this country was more settled and had more promise than it does now. Upcountry there is some pulpwood; at Delkatla Slough there’s even a small local sawmill. During the depression several local bachelors almost made a scant living panning gold out of the beach. Seems that the particles are so fine, there’s a sp. [specific] G-surface tension problem. The gold’s there in plenty, but no one so far has devised a decent method of separating it out from the sand. No farming, no stock raising. There are cows, but it’s hard to get them thru the winter and into the summer growing season. Oh yes, and there is a government telegraph agent, wireless I guess it is, and there’s a phone line to Port Clemens and Queen Charlotte City, 100 or 150 miles south. Food is something of a problem. Almost nothing’s raised locally, and they get supplies from the mainland only every other week. Meat especially. I was amused to see how this works. Canada has food rationing, especially for meat, sugar, etc. Only the two stores have refrigeration (it’s

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pretty cold here anyway). Soon as the steamer unloads, people rush to the stores, get every bit of meat the storekeeper will spare them, cart it back to their houses, have a big dinner that night, a smaller amount the following day, and by the third day what they have left has gone bad; they throw it out or give it to the dogs and live on fish or clams until the next shipment from Prince Rupert. If they’d get together on some system of cooperation and leave the stuff under refrigeration until they’re ready for it, they’d have half again as much meat. During the winter, I gather, they depend on the wild game, especially deer and to some extent bear. Deer are so plentiful as to be a nuisance, and I’m pretty sure that during the winter no one pays any attention to the game laws. Shoot does out of season, etc. There’s no one to check up on them; it’s a hungry country, so why shouldn’t they. First seaport community I’ve ever heard of that had no small boats chasing around. There’s one skiff, which the owner seemed eager enough to loan us whenever we needed it, which, considering the tidal current (heaviest at the times of greatest amplitude, in other words just when I wanted to go out), wasn’t very often. It had to be kept on the float, not in the water. In spite of these difficulties however, there are one or two families of hardy settlers who live up the inlet twenty or thirty miles, whose only transportation is an undependable skiff. And who come clear to Masset in an open rowboat, depending on the current and on their skill and knowledge of the region to get them thru. One woman we heard of who hadn’t been outside the islands, hadn’t even been to Prince Rupert for thirty years, and who hadn’t even been to Masset for five or six: we saw her daughter, who brought in vegetables and eggs for sale, took back staples. Several families live out east on the plank road. Two or three have their bicycles fixed up with a sidecar for transporting supplies. It’s a very funny thing to be driving along and see a queer thing clear up ahead of you on the dim, tree-shaded two-plank trail, that turns out to be a bicyclist who pulls his rig off the road into the muskeg at some favorable spot so you can pass. And stop and talk first. Masset, which to us seemed the last lonely outpost, is to them a metropolis, and their trips to town for the semiweekly movie must be a great event. Semimonthly, I mean: one or two shows from the film brought in by the steamer every other week. Oh yes, and an airplane beacon broadcasts one of those invisible beams. Main way point between Seattle and Anchorage, and the U.S. planes during the war went far overhead in the overcast skies, riding the

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beam for which this was the halfway point. The beam is still being maintained, the powerhouse operates on only one of the three or five power units, and only partially on that. And the huge airport with its several-mile sand runways with their steel nets has been allowed to revert. But here again in this rain drenched country, running water is the chief problem. We were fortunate in renting a place that had a sink and a flush toilet. We very naïvely used all the water in a few hours, and then had to wait for rain replacements. Very clever householder had rigged up two fifty-gallon barrels fed by rain from the roof. If you knew about it, and if you were careful, you could just get by. But we got to flushing the toilet with seawater, and from the number of buckets this fellow had around, I assume he depended on the ocean, right outside his yard, for most purposes that didn’t require freshwater. There is another stunt. A local hose cart. Community property: apparently anyone can use it who can persuade the storekeep-postmaster-customs man to hook it up to his privately owned diesel engine pump which is apparently their way of fighting fires. Heating is by kitchen stoves and by airtight stoves. No dearth of firewood. Most of the ranges use stove oil. Some are equipped for burning sawdust, and a few use coal shipped in. Most of them are fixed up for banking, so they go day and night. Be pretty unusual for there to be more than a few hours of warm sunny weather, so the normal pattern is for the stoves to be kept stoked all the time. The winters, I understand, aren’t very cold. They’re just dark and much stormier. But one winter they had snow on the ground for several days, and that was the year that sticks importantly in the minds of everyone who passed thru it. The Indian thing is terribly important here. If ever there was a place where you’re surrounded by the ghosts of a powerful people now dead or changed, here it is. Not in New Masset so much. But in Old Masset everywhere and all the time, and on the road en route, and above there, particularly out in the wonderful Indian graveyard. A crazy place, because the graveyard thing is, I think, [something created] entirely after white men showed up. So there are the hopes and the disillusionments of the most powerful and significant Indians on the whole Pacific coast. The Haidas. The cold wind blows all the time over that open ground, the graves are all around and close by in the thin woods, with their naïve markers, and then you go thru a trail in the deep woods and come out on the desolate gravel beach with the ponds of the forming land (depositing shore at this point). It seems very weird to me, with the great radio tower

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near there, because this was a heavily settled Indian region before Dixon came by in his English ships and named these islands for an English queen (was it?). Now the Indian girl in the co-op cannery wears glasses and uses lipstick; she isn’t very pretty, and she used to work in a bank in Prince Rupert, and she doesn’t look very happy to me, but maybe these people never were; they’re sort of somber and grave. Most of the totems are down and no one bothers with them. They’re rotting on the ground. You can’t cart them away; that’s forbidden by law; but no one does anything about them, even the Indian agent who mourns but has no action. And they’re the finest totems certainly in the whole world. They were real, not for tourist show. At Yan, a deserted village across the sound (and it might as well be across the world: in this region of heavy tidal currents, across the inlet is across the ocean), you can see it from the steamer but no one goes there. The forest of totems is a shambles of windfalls now. Say, in that connection, why don’t I write to Jack Calvin? I will do this at the first opportunity. And ask him for a print of that marvelous grave marker that he and Sash ran across in the woods near Sitka. On a rough plank, printed with boat paint, in memory of a ten-year-old Christian girl, when Christianity meant something to these people. “I see the cloud come in the room. . . . I go up in heaven with the angels. . . . Goodbye my mother and my father and sisters and brothers. In Killisnoo die. Age ten years. God is love.” All that seems so strong I can scarcely dig it up. When my chest disappeared from the open warehouse on the dock at Masset, there were some local snooty superior people who said the Indians got it, [that] there was a great lot of them there to take the steamer for Prince Rupert, [and] some of them loaded it onto one of their small boats; you’ll never see it now, but report it anyway to the provincial police. Which I did. Knowing, however, no Indian had taken it. And he said that too. (The careless freight handlers had merely loaded it back aboard the steamer; unloaded it again on the dock at Prince Rupert, where I recovered it by fishing boat a week later.) Then we went into Old Masset and saw standing—in the town where grateful shipwrecked white men clear back in the 80s had erected a wonderful monument to the original Chief Edenshaw—a great queer wooden house, completely furnished, all open to the wind. Doors ajar, rain in the living room. The beds still covered and awry and with rotting clothes. China in the dining room, utensils in the kitchen, bookcases filled with molding Nelson’s Encyclopedia and things of ten to twenty years back. Furniture and fixtures standing unmolested in an Indian village of poor, sometimes starving, people for year after year. I asked some passersby. They said the house belonged to

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Chief Edenshaw, I guess the grandson or the great-grandson of the great. (This is just like the Maquinna situation at Nootka; except that he was a cruel man too.) And he was so much loved that, when he died, they left his house just as it was. You don’t touch a thing like that. You don’t even go in it. If you were to go inside even to take detail photos, you’d feel just as tho you’d got permission from the sacristan (and you’d be a fool to do it otherwise) to make photos inside an old Catholic Church. Of the altar. We found a grave on Clayoquot with the old guy still in it, just a mummy, just a skeleton. But of a chief, else he wouldn’t have been buried so carefully, cedar chest all carved and painted, and put into a cave that went in below high-tide shore, several hundred feet into the cliff. And dark and scary because part of the entrance was blocked by a down tree washed up by the waves; and you thought what would happen if some of the roof would cave in. Nobody touched that old man, tho Bill and Betty, the one scornful the other respectful, both knew he was there. And we went in there with [a] flashlight. Once soon after they discovered him, a cat had gone in there and had her kittens in the box. Bill went in with a flashlight and was terribly frightened at the eyes gleaming in the dark when his light hit the box. And then, on Deadman’s Island, there were cedar-wrapped corpses in platforms in the trees. I didn’t bother them. Bill told me afterward the Indians didn’t like, or in the old days at least didn’t like, anyone, white particularly, even to land on that island. But most of the old things are going. Already they’ve gone. At Masset there’s still one old man who does the old carving—and he turns out gorgeous work—and at Skidegate (Queen Charlotte City) I understand there’s still another. It’s near there they have the quarry of fine smooth black Skidegate stone that these people use. A jadelike substance, I understand, but also they tell me that when it’s first quarried the stuff is quite soft and has to be worked then in a hurry. Someone told the old guy in Masset about mermaids. It made a great impression on him. The sea may be their source of food, but it’s also a pretty implacable business. And this old guy turned out the most malevolent sea lady you ever saw. I wish I could have got it, and for a matter of ten or twenty Canadian dollars then I could. But mostly they copy the totems, or imagine and carve new ones. The totem of wish fulfillment, I suppose: I wish my family had been so and so. I wish my father had been Chief Edenshaw. Maybe he was. What if . . . Now if . . . now if I’d go home to lunch and maybe pick this up again next week, mister j s beck [Steinbeck]. Or even the same day.

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But when the sun shines here it’s pure paradise. Reminds me of that fine expression in “The Peasants,” people speaking to each other even if they aren’t friends. Just because the day’s so lovely. And when you get people who’ll use the country rain or shine—their extrovertness has to take this form, there’s no other—it’s doubly fine when their environment’s good. If it’ll be sunshiny here, the storekeeper closes shop—he might as well, nobody’ll be inside now—takes his family and goes down on the beach. Only I work anyway. If a ball game is scheduled for this or that day, you ask them what they’ll do if it rains. They tell you gravely that the ball game will take place as scheduled anyway, that it rains so often here they may just as well figure on it. For a Sunday picnic or crab feed, they get in one of those open trucks: men and children and women, even old women, ride out in it, and when it rains they grin at each other, and those who haven’t rain hats or raincoats along—foolish people—pull papers or cloth or a rag from the truck bed over their hair and sit there grinning at each other. Driving over two planks that go thru the scrub trees[, which are] just big enough to meet overhead and swish against the cab of the truck where the three or four lucky people ride. I suppose they think to themselves: this is the worst place in the world, every place else is better, but this is alright. The very day after we got here, a group was going out fourteen miles to the beach, almost to Tow Hill; they invited us to go along, and despite the half tide I collected very successfully at a place called Yakan (pronounced Yak’n) Point. 54˚ 04′ 15″ north, long 131˚ 50′, where I suppose in the history of marine biology, no scientist, no naturalist, no book-learning trained observer had ever collected before. It’s very thrilling to do this, the first tide in a new country. It seemed quite different; in fact a good many aspects of these islands seem different, but only an analysis of the notes and of the stuff collected will show if that’s really so, and wherein the difference lies, if any. Sunday, June 23, 1946: The crab fauna is different in that no porcelain crabs, Petrolisthes, occur this far north. I doubt if they’ve been reported ever north of Vancouver Island. And the absence of an animal as abundant as this, even if it’s only one out of a quantitative list of several hundred species, makes a lot of difference in the feeling. In the deeper zones occur a Telmessus chiregonus, the helmet crab, which I’ve never seen intertidally south of here. But we didn’t find that today. The common littorine here was sitchana; limpets were as further south; there were six chitons, Katharina in plain sight and the slightly hidden Tonicella being the commonest. We got one Mopalia swanii, which was new to me.

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Archidoris montereyensis was common. The high-up crabs were Hemigrapsus nudus. Juveniles of Cancer magister were very common even in the middle region. The usual anemones. Several things were unique— great rank clusters of a northern hydroid, Thuiaria dalli, which previously I have taken at Sitka. And huge [bunches] of tube worms: Schizobranchia insignis and small specimens of Eudistylia vancouveri. The small starfish were f. regularis of L. hexactis, the hermits were all P. hirsutiusculus, the common snails Thais lamellosa and emarginata; a few of the littorines were also scutulata. The commonest limpet was A. scutum. Physcosoma agassizii occurred here as elsewhere. Co-op fisheries are certainly powerful here. A small private outfit canning crabs alternates with the co-op clam-canning outfit in the same plant leased from Nelson Brothers (which apparently can’t operate here), but all the salmon stuff is marketed thru co-ops. Truck driver here was telling us that, some years back, they were getting two and four cents for salmon, whereas now they get eight and thirty, as against a probable price at present of only eight or ten under private enterprise. This, of course, instead of representing private profit to a middleman or to a marketing company, reflects a direct increase in the living standards of the individual fishermen and of course greatly increased purchasing power at the base of the pyramid. Toni got a fine house at twenty dollars per month bless her heart; others were ten, twelve, and fifteen, and there doesn’t seem to be any dearth of empty places, altho the total number can’t be over a hundred or so. But ours is a luxurious place, just built, and it has a radio. Battery job, with the batteries pretty run down, but Ed listens to jazz from Ketchikan pretty happily. It’s rumored up here already that I’m the Doc of Cannery Row. How do rumors get around so quickly? And already I’ve autographed a copy of the book. The tides here are based on Prince Rupert as a point of reference, and that’s unfortunate because that’s inland and the tides build up there; the high there this year, for instance, is plus 23.9′ in December, and there’s a 23.3′ in May, and even a 23.2′ this month. I’m sure the complete amplitude here in the inlet isn’t 15′ and no more than 9 or 10′ outside. So it gives a false picture; but after all, the percentages and the times are right, and that’s the important thing. On Monday, June 24, I followed the tide down from the 16.7′ (from Prince Rupert) high at 9:12 Masset time to the 6.8′ low at 3:18, trying to spot the important animals at the various levels. At the highest inhabited level around 10:30, an hour and fifteen minutes and therefore 1/n% of the way down, there were only Littorina

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scutulata and the amphipods Hyale plumulosa importantly noticeable, altho barnacles (probably B. glandula) and L. sitchana and L. scutulata in about equal numbers occurred right below; scutulata at this level was about 20 percent of the littorines, the larger and lower sitchana making up the bulk as you go down. Then there were already in the water two limpets, Acmaea pelta and A. persona (these are Haas determinations based on old published work; before we write this up finally, if you use it, I must allocate it to the new unpublished monograph determinations, which are definitive), and the crabs H. nudus and H. oregonensis, [the] latter in great number. As the tide went down, the beach was rustling with them. At 12:15 pm, small clusters of Mytilus edulis began to appear and with them the flatworms Notoplana litoricola; small hermits almost certainly of the hairy type, but unfortunately I didn’t take any along right then; and immature Nereis, probably vexillosa. Larger Acmaea of the same species occurred, there were still a few scutulata and sitchana, but most of the snails were small Thais lamellosa and Searlesia dira. An occasional Mopalia muscosa occurred at this level. The constant overcast weather at this point during the hottest part of the year must be a great benefit to the intertidal beasts, allowing them to occupy much higher levels than would be possible if the times of exposure coincided with dry air and hot sunshine. Later on, but still not at this afternoon’s low, there were thatched barnacles, probably Balanus cariosus, and Leptasterias hexactis. Additional limpets were A. digitalis, ochracea, and scutum in addition to persona. L. sitchana and H. nudus were still abundant. But at low water, about 7′, Prince Rupert reference, there was a rich fauna of large Searlesia dira, juvenile edible crabs Cancer magister, juvenile and small adult Cancer productus, some fine big Archidoris montereyensis, and three or four Katharina chitons on the side of the rocks. Underneath were the sipunculids Physcosoma agassizii, the polychaetes Nereis, and some large Pentidotea isopods such as were taken yesterday at Yakan, undetermined. This accounts for the fauna of this gravelly beach with occasional small rocks down to about [the] half-tide mark at a point where the shore slopes gradually to the point (as we discovered subsequently) of the lowest spring tides, [and] where there are great boulders [that] jam up against the channel where the shore slopes off suddenly to great depths. Oh yes and I forgot: there were lots of other things at that low level undetermined: red anemones, hermit crabs, sponges, small isopods, small green anemones, and spider and several other crabs not yet determined. A nemertean discarded, broke before I could tend to it; usual thing. Gosh, there’s an awful lot of

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work to making even the most cursory survey of this sort. Determining even such simple items as the hermit crabs is a job: you can’t get anyone even to give you any hints on the anemones; the nemerteans break up before you can preserve them for the specialist; there’s no one now to determine sponges, now that deLaubenfels has gone lazy or has lost interest; and since the old guy at USNM has retired, no one to determine the isopods. Of course, I can pretty well do that myself, but where are the hours and days going to come from? The Indian agent is Mr. Philipps; his son Harold, the builder. Mr. Burton is the fisheries man. He tells me—this is really quite interesting in view of the California mussel situation—that the Indians tell him the razor clams are sometimes poisonous. I know that mussel poisoning occurs this far north, even in Peril Strait north of Sitka, because when Sash was translating one of the journals of the old Russian explorers, she found that a whole lot of them got sick and many died from eating some they got at Peril Strait. I ask what precautions the Canadian fisheries take in this matter; the agent tells me none (altho on Vancouver Island they do; there are placards posted up on all the docks). The razor clams are collected thruout the summer, whenever low tides occur. However, they are trimmed; the parts—liver and viscera—that concentrate the poison are always cut out and thrown away, and I suppose there isn’t much danger. However the agent agreed with me that nothing would be done until, if ever, there was trouble; then there’d be a terrible stink. However, I talked plenty about it; I wouldn’t be surprised, when we go back this year, to see that the British Columbia Provincial Fisheries Department, which is a livewire bunch, had done something about it already. Take samples of some index animal, like the handy sand crab on the California coast, extract it after grinding, inject the extract into mice, and when so many cubic centimeters kills a mouse in so many minutes, close up the beach. Still, what index animal would they use? Emerita doesn’t occur north of California and southern Oregon. On Tuesday, June 25, I worked on the little flatworms, noting color, where they occur, swimming crawling, undersurface of air-water surface film; making perfect kills for Libbie. They might have been something new, but they turned out to be Notoplana, which Heath and MacGinitie described from Monterey Bay, tho I’ve not ever seen any of the same things there; maybe that’s what I’ve been calling Leptoplana sp., and here they look different. And picking up tide-pool fish. All are Leptocottus armatus, which, as I recall, occurs also here at Pacific Grove. All the Masset specimens so far have been in old tin cans. Ap-

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parently that’s where they hide when the tide’s out. And considering this business of tides. Some method ought to be worked out—and I should get busy on it—whereby position in the tidal zone would be numerically indexed, either based on height, or percentage of exposure to air. The one’s a straight line, and the other a cosine curve, so one set of terms would be referable quantitatively to the other only by means of tables or logs. No. 1, or perhaps 1 percent, would represent the height of the highest storm tide or the number of minutes in a day that such a tide would inundate that area, 50, or 50 percent, would represent mean sea level or Gislen’s physiological mean (where situate animals would be subject just half the time to water and half the time to air) and 100 the very lowest tide of the level, at which an animal would never be exposed to air except by the wave trough for a few minutes at extreme low. If such a thing could be worked out, the comparative tidal levels would be the same everywhere: 100 at Pacific Grove would be minus 2.0′, mean lower low water [on the] San Francisco tide staff. That would be the minus .2′ level, mean lowest waters at Clayoquot, on the Tofino staff. Mean sea level everywhere would be 50; at Pacific Grove that would be about plus 2.5′, at Clayoquot about plus 7 or 8′, at Prince Rupert about plus 12′ feet. Then you could compare animals of zone 40 to 50 and really get somewhere. Well, it would be a big job, and it would require not only a lot of theoretical calculating and engineering but [also] many weeks of practical leveling and driving stakes along the shore, and at many different points. And then laboriously listing and counting and comparing the animals found at those various levels, particularly in a quiet water region. I did quite a lot of that at Hoodsport, but of course all the notes burnt. You need a sloping beach of consistent sort, all gravel or all sand, and the gradient from high to low tide should be constant without the change that ordinarily occurs at the very low tide mark—why, I don’t know. Well, anyway, I was upset because still on Wednesday, June 26, there had been no wire from the Union agent at Prince Rupert about my missing chest, and I was needing boots and jars and alcohol pretty, pretty bad. I went out collecting from 4 to 6 am anyhow, in front of the house, but the lack of equipment—and it was cold and wet—plus the poor visibility, plus, worst of all, the fact that the rocks didn’t go out to the lowest tide and therefore weren’t continuous on down, made for many disappointments. A person ought to be able to survey many regions at the lowest of low tides before he spends time collecting on them. But the lows are limited, it takes time to go from place to place prospecting, and you

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shouldn’t spend the precious minutes in anything but hardest work. But there were many animals even so, about thirty have been determined; the isopods, many of the crabs, the sponges, anemones, barnacles, etc. are still to come. H. nudus was the common crab, with occasional oregonensis. Almost every rock had Leptasterias underneath and Nereis in the substratum. Many had Katharina on the sides, some had Cyanoplax raymondi more secluded. Occasional small Strongylocentrotus drobachiensis. The clams Venerupis staminea were spurting. We saw one Evasterias. The lack of wave motion here would suit it fine, but the currents are strong so the water is never still. All the hermits examined were hirsutiusculus. The small clam was Macoma inquinata, the small snail was Bittium esrichtii, the large one Searlesia. Fish were the omnipresent Oligocottus maculosus, the blennies Anoplarchus common, and the black hard-boiled Epigeichthys, rare probably because too far down. Cling fish. But the commonest blenny was Pholis laetus, yellow green underneath and quite sensitive; I hadn’t seen it before. The field notes say helmet crabs Telmessus (several); the spider crab Pugettia gracilis and the Cancer crab oregonensis both very common. Ronnie Stewart or Stuart (Scotch) is the ornithologist, Johnson the provincial policeman, and Martin the storekeep and postmaster. Reminds me somehow of the relation between the wartime navy and science. The mixed-up navy that could be pure but isn’t, that is in fact a perfect socialist outfit, a commune, used to fight communism. Like the army, like the Catholic Church, a true commune. The letter from Dr. Henry reminded me of it. And the difficulty of determining barnacles. She’s a barnacle specialist. At the start of the war, she heard the navy had a ship-fouling project at nearby Bremerton. Offered her services. Chiefly patriotic. But the navy was very polite and stiff-necked and stuffy. Pure scientists, biologists especially, no doubt had their uses, but the navy wanted practical people. Engineers certainly, but no theoreticians. Biologists, especially systematists, were ivory tower. A year later the navy’s long and costly experiments had been ruined. Curiously there was no difference between the expensively set-up experiments and the controls. In fact the navy had been so perfectionist and so practical that they had filtered every bit of water used in the experiment. At the same time filtering out the larvae that even the most abstruse biologist could have told them would have developed into the fouling organisms they wanted to deal with! Not even related: the tearful complaint of a traveling salesman in the Queen Charlottes. He said, “You get up and at ’em early in the morn-

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ing; get your work all done [in] plenty of time before the plane gets in. Call on the storekeeper about 8:30. He isn’t there, the store’s locked. You go over to his house; hell, he doesn’t even get up until midmorning. No use trying to see these guys early; no use trying to do any work here in the morning at all; no use even coming to the Charlottes in the first place!” On Thursday, June 27, 1946, Ed Jr. and I in the skiff set a course for Wimble Rocks on a shoal called Susan Bank on the opposite shore of the inlet and about a mile seaward. We planned it so the outgoing tide would take us there and the incoming tide bring us back; but there are local eddies and swirls, there is no slack water, or at most [for] a very short slack time, and we had some bad half hours. Even a little outboard motor would have spelled us; once or twice I thought we were in trouble, but we got there and we got back. This was an eddy region of depositing shore, the characteristic beasts were underrock, or even mildly in the substratum, and here we saw plentiful apodous holothurians, Leptosynapta, burrowing in the sandy mud, for the first time in this region, with Amphiodia (snaky brittle stars) occurring just as they do on the Clayoquot flats. There was a good epifauna on the exposed rocks, and the eelgrass had Haliclystus. All told I suppose about fifty species. Continued to work on chitons for jinglebollix [S. Stillman Berry]; several new species resulted from this and similar trips. There were Charisea-like anemones such as I found in Sitka. Friday, June 28, was sunny, brilliant. All work stopped in the community, if indeed there’s ever any work normally; family parties were picnicking on the beach, the picnics anastomosed, and finally the community indulged in one great unplanned holiday. We collected during the early morning tide, which was very good (plus .8′ Prince Rupert height), about a half mile north of the new wharf at New Masset. The starfish at this low level were Dermasterias, Henricia, and Pycnopodia; no Leptasterias whatsoever down this far, and the rocks are too small for the big starfish, such as P. brevispinus or Evasterias. One white cucumber, several Leptosynapta; funny no C. miniata here. The commonest crab was Lophopanopeus bellus. I saw only one Pugettia producta. No Cancer oregonensis this far down, and of course no Hemigrapsus of either species. The Telmessus were large and plentiful. There was some Abietinaria and several bryozoans. A good many miscellaneous items: shells, nudibranchs, tunicates, annelids, fish, Spirontocaris. The tide was exposing the stones on which the roots of kelp were attached, and

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these stones would average one small chiton each. Saw Cryptochiton, but no Katharina. During much of this time, I was going out collecting twice and sometimes three of four times per day. A fairly good beach was right outside our house, and there was very good collecting only half a mile north, easy walking distance. And I would often get stuff from the clam gatherers. During these low tides, one or two big four-wheel-drive trucks take off several hours before the time of extreme low. Today the co-op truck plus another landed fifty diggers on the grounds between Tow Hill and Rose Spit; brought back seventy crates of clams weighing sixty pounds each. I went thru a great many of these for parasites, found them extraordinarily free. During the late evening I arranged with the taxi driver to take me out early on the tide, I having heard of a likely place about six miles away, reachable by the plank road. It finally worked out that the guy didn’t want to rout out so early and didn’t see any reason for it; suggested that he let me take his car, bring it back when I got done. We used his car for three and a half hours, drove about ten to fifteen miles, but could have gone clear on to Tow Hill or even to Rose Spit along the beach and back; he wouldn’t have known except for gas consumption, since his speedometer was broken. I asked him then what I owed him. He looked all around the horizon, away, like people do who’re a little embarrassed. Asked if I thought two dollars was too much. I said too little and gave him three. My memory’s no good on such things—too much conditioned by common sense; I’d have sworn he said three or four and I gave him five or six, but there it is in the notes at the time. This was a very striking tide, zero at Prince Rupert high tide, and probably twenty-five feet below the Prince Rupert highest tide. Observed and photographed a great octopus, probably thirty-six inches spread. I dragged him out of his cavern; he swam, rocketed, and walked for us. Head about as big as my cupped hands. Body pretty well covered with rows of papillae, usually white, and quite noticeable. Highlights otherwise were [an] abundance of large Mopalia and, of course, of the brilliant chiton Tonicella. No minute chitons seen. No Leptasterias. And curiously enough, no Dermasterias, which inside is abundant at this level. Maybe chance of too much surf, altho today quiet enough; and during this time of the year, the offshore kelp beds and the shallow banks break the force of the waves considerably. Many compound tunicates; surprising, the usual thought is that the further north you go, the

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scarcer they become, and the more their place is taken by simple tunicates. Large Spirontocaris abundant (brevirostris), many Crago nigricauda, and at least one C. stylirostris—curious, isn’t this the beast we took in the gulf? Couldn’t possibly be the same, must be some mistake. The large Mopalia were lignosa. Notes mention also mysids as abundant, but USNM hasn’t yet determined them. The gangly masking crab, Oregonia gracilis, most abundant; the males are much more elongate and attenuated, look like another species. Hermits were mostly beringanus. Telmessus very abundant. Red anemones. Saw only one Pisaster, but brilliant slim Henricia were very abundant and I saw several Pycnopodia. Fifty-four species already determined, so we took probably a hundred. As the tide started up, I moved into Delkatla Slough, where there is a lag, and worked for another hour or so. Finally, I got into the burrow of a (probably) Upogebia, when the tide started running in swiftly and I had to abandon it; had no shovel along. Picked up a few fish, some limpets, and a Spirontocaris (Heptacarpus sitchensis). Later in the day I examined another lot of commercially dug Siliqua patula, the razor clam. Found one Pinnixa littoralis juvenile male. These beasts as juveniles get into almost anything, but as adults their choice is limited to Schizothaerus, etc. The tide Sunday am was one of the twenty-year beauties, but actually only .2′ below yesterday’s. Still, minus readings on the Canadian datum are predicted darned infrequently. Collected at Yakan Point, about fifteen miles east of Masset. Forget how we got there, probably borrowed the taximan’s car again. He doesn’t care; would rather sleep anyway. Another big octopus. I’ve often wondered if octopi ever bite. Today I found out. Yes, they do, they certainly do. This was a fine region, far far better than yesterday. Very extensive, and some parts of it had no depositing aspects of sand; many of the inside rocks, however, were being drowned and the fauna was suffering accordingly. This is a wonderful place for crabs. Oh yes, now I see later in the notes. Occasion for coming here was a community crab feed, and we were invited to come along. Truck brought the men out early, went back later to bring the women out, or no, another truck brought most of them, because when we went back in with the first, the wimmenfolks were coming out [to] cook dinner and eat crab. But we went back and laid out bugs. Four men got forty-two crabs in about half [an] hour, largest had a width of nine or ten inches. We ate crab till it oozed out of our nostrils. The low

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horizon here was characterized by great colonies of a huge sponges with carpets of hydroids, mostly a plumelike species of sertularian, Abietinaria turgida, in great coarse clusters. There were seven other hydroids, including two species of the ostrich plume, Aglaophenia. The overhangs were lush with compound tunicates in continuous colonies. Not many species crabs (tho lots of Cancer magister in sand tide pools), very few snails, no holothurians. Many chitons, including Cryptochiton, Mopalia, and Tonicella at low levels, and Cyanoplax raymondi on coralline rocks three or four feet above zero tide. Water soupy with mysids not yet determined. A new species of Spirontocaris fairly common. Several Strongylocentrotus franciscanus. Very few Pisaster, but plenty of Dermasterias here, which is as it should be; I can’t imagine why we saw none yesterday. Henricia and Pycnopodia. No Leptasterias, of course, so far down. About sixty-five species already identified, including the parasites (rhizocephalans and bopyrid isopods, on the hermit crabs). The hydroids were searched thru for pycnogonids, a weary task, with negative results. Monday, July 1, my chest finally came thru, and now I have boots again and good alcohol to work with. Some of the specimens suffered from being preserved in the commercial methylated spirits I was forced to use; it’s little better than kerosene and paint thinner. This morning we collected on the rocks just south of Old Masset. The wind and the rain were so bad we could hardly see; some things blew away and I’m sure we must have missed a good many things which, with decent weather and good light, we could have taken. However, I found one little beast I have long sought: the hermit crab Orthopagurus schmitti, which lives, instead of in snail shells, in MT [empty] serpulid tubes. Cream-colored chelipeds and walking legs banded with brilliant red, a very handsome crab. Also some of the small creamy anemones, perhaps Charisea, as at Sitka. Polychaete worms were very abundant, there were lots of shells, and we took five species of chitons. A new species of Spirontocaris, perhaps the same one we’ve been taking. On July 2, the high wind continued. We worked in the very low eelgrass beds in front of the house. It was very discouraging, cold, and whenever you’d see and reach for something, the wind would whirl the water so you’d lose it. On a quiet day with good visibility, it would be a great pleasure to collect here; you could look down on the bottom and see all sorts of beasts. But today it was hard enough to keep the tears out of your eyes enough to see surface animals. There was a very highly specialized terebellid worm, Nicolea zostericola (Oersted), apparently

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the same beast reported from northern Europe in the same environment; makes a tube of the eelgrass blades. Saw it first in the eelgrass beds near Wimble Rocks. Also lots of Haliclystus. Apparently you can get Haliclystus at will here in any of the beds of eelgrass. I’d expect Gonionemus too, but nary a one did we kick up for all our efforts. Must be around here somewhere. Probably way back in the inlet, in the saltwater lakes. I found here again the eelgrass limpets of quiet water which I reported to Dr. Test (the limpet specialist) from Sitka, without, however, bringing any along, and she suspected [a] new species. However, they turned out to be juveniles of A. testudinalas scutum (mostly) and occasionally of instabilis. Couldn’t persist on this substrate as adults, so it’s probable that for them this ecological niche is a dead end. They just happened to seed there, to their great misfortune. There were minute eelgrass snails, Lacuna divaricata and Homolopoma bacula. Really quite a highly specialized fauna. One of the Pagurus hirsutiusculus had nine rhizocephalan parasites: Peltogaster subterminalis. On Wednesday, July 3, there was a 2.5′ tide at midmorning, and Ed Jr. and I made a search for snail chitons for old jinglebollix. He should be happy (he is!); we got him sixty-one individuals of eight species, including one new species of Mopalia, which he’s calling rickettsi, and including the smallest Katharina he or I ever saw. And some minute Cryptochiton. Tonicella lineata with its brilliant clean-cut colors is probably the most abundant, certainly the most obvious. Cyanoplax raymondi, the other large and abundant species, is almost invariably hidden. Probably photonegative as are most of the Amphineura. Lots of ecological data on chitons on p. 122 of the “New Series Note Book #4.” Minute Spirorbis are very much a feature of the upper rocks here; I took some scrapings, and Dr. Berkeley reports three species, including some not reported on the PC NA before; European forms. Many circumpolar species here. Thirty-five to forty species already determined; we probably got a good cross section of this horizon. notes for future collecting: Trowel, prospector’s hammer. Short-handled mud-and-sand shovel, to fit chest. Short-handled net to fit chest. notes if we come here again: Outside collecting: Seven-Mile Point (Wiah Point).

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Rocks outside Naden Harbor. Inside, there may be also a very good fauna. North Island. Check over semiprotected mud and sand flats at very low tide, as in front of house. Be sure to have shovel along. Inlet conditions. Part way, as at . . . River, seven miles up the inlet, recommended by the Dutch truck-owner for starfish. etc.; and all the way in, as at Justakatka Inlet, for brachiopods, Aurelia and Gonionemus. Skidegate. Thing to do is to go to Fort Clements (there is a pub there, I understand) and to Skidegate by truck over the plank road.

to bring along next time: Richardson’s isopod monograph [L. P.] Schltz, key to fishes Robertson’s bryozoan papers Coe, three papers, or four papers, on nemerteans Essential to get MacFarland’s fine bur fish paper with colored illustrations on nudibranchs, but where? Four chief things condition life at Masset. Transportation and communication difficulties. The weather. The tidal currents. The plank road. For picnics, you drive out or bicycle out the plank road. You seldom go out in a boat. There’s only the one rowboat here, and riding the currents isn’t fun. You do it only when you have to. And then you know your stuff. Else someone has to rescue you. A fisherman in a powerboat if you’re lucky enough to have one around. The deserted Indian village of Yan is just a few miles across the channel, yet in the two weeks we’ve been here, no one from Masset has gone there. The local rainfall isn’t excessive, but it too conditions daily existence. The typical pattern is overcast skies, mist, or drizzling rain. Or, in winter, outright downpours. Likely to be wind with every very high tide—but this is a world-over phenomenon. Cool but never cold. Occasional fog. But it’s transportation difficulties that channel Masset activities most characteristically. Particularly in the matter of rare stuff such as meat. I already considered the way these people rush to the store soon as the boat’s in,

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get all the meat, let some of it go bad, then wait another two weeks for more. No rationing here, no meat points, no sugar points; I don’t know how the stores get by. They just don’t seem to bother with such things. Biological curiosities: very few Pisaster here. Difficult enough in itself to understand. But also no Cucumaria miniata—which is a quiet-water form and which thrives in a region such as Clayoquot, which is being drowned in sand. But that’s what much of this area is too, along the outer coast anyway. Just no figuring it out. Cancer magister, which is a sand-loving species, very common in both places. And there are no porcelain crabs here, very common at Clayoquot, but that’s a geographic factor: they don’t occur so far north. Since projections are the only “true” things, the only things in the world we can really know, it’s not a figure to speak of ghosts in these Indian graveyards. A group-soul, now wiser than two hundred years ago, less fierce, now kind, but pretty sad. That collective being knows how terribly the coming of the white man has disoriented the Indian from the land he held communally, but held nevertheless more intimately than most of us hold the land we personally own. Not only dispossessed him economically, so that he no longer had a business relation with the land (now he lives in a house the government builds for him), but inwardly too. I suppose many a fine person among them broke himself on that brick wall, fighting an invasion which, because it’s inevitable, must not be fought. We walked out onto Entry Point, out to the second range light. (John, lots of this is repetitive; what I do mostly is to transcribe the notes more or less unthinkingly: if they repeat, I just copy it; and they do; and they digress. I will try to cross-reference these things as I come to them. In the meantime I go on with lots of transcribing and not much editing.) Albert Edward Edenshaw, “a staunch friend of the white man”—a staunch friend of all people in the world, near as I can see, and of all things—and his son’s house. Left just as he left it when he died in 1935. Not a book touched. All the windows out. The furniture rotting. Apparently not a pan or a cup has been removed. A great funny staring house. The queer feeling in the cemetery, in the woods. Alien. An important place of another people. Not malicious. Just alien. Austere. The co-op cannery and the serious bespectacled Indian girl working away in the office. The beautiful, beautiful Indian children smiling and playing and crying. On the way out, in the distance, deserted Yan, a few totems still standing black against the dark land. Then Seven-Mile Point of the people here, Wiah Point of the charts (funny how places are called lo-

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cally by different names than officially), and the light. Even from a distance, even in that dim light, 10 or 10:30 pm fastime, it looks like a wonderful collecting ground. Then North Island, “hull down,” far off, five hours’ journey by small boat, I suppose, forty miles away. I know a fellow who rowed all around it. Then to bed, Prince Rupert tomorrow. Data on Church of England missionary boat, now unused and perhaps available for charter: Bishop of Caledonia, Prince Rupert. The old justice of the peace, magistrate, notary. Mr. Frost is it. The woman who operates the government phone and telegraph station went to school with Sasha. “All of them redheaded; wasn’t one of them lame? They started going together clear back in high school; I knew the marriage would be no good.” (Nadja and the husband who was killed by the suiciding gal friend.) Book on British Columbia: Collison (Archbishop), In the Wake of the War Canoe. The ideal traveling companion, like the ideal wife, exists only one place: in the imagination. Masset Photos: Indian graveyard Edenshaw’s deserted house The Edenshaw monument Poorer sections of old Masset The plank road Village of Yan The following morning was Sunday. We were in Prince Rupert with a whole day to wait over for our connecting steamer. The Cassiar took off for recoaling about 10 am; everything was closed up tighter than a drum—movies, library, museum, even the dock waiting room—and we had no place for headquarters unless we should rent a bleak hotel room. Our steamer was due in that afternoon, but it didn’t show up until late at night; it unloaded hurriedly and took off at once for Stewart, British Columbia; Hyder, Alaska. Fortunately a clear, even a sunny, day—a thing that never happens in Prince Rupert—and we walked miles around the town and over the hills. Collected at 10 am in a little landlocked cove drained by a sewer pipe, an environment that represents the extreme of protection and pollution. The gammarids (genus of freshwa-

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ter amphipods) which we collected in this highly specialized environment are, as you’d suppose, representatives of a new species. Barnacles, pill bugs, and very depauperate Littorina sitchensis. At Port Simpson the following midmorning, we collected on the lower high tide, about 15.0′ level (the afternoon high is only 3′ higher, but the extreme highs go up to 22–23′). This region looks very good; fauna growing in the upper, Fucus at this level, nine species, which reaches, near as I could see, a peak at about the 14′ level, slightly submerged now. No samples were taken of the Mytilus edulis, the H. nudus, the pill bugs, and the barnacles which occurred at this level; representatives of the Aomaea, the two species of littorines, the hermits, and the amphipods were preserved. A typical high-tide fauna. The water is very clear, the rocks clean, the seaweed lush, and the fauna very well developed. A very spick-and-span but oldish community, with a lovely new Hudson’s Bay Company store. Further inland, at Wales Cannery, there was very little. In the event of confusion in the collecting reports, there is on p. 128–29 a statement of dates and tides from June 20 thru July 3rd, with stations, [in] “New Series Note Book #4.” We got into Arrandale Cannery [on] Monday, July 8, about afternoon low tide. It looked good, boulders with Fucus, but there is glacial water here, and everything was covered with muck. We found the most fantastic fauna I’ve ever seen. Insects, arachnids, and chilopods down in the intertidal, at about half tide! No fish, no crabs, no flatworms, some Mytilus edulis, some Littorina sitchensis, plentiful barnacles. Several species of isopods, including some Pentidotea-Idothea. Amphipods, the large ones, of course, represented new species, but as usual they were lively; I got only a couple and they turned out to be of one sex only. It would pay to collect over this region carefully, not because the fauna is good or lush, but because it’s so highly specialized. I wrote up some of the conceptual aspects previously, as I recall, how conditions as untoward as these eliminate the truly seagoing marine animals from the struggle, and freshwater beasts then can penetrate. Acmaea, hermit crabs, Nereis rather common. The native village at Arrandale is as filthy a place as I’ve ever seen anywhere. No one to look after these people, who are children at least in civilization (in Western civilization). I went across a creek where some friendly Indian people were living in smiling squalor; even the dogs were filthy. There was shit and salmon entrails and maggots and flies and for all I know human vomit mixed up with washing and drying

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clothes and buckets for hauling water and rottenly dried fish in the awfullest stink you ever saw, and I’m not squeamish about those things. I suppose no church to look after this place. To the eagles watching high over Portland Canal, the steamer that’s so great to us must seem like a dot at the bottom of a great trough. For forty miles in some places that canal, not an inlet but an outright canal, runs straight into the mountains, which get higher and higher while still you’re sailing on tide water in a channel that gets deeper and deeper. There’s no use [for] a steamer trying to anchor in parts of this channel; no anchor chain reaches bottom. If the steamer’s going to get in trouble that requires anchoring, better go some place else. Something a little bit terrible to me in a deep canyon of that sort, it’s so isolated, it gets the sun (what little there is) so very seldom. The environment in many other ways is curious; biology has to be highly specialized. In the first place, the further you go up those inlets, the greater the concentration of freshwater; and it’s all on the surface, it doesn’t mix. Finally at the head, the surface water isn’t even brackish, it’s fresh. You’re on the ocean but not of it. And that surface layer of freshwater can go down a good many feet, maybe fifteen or twenty feet, enough at any rate to prevent any intertidal associations from developing. Yet the shallow bottoms and the sides are wonderfully rich—or at least they are if these places are comparable to the Norwegian fjords, which oceanographically they certainly are. But there again, when you get into the great depths there’s sterility again, depending on the depth of the threshold. Many fjords with a threshold of several hundred feet go off into very deep water further up, but the circulation of the water doesn’t touch down below the threshold, even far in, so all the water below that, including the bottom, is dead. There’s an azoic zone, where only the bacteria can live and a few worms and perhaps an occasional mollusk with low oxygen requirements. But in many places—parts of the Mediterranean, parts of the Gulf of California, all of the Black Sea below a few hundred feet, most of the deep water in most fjords—there’s no animal life whatsoever, and no plant life other than bacteria. The plant nutrients in such places must pile up enormously, but there’s no way of them getting out except by slow diffusion. Now above, also, there’s another azoic zone of freshwater. So the intermediate zone, where the sunlight still penetrates and where the diffused plant nutrients from the deep azoic zone will permit a huge development of plankton, must be enormously rich. And a fine copepod and small crustacean fauna correspondingly develops, I suppose. So maybe that accounts for the almost incomparable fish rich-

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ness of some of these fjords. I always wonder, going up to places like Bella Coola, how it is that such great canneries can be supported, how come there are so many fishing boats. That very easily could be the answer. And I never realized it before. Oh and another thing in these long deep canals: [the] further you go into the mountains, the higher the back country gets, the more precipitation there is, and the more glaciers there are. And all this discharges the milky glacier water into the inlets: that’s rich in nutrients, but the emulsified effect is such that the light is cut off. I suppose some of these channels consist mostly of azoic water. But it’s potentially so rich (in plant nutrients, etc.) that, given even the faintest chance, those waters will bloom like the tropics. Well, eventually that situation piles up to saturation, then it leaks out at all the borders, until, along the inland passage and in the waters offshore Vancouver Island and southeastern Alaska, you have oceanic conditions that are about as inviting to animal life as anything I’ve ever heard of. No wonder the California sardines make summer pilgrimages to the northern waters. No wonder the halibut beds are rich. No wonder it’s the finest salmon-fishing country in the world. Enough stuff in here suggestively, I suppose, for half a dozen books. One thing we might do, since selectivity obviously will play a big part, is to eliminate everything but the outer coast Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlottes stuff. The Hyder-Stewart side trip, for instance, applies to waters the furthest removed possible from the outside ocean. This is all inland passage stuff. Wouldn’t it be fine some summer to take a small boat up thru here, as Jack, Sash, Joe, and I did? Would be a good repository for my hosts of notes (mostly burnt, but some still OK) on the inland passage. Be fun to do. And as we did it, not expensive, but Jack had his own boat and acted as his own pilot. I can’t navigate, and I suppose you can’t either. With a decent-sized boat, a person, however, could live comfortably, even luxuriantly, and could do a lot of work. These inland passages are the quietest places you’ve ever seen. Nothing but the drip of rain, the sound of waterfalls, and the songs of the thrushes; at dawn and dusk the hillsides ring with their whistles, and maybe no other sound. Russet-backed thrush, sound of the wilderness. Anyway, this is how it happened. Nothing that’s in the notes taken out, some things added, not much. A little editing. Hyder, Alaska, is latitude 53 plus north. The monuments that the Russians erected to mark the boundary are still here. I was surprised they got up so far. And the more recent and slightly differently placed U.S.-Canada boundary monuments. A town that’s built on wickedness and cupidity. One of the few

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places I’ve been ever where you can say “where only man is vile.” Nothing else. Lovely countryside. The only excuse for this town being (now—it’s a ghost town, once an important mining center) is that it’s a liberal Alaska adjacent to strict Canada. Alaska sells liquor in any amount at any time; sells American cigarettes. Frugal Canada has pubs that close on the dot; you can get hard stuff only on ration at government liquor stores that look and act like banks. Hyder depends on outside of Alaska. The customs collector is also the town’s chief merchant, he has a clean, nice drug and general store, and you have only to notice things a few minutes to understand how come; he should be rich. Only a few people live on the Alaska side, many in Canada. And only the Canadian ships call—the dock is legally on the Canada side of the line. There’s a great run on American cigarettes by the carton. The stewards rush over and stock up. Walk past the line (where the customs post is mostly unmanned) with the cigarettes tucked under their coat. Many times as they want. The guy who sold them the cigarettes is also the customs inspector. He knows where they’re going. The other places are lousy saloons. Just lousy. Sell liquor to Canadian Indians, to anyone. This place is the end of the line. Inspectors can come up only on ships or boats, you can know long beforehand, by telegraph if you want, what vessels are coming up the canal. We had a few drinks in [a] saloon run by [a] funny, sad guy on the beach, thinks in terms of outside, lives here cheerlessly, what a life. “They’ll never take Malta,” then I had to walk away, too sad to stay here. Out in the countryside, which is as lovely as I’ve ever seen. Steamer docked about 11 pm fastime. Doesn’t get quite dark up here all night; couple of hours deep dusk with the birds singing. The sad rather than vicious old town whore picks up a couple or three or four or five men at the saloon takes them out to her shack on the edge of town in the lovely country; you can hear them in there drinking and singing. She doesn’t want to be screwed particularly, she just wants the money, and much much more she wants the companionship. A sad, fattish middle-aged woman, being sentimental and palsy-walsy and crying into her beer. Hell, she’d give you the fat contents of her whoring purse if you’d once in her life clasp her face honestly, pat her on the back. Well and how that all contrasts with the smell of the clean country on the good gravel road, mountains with snow right almost down to the sea level. And the guy on the beach who runs the saloon talking about the blue glacier bear. The next notes, Wednesday, July 10, mention Port Hardy or Hardy Bay, licensed premises with transportation to the west coast at Coal

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Harbor in Quatsino Sound, and with store, hotel, as likely looking collecting place. Of all the inside passage points from Vancouver to Hyder, Alaska, that we’ve visited this year during daytime—and while I could check the low tide shore—this and Port Simpson look most promising. Got in here about 3:30 pm, upper five or six feet of shore was bared, ledge rock, apparently of sandstone. I have collected on this type of shore (as at Nanaimo) too infrequently. The road up the east coast of Vancouver Island (the civilized coast, the accessible coast) now goes up as far as Sayward [and] Menzies Bay, about fifty miles north of Campbell River which is about 175 miles above Victoria. It’s a good gravel or paved road. We found that, by getting off at the town of Campbell River about 3 am, we could save twenty-four hours or more on getting back to Clayoquot, so decided to do it. In the meantime we had been scrambling around at a great rate for some method of avoiding that long trip to Vancouver and back. Captain MacKinnon had even been good enough to say that, if our passages coincided as nearly as we then figured with the northern transit of the Maquinna, we should wireless from our Union steamer before we got off at Port Hardy, come quickly over to Coal Harbor (where he no longer stopped), get a launch from there, and he’d stop midstream in Quatsino Narrows and pick us up; I knew him by that time well enough to know he’d like that, and I wouldn’t have hesitated to ask it (we’d have saved three or four days that way), but our steamer came thru just one day too late. So anyway, we were up and ready when we came thru the Seymour Narrows bucking a seven-knot current. Ed Jr. had found him a gal friend, nurse in Vancouver Hospital, and elected to stay aboard and come back then by the slow way (he didn’t at all, but met us at the dock in Victoria about ten days later, as broke as I’ve ever seen a man). That crazy steamer docked at Campbell River by the aid only of a lady taxi driver; I never saw such seamanship; lady succeeded in hooking one hawser over until a deckhand hopped ashore, then they made her fast. We were the only ones off, with a little freight; difficulty, with aid of lady taximan got a place to stay. By bus next morning (and what a time we had with that heavy chest) to Courtney and the railway to junction at Parkesville (where the train crew in good weather luxuriously go down to the beach and idle. Really a pretty good, slow, working life the people lead on Vancouver Island). The notes mention fine, wonderful-looking collecting place: a quarter mile south of the town of Campbell River, about opposite the

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Provincial Police Station, thence south for several miles. Fine bouldery shore with rocks extending apparently out all the way (and they should, because this is eroding shore; the currents start piling up here for Seymour Narrows). Kelp further out. Motor road runs right along the shore. Baggage is handled so much more simply by train; and the whole trip so much more pleasant. Why does anyone take the crowded, often stopping, jerky bus? Very local and personal. Conductor: “Which side do you want to sit on, Mrs. Junkins?” “I want to sit on this side till we pass our house.” The train ride from Courtney to Point Alberni on that local jerkwater branch of the CPR [Canadian Pacific Railway] is a pure delight. Trainmen insist we sit on the spectacular side coming down the mountain. We’re obviously strangers, and from the states; obviously they don’t get many tourists anymore. If ever. Just local people. The train stops literally at the crossroads, [someone] hands Mrs. So-and-So her paper or some eggs or a parcel from Mrs. Someone-Else. And on the Uchuck we are received like old-timers; the skipper has us up in the pilot house. Bad roll coming across the head of the sound for a couple of hours, and he’s delighted that we don’t join the vomiting hordes below. He doesn’t know what might happen if the roll continued! We hear that, during the winter, the sitting room below is a mass of sick and crying Indian children and grown whites; the floor runs ankle deep in vomit swishing from side to side as the boat rolls—the Bone Crusher. The earthquake of June 23 was a very serious thing on Vancouver Island, the more so because, in the history of the oldest inhabitant, there was no preparation for it, none of the Indian legends had such a thing. Earthquakes just don’t occur here. The year of the big tides, 1946 and early 1947, I figure had more, and more serious, earthquakes than anytime for many years. It was serious on Clayoquot Island. Scared the people very badly with its loud rumbling noise; damaged or knocked down most of the chimneys. Bill went into our attic to see how badly the specimens had suffered. Fortunately not much. The jars and bottles had been stored well; they were knocked over, but only a few were broken, and I saved even most of those. Thousands of Callianassa were killed on the north sand beach. Also, the Indians told Betty that their beaches were full of dead pink crawfish. Most people hereabouts hadn’t ever seen them before; even the Indians, apparently, who are usually pretty sharp. Apparently there aren’t any Upogebia hereabouts, or if so,

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they weren’t damaged. Some of the towns we came thru on the east coast looked as tho they were hit by a cyclone. The dock at Kildonan was cast into the sound, the Australia–New Zealand cable was broken where it takes off from Bamfield; several miles of it was missing and hadn’t been found when I last heard. Most drastic of all, the depths were changed offshore so markedly (sometimes by several hundred feet vertically) that much of it had to be resurveyed. At Ahousat there was one of the strangest things. The people in the store were awakened, scared. The woman started to walk down the path; it was swaying so badly she fell down, then crawled on her hands and knees. The power of the shock was attested to the next day by a curious business: some rocky beds were tilted diagonally so the tips of the rocks formed humps or peaks. These tips were sliced off very regularly and very easily. I saw this myself. And I cannot understand it. Back at Clayoquot I decided that the difference between the two Schizothaerus shells was definite and sufficient to justify sending specimens for determination. (Fortunately I made tracings of the ones I worked on.) See p. 134–35, “New Series Note Book #4.” Sent a great lot of this stuff to Dr. Haas. On p. 137 [see the] report of my discussion with Norman Nelson of the Nelson Brothers packing company on the fisheries situation. Not knowing I was a fisheries biochemical technician also, but seeing I knew something about it, he wanted terribly for me to come take a look at his reduction plant at Prince Rupert; [thought] I might have some suggestions (I told him he was dumping his profit into the salt chuck in the form of unextracted stickwater). Met him by chance at Masset. Don’t know why it’s reported here. Report on p. 139 of the trip to Ahousat, meeting the mother of the Gibson boys—and what loyalty they inspire in some of their men; I can’t understand it. Apparently they maintain the original store there at Ahousat, where they got their start, as a refuge for the old woman—the original home is there. But that’ll have to be closed soon, since the Indians, sick of holdup prices (at a store which apparently already is losing heavily) are establishing their own co-op. The shore at this point is almost identical with Point Lobos, same type of rocks and (as you’d expect) the same animals, almost without exception. Only difference is that here, during this time of the year anyway, [the] surf isn’t quite so high as there. The only different beast was a littoral sabellid. But further along, in a more quiet cove, the urchins were drobachiensis (instead of the purpuratus we’d have found at Point

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Lobos), the hermits were hirsutiusculus (samuelis and hemphilli at Point Lobos), the cottid fish were Oligocottus maculosus, and there were more Serpula vermicularis than we’d have found there where they are rare. Still on the whole, it would have taken a sharp-eyed observer to see any difference. One hermit may replace another, but the species are very, very similar. On July 17 we had another look at the animals of the 2.0′ level east of the Clayoquot wharf region. Picked up a lot of chitons for jinglebollix. There are ecological notes with regard to these on p. 139. A copy of these and other chiton ecological notes should be sent to Dr. Berry before he publishes on these. The chitons fairly exposed, dry on the rock, from the 2′ to the 4′ level, were all Cyanoplax raymondi. And one fine definite, beautifully sculptured Mopalia of lignosa, and it was lignosa under buried boulder in shelly substratum. Suspect that Placiphorella is on the way to becoming a sessile and fixed animal almost in the sense that Hinnites is. The Petrolisthes at this level definitely were eriomerus, and I got four Pachycheles rudis. But mostly we poisoned a tide pool at about the 3.0–3.5′ level, getting six species, and one liparid from seaweed at the water’s level and four others from above; eleven tide-pool species from this one small area. On July 18 we made a 1.9′ tide at Tsapee Narrows, about ten miles south and inland from Clayoquot. Evasterias troschelii was definitely only on the west, the silted-up side where the current was slow. With Metridium, which, however, as I recall, occurred on the swift side also with one Balanophyllia. Thirteen species of shells, a good many other things. Seven species of crabs have been determined; the hermits were granosimanus and beriganus. Six worms. Flatworms. About twelve brachiopods, Terebratalia, the only place we’ve found more than a couple. On Friday, on a 2.5′ tide, we went with Pete to Elbow Bank on Maurus Island to see what he thought was a colony of Balanoglossus (he basing his idea on the picture in SoC [Southern California]). The colony, which had been exposed on the lowest tides, or just about, had been inundated by sand, or else he couldn’t find it at all, but I suspected the beasts were the flashy sea pen Ptylosarcus or Leioptilum quadrangulare. Later on, prowling around and still on the search, he found a couple, then under maybe ten feet of water, the tide having come in rapidly meanwhile. We fooled around for a long time trying to pull one up with a weighted fish line, then Pete said hell, took off his clothes, dived over, and got the one we maneuvered the boat over the first try. Very tickled.

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Now I have a littoral or slightly sublittoral pennatulid, and the great beds I have heard reported can be substantiated inferentially. It was in January that Pete saw the great bed there [and] estimated several hundred. Later, up in the channel toward Tofino, we saw one of the delicate Aurelia, the first seen in this region. On Saturday [July 20], we left for home via the Maquinna, staging on the way over to Tofino a party in our cabin with Bill, Ruth, Betty, etc. of such a quality that the captain got involved and didn’t pull the ship out of Tofino for an extra half hour. Everyone including Captain MacKinnon got quite swacko; we drank up all but one or two bottles of the saved liquor. Subsequently we heard that, when Betty went back, she passed out while milking the cow, and Bill just barely got in and went to bed. They blew the whistle several times from the pilothouse, and the officer on duty sent the cabin boy down twice to get the captain. He just said, “Tell ‘em I’ll be right up,” and that was the end of it. I may be a little mixed up on this, the notes aren’t very explicit. I know Captain MacKinnon was taken off this run, and it seems as tho it must have been on this trip, because I recall some other officer being in charge, but it was one of these times that the captain got us up in the pilothouse when we were about to leave Bamfield, and had Toni stand that ship out in the stream. He told her just what to ring up on the engine room telegraph, and she, who’d never handled one of them before, with some trouble got the message across. The old guy would stand there watching the trees alongshore, to line two particular ones up, for instance, the way they do, then tell her to give full speed astern and set the helmsman for southwest by south a quarter south—“and you better tell him when to stop swinging the wheel at just the right place”—and Toni sweating it out at a great rate. Doing better than I could do at that, who have had more experience. (Couldn’t have less.) That fine drunken captain, actually staggering, but never making one mistake. And the other officer on duty so young and gold braid and trim and disapproving. Finally getting into a squabble with the captain over where they were, that he should have changed course in the fog a bit earlier or later. And I so interested I stayed in the pilothouse until after midnight to see how they came out. And of course it worked as you’d suppose. The drunken captain, by this time cold sober, was right, and the precise sober younger officer was minutes and a half mile off. The captain was on the nose. At the last, we met the inspector of lighthouse service, and he was very cooperative and said, when I told him I must sometime get to Estevan, that it probably could be arranged and suggested that I write [the] Division Superintendent,

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Department of Transportation, Radio Branch, Belmont Block, Victoria, saying I wanted to collect on a few good tides there, why, who I was, and that I had contacted this guy whose name was pronounced as though it were spelled Neass (perhaps Kneass). well jnny boy, this is it, this is thirty, the trips of 1945 and 1946 are over, it’s [your book] now and god bless you.

chapter 10

“Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage”

Ed Ricketts’s serious studies of the sardine cycle span the almost twentyfive years he lived and worked in Monterey—from the mid-1920s through the late 1940s—as he watched the boom and bust of Cannery Row. By the time his last and most articulate essay about the subject, “Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage,” appeared in the 1948 Monterey Peninsula Herald, the canning industry had begun to collapse. In his article he attempted to explain the crisis in a historical context. The article ran on the first and third pages of the newspaper and included a bar graph of the annual tonnage of sardines caught along the entire North American Pacific coastline from the 1920–21 season through the 1947–48 season. Ricketts’s studies of the sardine were a natural extension of his scientific investigations and his personal connection to the local community. He was a staunch conservationist, and while he was willing to take, and took, the unpopular position that overfishing was a major factor in the collapse of the sardine population, he recognized that it was affected by a diverse and complicated set of factors—both human and natural— and knew the problem could not be solved simply. The rupture of an ecosystem he loved, and that he helped identify as a scientific entity, grieved him, as did the profound economic suffering it caused friends and neighbors of long standing. In his final essay, written just weeks before his death, Ed Ricketts delved deeply into the problem of sardine depletion, the causes of which, he recognized, were somewhat enigmatic. 324

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Figure 17. Ricketts working in the laboratory at the California Packing Corporation, 1947. Originally published on page 3 of the Monterey Peninsula Herald, March 7, 1947. Courtesy of the California History Room, Monterey Public Library.

Out of his sense of loss, he articulated a holistic understanding of the fragile symmetry of the interdependent coast environment of marine and human communities. •

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Recent sardine activities, or perhaps I should say the lack of them, have done very little to change the picture presented in these columns last year. But it is perhaps worthwhile to point up a few ideas which last year’s article failed to emphasize. One is that the decrease isn’t sudden; the current trend started clear back in 1936.

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Another is that we mustn’t regard over-fishing [sic] as being the sole factor in the present disaster, although it’s the only one over which we have any control. And a third is to stress the fact that some of the unfortunate practices of the past still are being continued—to the detriment of the whole industry.

Unpopular Theory A large waterfront element continues to advance explanations for the increasing scarcity of sardines. The two most fantastic involve the dumping of munitions and the effects of the atom bomb, although obviously neither of these were in operation twelve years ago when the total landings started their downward slide. But [the] most likely explanation (and still by far the most unpopular!) is that the sardines we are searching for have already been canned and reduced. In other words, that the total number has decreased. At the same time a plausible theory is being entertained that the sardine population center has moved south, and I understand that at present Dr. Clark is investigating that phase. Whatever her investigation discloses, the unpleasant fact stares us in the face that the industry is over-expanded [sic]. For many years we have been increasing the numbers of our canneries and reduction plants, while at the same time the sardine population, if not actually decreasing, certainly can’t have been increasing. Even if the fish were to come back every year from now on in their greatest recorded numbers, as in the peak season twelve years ago, still there wouldn’t be enough to keep all our plants running at capacity.

Not Sudden A chart is being reproduced to show total landings for the whole industry including floating reduction plants (floaters). This shows quite clearly that our banner year was clear back in 1936. No figures are available on the Mexican canneries at Ensenada, Cedros Island and perhaps elsewhere. And no estimates have been included to show the rather large amounts of young sardines taken as live bait off the Lower California coast by tuna boats fishing the more southern waters. Figures previously issued by the Division [Department] of Fish and Game have

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been misleading in that tonnages unloaded at the offshore reduction plants weren’t included. Fish Bulletin 67 (dated Sept. 1947 but only received this month) is the first in which detailed figures have been shown for the floaters. The attached chart, which was first made over a year ago, carries estimated figures to cover this tonnage. These estimates are somewhat low, but the differences are slight, and no corrections have been made. In any case, now it can be established that the decrease which makes us so unhappy isn’t sudden at all but started years back.

Nature Shares Blame Whatever the situation may be in Southern California, Monterey operators in general seem to be willing to accept the fact of depletion. And some at least are willing to accept Monterey’s share in the process (now that the horse has been stolen; ten years ago [it was] different). The industry however mustn’t take the entire blame. Natural conditions certainly are involved also, but just how much weight should be attached to the various natural causes and to overfishing cannot be determined. Students aren’t even yet certain where the blame lies in the French sardine crisis, and this occurred more than a generation ago. Probably we couldn’t exterminate the sardine even if we tried. Humans have been trying to eradicate the rat, the mouse, the bedbug, the body louse and the cockroach for a thousand years or more, and the best we have been able to do is to keep their numbers in control. It’s true that within the past two centuries the Dodo, the Great Auk, the Passenger Pigeon, the Carolina Paraquet [Parakeet], and the aborigines of Tasmania and the Aleutians have been extincted. And the American Bison and the Sea Otter almost followed suit. But all we can hope to do with the sea-going forms as the whale and the sardine is to reduce their numbers to the point of commercial extinction, so as to make the industries unprofitable. By continuing to take undersized specimens and by concentrating our fishing activities in the areas where the animals gather preparatory to spawning in Southern California we can come pretty close to accomplishing this objective. How wonderful it would be, in this connection, if only Southern California and Baja California could be scared as thoroughly as we have been in Monterey, and as the operators have been in San Francisco, Oregon, Washington and Vancouver Island! Perhaps then we could count on the sardine making a quick come-back.

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Specialists Ignored In the meantime, I have been listening to waterfront gossip. It is being complained along the row that the Division [Department] of Fish and Game should have awakened to the danger long ago, that at least they should have prevented the taking of undersized specimens. But I reason this way: Suppose they should try (as I believe actually they did). A suave lobbyist says to the individual legislators: “Don’t pay any attention to these scientists—Good fellows of course: but their heads are in the clouds. Let’s listen to the hard-headed down-to-earth businessman. There’s no chance of depletion. There’s just as good fish in the sea as any ever’s been caught. Both the fishermen and the canners are agreed on that. And they know. They’ve had years of actual experience. Let’s not have any professional new-dealing in our fisheries.” So, the legislators refuse to listen to the Fish and Game Division [Department] scientists. Sometimes even the division itself refuses to support its own specialists. And the sardine populations do decrease (although not necessarily only through overfishing). Until finally the canners themselves (of Northern California for instance)—these down-to-earth hard-headed businessmen—get concerned over the scarcity. Their profits fade, their business decreases. In desperation they appeal to the division for protection, for a statewide regulation to prevent the taking of small sardines. What happens! There’s a meeting. The canners of Southern California scream their heads off. They say: “In this region we get only mixed sardines. The proportion of small ones is often high. Don’t take away our business too, just because the unfortunate operators in the north are suffering.” Again the Division [Department] fails to act, confronted with disagreement. And in the meantime still more of the vital and decreasing breeding stock is being wiped out.

Mexico Next? Next year or the year after even the southern operators will plead for protection (unless in the meantime natural conditions improve, conservation is forgotten, and the cycle of drought and plenty repeats itself). And then some of the sharper ones will make a dicker with Mexico so as to tap the remaining stocks running off Ensenada, Cedros and Magdalena Bay. And another natural resource will be gone. In the meantime there is the rumor that the main body of sardines has moved south. This may in fact be happening, but if so it will be only

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one added factor in a large total complex. Fishermen furthermore have reported schools of small fish, presumably sardines, in the Galapagos region. If actually these are sardines, probably they represent an unusual northward extension of the sardine of Peru and Chile which never has been known to contact the California sardine by two thousand miles or more. A friend in Carmel last fall sailed along the west coast of South America in a Norwegian freighter. He reports that in southern Peru and northern Chile day after day their path was through a belt of sardines which he estimated to be from several hundred yards to several miles in width and which extended unbrokenly up and down the coast 5 to 10 miles offshore. This needn’t surprise us here. An upset balance of rainfall or plankton or sardines in one region easily may relate to a compensatory imbalance before or after that time in the same region, or in some other part of this great and unified world.

Two Races With reference to our own California species, it seems to be pretty well established that two races occur. The northern feeds into a fairly separate southern race along Central and Southern Lower California. My own (but unproven) inference is that while the southern race always, or at least often, recruits from the north, it never or rarely feeds back into the north. I think of it pretty much as a dead end, lacking issue, and in the Gulf of California at least, rarely attaining full maturity. However, it’s conceivable that if something happened to the northern race, say if it should be depleted by a combination of natural causes and overfishing, the southern race very easily might increase to the point where it would infiltrate back into the depopulated north. More detailed information on the essential food of the sardine, the marine plankton, will be available shortly in the form of an account of planktonic production on the Pacific coast. This is being published in the second edition of the Ricketts and Calvin “Between Pacific Tides” which will be issued this month by Stanford Press. There will be found also tables and charts on sea water temperatures, on diatoms, on dinoflagellates and other floating organisms, some of them quite applicable to the sardine problem. If this civilization of ours ever gets to the point where definite predictions are possible for the sardine—a point which has been reached already for the salmon and the halibut—it will be through continued and

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intensive scientific research. But long before that time, if we hope even to have an industry to worry about, we shall have to establish a program of conservation involving Canada, the United States and Mexico. When warnings were first sounded fifteen or more years ago, if such a program had been put into effect, the industry perhaps could have been standardized at 400,000 tons per season. Instead, once we hit nearly 800,000. The 1947–48 landings were less than 100,000. If conservation had been adopted early enough, a smaller but streamlined cannery row in all likelihood this month would be winding up a fairly successful season, in stead [sic] of dipping, as they must be now, deeply into the red ink of failure.

Epilogue

So ended Edward F. Ricketts’s career, prematurely, at a time of considerable environmental and economic peril for the Monterey Bay, a region that defined him. In his final essay, we see him struggle to come to grips with a crisis and reconcile the complexity of the human and natural factors affecting the sardine. Had he lived, Ricketts would have borne witness to the final collapse of Cannery Row and the industry that transformed Monterey from a mere fishing village to one of the world’s industrialized fishing and canning centers for more than half a century. His work was far from finished. As I note in the introduction to this volume, he intended to write a comprehensive book about the North American Pacific coast invertebrates, which would have integrated his studies ranging from the Sea of Cortez to the outer shores of British Columbia. Moreover, his final notebook entries in 1948 reveal that his interest may have turned from the shoreline to the California deserts—a shift promising radical new systems and vistas for his personal curiosity and scientific work. Though his life was cut short, more than fifty-five years after his death Ed Ricketts’s remains an example of one personality who healed the breach between science and art—at least for himself—and a central figure in interdisciplinary cross-pollination and the rise of American ecology. His being and work continue to intrigue us and shape our vision of the North American Pacific coastline.

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Living at the Lab with My Father

Our family broke up in 1936, when Dad moved out of the Carmel house to live in his lab across the hill, on Cannery Row in Monterey. Later, Mother and my sisters went to Washington State and I moved to the Row—an abrupt change for me. What were once leisurely times in a sleepy town with frequent morning hikes up Carmel Valley to hunt cottontails suddenly turned into near chaos. Our little building, “the Lab,” was crammed between noisy, smelly sardine canneries. Across the street were two whorehouses and a Chinese general store. During the day, when fish were being put into cans, trucks jammed the narrow street and whistles blew and cannery workers changed shifts, often into the evening if the sardine catch was large enough. Eventually all the sardines were canned, and then a curiously peaceful lull fell over the Row. Soon, taxicabs began to appear across the street to deliver customers to Flora Woods and her Lone Star Restaurant. I was fourteen years old and had been given a trumpet. It was during these early-evening interludes that, if Dad was away, I could blow my horn. If I didn’t keep track of the time, I ran the risk of attracting Flora’s customers—I didn’t need to have a drunk come stumbling across the street. A trumpet can be pretty loud, and I often found myself forced to play while perched on the rocks above the surf down behind the Lab, with 333

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only the sea lions as my audience. And there was a large storm drain. Several yards up into this conduit, the acoustics were good and I liked the sound. Someone said that a drunk way up on Lighthouse Avenue swore off liquor forever when he heard weird noises coming out of a manhole. There was a lot of good-natured kidding going on those days, and I often took the brunt of it. Dad’s friends dropped by in the evenings to eat and drink, hear music, or talk. Mostly talk. I squatted on the floor in a corner of the living room, listening to the conversations and watching. Sometimes my music was requested, and then I jumped up and ran to my bedroom to bring back records, but mostly I just watched and listened, fascinated by the conversations. Bedtime was a nuisance, but I needed the sleep and this was a major problem, since the partying usually went on well into the night. A hand-operated coffee bean grinder mounted on the kitchen wall invariably jarred me awake, and the phonograph music persisted. We had a very big loudspeaker. Not all was negative though— I developed a lifelong love for Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20—what a beautiful way to be awakened! Sometimes I was awakened at odd hours of the night by the typewriter. Dad used a peculiar four-fingered style of typing. I was taking a typing course in high school and was amused (and amazed) at how fast he worked while using this awkward method. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized he typed as though he was speaking. And that typing was his unique way of working out his thoughts. A way to mull over a question, a way to consider all approaches to a problem. Complete with backspacing and X’ing (crossing) out mistakes. Other evenings we were alone, and for me, these were among the best of times with my father. There was always work downstairs. Specimens had to be packed for shipment to schools. Turtles and frogs and sharks and starfish were to be preserved. And cats. I liked helping as much as I could, and I helped a lot. Except for the cats! Cats were gathered from time to time to be sold to schools for dissection. Local kids were paid twenty-five cents apiece. Dad put the cats into a garbage can and added a few drops of sweet-smelling chloroform. After a few seconds, perhaps thirty seconds at most, the thrashing ceased. When I felt bad about the cats’ panic, Dad explained that cats and humans don’t have similar nervous systems. These downstairs work sessions were important to me because they offered a perfect setting for conversation. I was usually bursting with questions, questions about my classes, for instance. I had become bored

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at the slow pace. Dad thought that maybe public education could be split into several tiers, depending on the individual abilities of the students, each tier running along at its own optimum speed. We talked this over and over, each contributing, both of us gaining something. The point is that both of us participated, and on an equal basis. Dad had the very rare ability to participate without ever seeming to advise. As a result, we had more of a brother-to-brother relationship than a father-toson relationship. Another example of this participation: I had come up with the idea of somehow gathering from the beach below a number of heavy sections of railroad track and wanted to talk it over with Dad. I suspected that I should be able to use the incoming tides to my advantage but hadn’t yet firmed up any conclusions as to how to do this. We knew that there were some empty steel drums, and together we found the answer, in little progressive steps. Seal the drums, wait for a low tide, chain a drum to a rail section, wait for high tide, and guide the rail up onto the beach. I was ecstatic! In 1993, my sister Nancy Ricketts and I visited Stanford University’s library and ran across a typewritten paper of Dad’s entitled “Parenthood Problems—Ed Jr.’s Problems (Observations on the Functions of Parents in Connection with Children Growing Up).” In it he writes: The problem of erecting some intertidal structure that would persist thru waves and tide. I could have told him the great, almost impossible, difficulty of this. As a matter of fact I did, it would be dishonest for a parent to remark otherwise, or not to pay attention to a thing so important to the child. But there are ways of doing these things; a person could make an observation to the effect that a thing is difficult, in such a way as either to discourage or implicitly to forbid a child. . . . Now I knew that that thing was so difficult that the amount of time he spent on it would be practically wasted, but when he asked about such things, or when we discussed them, I told him that smilingly and happily, so that it was just information on a desired subject that I was contributing. So then, he was able to feel right about going ahead, because, as he’d say “it was fun,” and in that way learned, deeply. And furthermore, I learned more about those things. I learned that it is possible to erect really a quite permanent structure.

Ed Ricketts Jr. September 2004

Early Days: Nicknames and Such

“Mugwumps” is what he called all three of us children from time to time. Dad was big on names, on words in general. And “Mugwumps” was always said so lovingly! Among other names he called me were “Peaches” and “Nancy Jane, Butterfly name”; he called both Rikki and me “Wormy” quite often—it was a precious name. For a while when we were very young, brother Ed and I were “Sheik and Sheba.” I introduced sister Rikki, whose given name was Cornelia Frances, as “Cornelia Frances ’n Connie” when she and I were out visiting and cadging cookies—I don’t know if Dad initiated that, but he might have. And probably the most unusual was the name I called Rikki till we were in our teens. At one time, apparently, Rikki was stung by a bee; she went sobbing to Dad, who said, in effect, “Next time you bite him back.” From then on, for years she was “Bit–a-bee” (pronounced as one word), later shortened to just Bee. When Ed and I were quite young, Dad used to sit one of us on each knee about bed-time, and we played “elevator” for a while, Dad moving his legs so that we fell time and time again—how we loved it. Then there were always stories to be told, usually stories of twin animals who got into all sorts of trouble, the monkeys actually wetting on people. I can remember twin monkeys and twin giraffes, but I know there were others. One set of twins was named Montgomery and Montmorency. 336

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When we got a little older, Ed and I looked forward to a short reading from The Odyssey—in Middle English, yet. Dad loved the sounds of the words and such phrases as “the rosy-fingered dawn.” Of course there were the inevitable questions—“Did Circe really turn the men into swine?” But he always gave us answers, good answers, that didn’t leave us hanging. And, oh, the wonderful stories about Dad and General Pershing during WWI, stories that we proudly passed on in school (for a while). The daring adventures in Europe with the great general we found out later were purest fiction, as our father was peeling potatoes in Dixie during his army stint and was never even sent to Europe. We had a lot of company on Sundays in particular. Somehow there was always someone in town from a distance, sometimes even a great distance—such as Gislen from Sweden—and they were brought to the house. Mother cooked very good dinners (but, as I remember, was rarely seen), and the men would sit in comfortable living room chairs, smoke cigars or pipes, and hold lengthy, quiet, and congenial conversations, to which brother Ed and I were always privy. We played quietly on the floor, perhaps in a corner, perhaps right near where they were talking. There was just the rumble of voices, sometimes laughter, sometimes questions, but as I remember, never interrupted by Ed or Nancy Jane. Dad always seemed happy and content, and so did everyone else. These events took place at 221 Fourth Street in Pacific Grove, well before Dad and Joseph Campbell’s trip to Alaska. This, probably my favorite house, must have been on two lots, because the yard went all the way over to Third Street. The Spanish–style white stucco house was built right next to the sidewalk on Fourth Street and had only high windows on that side, with what Mother called “Mediterranean blue” trim, seems to me, with some decorative spindles on them. On the corner of the front, next to the walk leading to the front door, there was a sort of small “tower” surrounded by windows and enclosing a high bench, which Ed particularly loved. My “spot” was a small alcove next to the front porch and door, where we put up our Christmas tree at the appropriate time. Opposite the front door and across the width of the living room were French doors opening to a patio, the U-shaped house surrounding it on three sides. I remember a very early radio on a table in the living room and a telephone that was only used by Dad. There was a small room off the kitchen (possibly built as a room for a maid, which of course we didn’t have), and this room was used as Dad’s at-home lab. There were chemicals in there, and we children were not allowed access. But once Bitabee got in there and tasted something, which threw our

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parents into a panic. Dad found an antidote to the substance, but when they gave it to her it made her “drunk,” and they were afraid she would run into the small wood-stove or anything else in her path. The back yard was a place of wonderful flowers (lots of cinerarias) and oak trees, perfect for climbing, which we did a lot of. For a while, I remember, a black Ford car was kept there, which was a definite object of interest. I also remember how interested we all were to occasionally hear an airplane, a rather rare happening, which brought us all outside. Our family had its first separation in 1932, when Dad went to Alaska and the other four of us went to Santa Barbara. When Dad returned, he went down to Santa Barbara to get us and we moved over to Carmel. From then on, there were separations every once in a while, and then Dad finally moved to the lab and the rest of us lived in our last house in Carmel. After that, Mother took Bee and me north to Washington State and brother Ed stayed in Monterey at the lab with Dad. After high school in Bremerton, Washington, I went down to visit Dad, and while I was there he and Toni and I drove down to Ensenada, Mexico, on a collecting trip for octopus, driving first to Sacramento to get my birth certificate so they would let me cross the border. We went in Dad’s Ford coupe. During most of the earlier years, we had had very big cars, mostly Packards, rigged up for transporting marine specimens, so this one seemed small indeed. We were packed to the gills with empty jars and chemicals packed in the trunk. As I recall, we stopped in Hollywood and had dinner with Burgess Meredith, driving to the restaurant in Paulette Goddard’s station wagon! I was thrilled. Then we drove straight south, crossed the border, drove to Ensenada, singing most of the time on the whole trip. We sang everything we knew, which was considerable. I was amazed that Dad even knew the music I had sung in high school choir and sang it along with me. We stayed at a motel in Ensenada and had some fabulous food and adventures. And came home loaded with baby octopus and a few other types of marine life. I met some pretty good-looking Mexican boys too, about which Dad and Toni were quite tolerant! The thing that capped off our whole trip was the adventure of crossing back over the border. It was during WWII, and our car was thoroughly searched when we stopped for inspection. We had just gotten the Sunday paper, and I remember they took it away from us—I never found out why. The inspectors went through Dad’s specimens in the trunk minutely, and showed great interest in them, but took nothing

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else away from us. I was greatly relieved, under the circumstances, to get away from there at all that day. When we got back to the lab in Monterey, one of the first things Dad did was to unpack his specimens. He took a couple of jars of, I think, shrimp, drained off the liquid, and drank, with great satisfaction, the tequila! Nancy Ricketts September 2004

Works Cited

Ahrends, A. E. Letter to Edward F. Ricketts. November 2, 1942. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. Allee, W. C. Animal Aggregations: A Study in General Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931. ———. Cooperation among Animals: With Human Implications. New York: Henry Schuman, 1938. Astro, Richard. John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts: The Shaping of a Novelist. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973. Barry, J. P., C. H. Baxter, R. D. Sagarin, and S. E. Gilman. “Climate-Related, Long-Term Faunal Changes in a California Rocky Intertidal Community.” Science 267 (1995): 672–74. Bennett, Melba Berry. The Stone Mason of Tor House: The Life and Works of Robinson Jeffers. Pasadena: Ward Ritchie Press, 1966. Benson, Jackson J. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. New York: Viking, 1984. Calvin, Jack. Grampus Log Book. Manuscript [1932]. Courtesy of Mary Purvis. Campbell, Joseph. Letters to Edward F. Ricketts. August 22, September 14, December 10, 1939. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. Davis, M. Kathryn. “Edward F. Ricketts: Man of Science and Conscience.” Steinbeck Studies 15, no. 2 (2004): 15–22. Devall, Bill, and George Sessions. Deep Ecology: Living as If Nature Mattered. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1985.

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Englert, Peter A. J. “Education of Environmental Scientists: Should We Listen to Steinbeck and Ricketts’s Comments?” Steinbeck and the Environment, ed. Susan F. Beegel, Susan Shillinglaw, and Wesley N. Tiffney, 176–93. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997. Fensch, Thomas. Conversations with John Steinbeck. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988. ———. Steinbeck and Covici: The Story of a Friendship. Middlebury: Paul S. Eriksson, 1979. Fisher, W. K. Letter to William Hawley Davis. December 2, 1931. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. George, Stephen, ed. John Steinbeck: A Centennial Tribute. Westport: Praeger, 2002. Hedgpeth, Joel W. The Outer Shores. 2 vols. Eureka: Mad River Press, 1978. ———. “Philosophy on Cannery Row.” Steinbeck: The Man and His Work, ed. Richard Astro and Tetsumaro Hayashi, 89–128. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1971. Heimann, Richard F. G., and John G. Carlisle Jr. The California Marine Fish Catch for 1968 and Historical Review, 1916–68. Fish Bulletin No. 149. Sacramento: California Department of Fish and Game, 1970. Hemp, Michael Kenneth. Cannery Row: The History of John Steinbeck’s Old Ocean View Avenue. Carmel: History Company, 2002. Larsen, Stephen, and Robin Larsen. A Fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph Campbell. New York: Doubleday Dell, 1991. Mangelsdorf, Tom. A History of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Santa Cruz: Western Tanager Press, 1986. Miller, Henry. Letter to Edward F. Ricketts. June 26, 1941. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. Otis, Elizabeth. Letter to Edward F. Ricketts. March 7, 1944. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. Owens, Louis. “Ways Out of the Waste Land: Steinbeck and Modernism, or Lighting Out for the Twenty-first Century Ahead of the Rest.” Steinbeck Studies 35, no. 2 (2001): 12–17. Pearse, John. Interview by telephone. August 20, 2004. Ricketts, Anna Maker. Interview with Lisa Maessler. 1980. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. “Recollections.” Typescript, 1984. Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University. Ricketts, Edward F. “The California Sardine: An Ecological Picture.” Typescript, 1946. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. Guggenheim Fellowship Application. Typescript, 1946. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. Invoice [Pacific Biological Laboratories to Smith College]. 1929. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. “[John Steinbeck’s] Fiction.” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections.

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———. Letters to Edward F. Ricketts Jr.” October 5, 23, 1945. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. Letter to Jack Calvin. February 26, 1940. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. Letter to John Steinbeck. October 31, 1941. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. Letter to Lieutenant Commander Lawrence. June 11, 1942. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. Letter to McIntosh and Otis. February 22, 1944. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. “Miscellaneous Thoughts in Process.” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Morphology of the Sea of Cortez.” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “New Series Notebook No. 1.” Manuscript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “New Series Note Book #4.” Manuscript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “New Tidepool Notebook.” Manuscript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Notes and Observations, Mostly Ecological, Resulting from Northern Pacific Collecting Trips Chiefly in Southeastern Alaska, with Special Reference to Wave Shock as a Factor in Littoral Ecology.” Typescript, n.d. Courtesy of Joel W. and Warren Hedgpeth. ———. “Pacific Coast Biology.” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Participation.” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “People Must Be Sick of War.” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Possibly Better Title?” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Post Fire Notebook VII.” Manuscript, n.d. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. “Prefatory Remarks. An Apologia.” Typescript, n.d. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. “Quietism vs. the Deep Thing.” Fragment, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. Renaissance Man of Cannery Row: The Life and Letters of Edward F. Ricketts. Ed. Katharine A. Rodger. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002. ———. “[Sardine].” Typescript, 1946. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Science Studies the Sardine.” Monterey Peninsula Herald, March 7, 1947, pp. 1, 3.

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———. “Second 1940 Mexico Trip Notebook.” Manuscript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Shareholders’ Meeting Notes.” Typescript, July 1928. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. “The Tide as an Environmental Factor Chiefly with Reference to Ecological Zonation on the Californian Coast.” Typescript, 1934. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “What’s Wrong with the World.” Typescript, n.d. Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. “Zoological Preface to the San Francisco Bay Area Handbook.” Typescript, n.d. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. Ricketts, Edward F., and Jack Calvin. Between Pacific Tides. Rev. ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1948. Ricketts, Edward F., Jr. Interview. October 15, 2003. ———. Interview by telephone. July 9, 2004. ———. Interview. July 15, 2004. Ricketts, Frances. Personal Notebook. Typescript, n.d. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. Ricketts, Nancy. Interview by telephone. October 24, 2003. Shillinglaw, Susan. Introduction to Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, vii–xxvii. New York: Penguin, 1994. Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures. New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1959. Stanford University Press. Contract Agreement [“A Natural History of Pacific Shore Invertebrates”]. June 11, 1936. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. Steinbeck, John. “About Ed Ricketts.” The Log from the Sea of Cortez, 225–74. New York: Penguin, 1995. ———. Letter to Edward F. Ricketts. [August 1946.] Edward F. Ricketts Papers. M0291. Stanford University Department of Special Collections. ———. Letter to Frank Knox. May 5, 1942. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. ———. The Log from the Sea of Cortez. New York: Penguin, 1995. ———. “A Primer on the ‘30s.” America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction, ed. Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson, 17–31. New York: Viking, 2002. ———. “Second Try of Opening Preface.” Steinbeck Studies 15, no. 2 (2004): 23–30. ———. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. Ed. Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten. New York: Viking, 1975. ———. Travels with Charley. New York: Penguin, 2002. ———. Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath. Ed. Robert DeMott. New York: Penguin, 1990. Steinbeck, John, and Edward F. Ricketts. Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research. New York: Viking, 1941. Strong, Fred. Interview with Edward F. Ricketts Jr., n.d. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr.

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Stucky, William. Letter to John Steinbeck. May 13, 1942. Courtesy of Edward F. Ricketts Jr. Tamm, Eric Enno. Beyond the Outer Shores: The Untold Story of Ed Ricketts, the Pioneering Ecologist Who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2004. Tanaihara, Tadao. Pacific Islands under Japanese Mandate. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1940. Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Walden, or, Life in the Woods; the Maine Woods; Cape Cod. Ed. Robert F. Sayre. New York: Library of America, 1985. Walker, Franklin. The Seacoast of Bohemia. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1973.

Index

“About Ed Ricketts,” xvi, 49–50 Allee, W. C., 4–5, 14, 32, 70 “Antiscript” to The Forgotten Village. See “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico” Between Pacific Tides, xv–xvi, 12, 17–20, 31, 32, 53, 57, 72 Breaking through, 17, 23, 28, 47; and struggle, 96–101 “Breaking Through, The Philosophy of,” 21–23, 89 Calvin, Jack, 11–12, 15–16, 138, 225, 316 Campbell, Joseph, 15–16, 21–22, 26, 138 Cannery Row, xv, 31; canning industry of, 8, 9–10, 20, 57, 71, 73–74. See also sardine Cannery Row, xv, 10, 57–58, 301 Covici, Pascal, 33, 47 Ecology, 18, 33, 39–40, 47, 60, 64, 70, 75, 76, 258–61, 293 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 94, 133 Fisher, W. K., 12, 18, 63, 71 Forgotten Village, The, 40, 42–44, 67, 202, 206. See also “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico”

Galigher, Albert E., 2, 5, 6–7 Grampus, 15–16, 17 Grapes of Wrath, The, 31–32, 34, 42 Guggenheim Fellowship, 63, 66, 71, 72, 76 Gulf of California. See Sea of Cortez Hemingway, Ernest, 91–92, 100 Holism, 8, 18, 44, 86, 104, 134 Hopkins Marine Station, 6, 13, 65 Jackson, Kay, 46, 57, 65, 66, 69, 71, 74 Jackson, Toni (Volcani), 46, 53, 57, 61, 64, 65, 66, 69, 71, 74, 222, 267–68, 287–88, 301 Jeffers, Robinson, 6, 22, 23, 24, 89, 93, 94–95, 98, 175–76 Kline, Herbert and Rosa, 36, 42, 140, 210 Lao Tze. See Taoism Log from the Sea of Cortez, The, xvi, 49, 50 Mandated Islands of Japan, 52, 53–56, 215 Miller, Henry, 26, 46–47 Monterey, 5–6, 11, 47; natural history of, 7, 82

347

348 Mulvihill, Father James Philip, 247, 284–85, 289, 290, 291 Non–teleological thinking, 17, 25, 28, 55, 119, 122, 126–28; versus teleological thinking, 121–29 “Non–teleological Thinking, Essay on,” 21, 25–26, 27–28, 38, 119 Nostalgia, 59, 69, 287–88 “Outer shores” region, 15–16, 17–18, 53, 56, 60–70, 72, 77; Ricketts’s notes about, 60–61, 63–64, 66, 222–23, 273 Pacific Biological Laboratories, 6, 7, 9, 29–30, 31, 46, 50, 57, 82–83; catalog for, 7–8, 10–11, 63, 76, 80–82 Palau. See Mandated Islands of Japan; War Plankton, 72–73, 75, 329 Poetry. See “Spiritual Morphology of Poetry, A” Princess Maquinna, 223, 230, 246, 248, 263, 278, 289, 318, 322 Queen Charlotte Islands. See “Outer shores” region Ricketts, Abbott, 1, 8, 29 Ricketts, Alice Campbell, 75, 76 Ricketts, Anna Maker (Nan), 5, 6, 8, 29, 31 Ricketts, Edward F., education of, 2, 4–5; friendship with John Steinbeck, 11, 13–14, 26–27, 31–32, 42–46, 49–50, 58, 59; Mandated Islands research, 52–53, 54–56; marriage to Alice Campbell, 75, 76; marriage to Nan Maker, 5, 31; proprietor of lab, 6–7, 9–11, 16, 31; relationship with Toni Jackson, 40, 69–70, 71, 74; sar-

Index dine research, 71–74, 76; scientific expeditions, 15–18, 33–40, 60–70; and Between Pacific Tides, 12–13, 17–18, 20, 72 Ricketts, Edward F., Jr., 5, 31, 36, 49, 57, 60, 65, 66, 192–93, 222, 266, 301, 318 Sardine, 71–74, 75, 76, 324–25. See also Cannery Row San Francisco “handbook,” 32–34 Sea of Cortez, 16, 21, 33–36; Ricketts’s notes about, 35, 36–37, 39–40, 42, 60, 63, 134, 135, 136, 155, 163, 222 Sea of Cortez, 25, 27–28, 37–38, 42, 45, 46, 47–48, 49, 50, 53, 57, 63, 283 “Spiritual Morphology of Poetry, A,” 21, 23–25, 59, 105 Steinbeck, Carol, 11, 15, 16, 34, 35, 136, 140, 179–81 Steinbeck, Gwyn, 53, 76 Steinbeck, John, 11, 13, 14, 25, 26–28, 33, 31–34, 40, 42–44, 46, 59–50, 52–53, 57, 71; in Sea of Cortez, 136, 140, 155, 174–75, 179–81 Taoism, 17, 21, 26, 89, 98, 102, 129 “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico,” 43–44, 202 Tidal exposure, 17–18, 61, 62 Unified field hypothesis, 20–21, 25, 39, 69, 186–87, 190 Vancouver Island. See “Outer shores” region War, 50–52, 53, 55 Wave shock, 17, 61, 85 Western Flyer, 36, 40, 134, 136, 181, 184, 208