Black Canyon Quarterly, Winter 2002
www.blackcanyoncommunications.com

For the Birds by Stephanie Cox
Cool North Wind, by Stephen Stuebner. Introduction by Jim Fowler. Caxton Press, 2002. Caldwell, ID. Cloth. 450 pp. 8 pp. color photos.
   Publisher Scott Gipson launched his company's lead title in September at Boise's BookFest, where author Stephen Stuebner appeared with his protagonists: Morley Nelson and a golden eagle. Scott expected to sell plenty of books that day, and by morning's end he had sold every one of the 120 copies he'd brought. No wonder. Morley Nelson has done nothing less than change the nation's attitude toward raptors. Stuebner writes: "From the time when Morley was a lithe 12-year-old boy to his twilight years, his passion for birds of prey has taken him on a grand tour that transformed a man, a family, a nation and the world. Clearly Morley has made a major impact on the welfare of birds of prey, an impact that will resonate for decades to come."
    Morley's achievements on behalf of the birds are impressive, and the character that enabled him often seems larger than life. Bill Burnham, president of The Peregrine Fund, says, "Trying to describe Morley is kind of like trying to describe the mountains.... You can count and list his achievements, but you can't really list what Morley is or what he isn't, because he's like the mountain." How does a writer translate that onto mere paper?
    Stuebner does an admirable job, pinning Morley's passion to the moment on his grandfather's North Dakota farm when the 12-year-old boy first watches a peregrine falcon snatch a teal in mid-air. Within days, Morley captures and begins successfully training a juvenile hawk and thus establishes the path his own life will follow. Stuebner's strength lies in his recreation of scenes from Morley's life, a device used throughout the book. It brings the reader into the action and allows the book to read more like a narrative than a presentation of biographical facts. The early chapters illustrate Morley's childhood in North Dakota, his college days during the Depression at North Dakota State, his first job at the Soil Erosion Service, his first marriage, and his World War II service as an officer in the Tenth Mountain Division-including his role in the Italian Campaign where he was gravely wounded. That's a lot of diverse information, but Stuebner keeps it tied to the overall theme by including stories of Morley's search for raptors in every place he is located. Chapters Two through Six cover chronologically the years 1917-1959. Subsequent chapters are arranged thematically and often cover some or all of the years dealt with earlier. This can be a bit disorienting for readers settled into the flow of linear chronology. Fortunately, each chapter title provides a subheading of the years it addresses.
    The chapters essential for understanding Morley's influence on behalf of raptors occur in the middle of the book. They describe his work for the Soil Conservation Service, where it was his job to monitor snowpack in the Colombia River basin and develop streamflow forecasts for the following irrigation year. His work in the field brought him first-hand views of the results of the "frontier mentality" that "the only good eagle is a dead eagle." Morley vowed to change that attitude, and his success with the farmers and ranchers rested largely on his credibility with the SCS. His streamflow forecasts were so accurate that farmers and ranchers trusted him. If he was right about the water, he must be right about the raptors. During his meetings with these men, Morley also learned the value of bringing the birds right into the room. If people could see the birds-their power and intelligence-they would come to respect them. The birds' star quality and the publicity it engenders leads to Morley's long association with Disney Studios, Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom," and his sons' own film production company. This sets up the remaining chapters, each of which deals with one of Morley's many accomplishments. He convinced Cecil Andrus, then Jimmy Carter's interior secretary, to designate the Snake River Birds of Prey Natural Area. He designed perches for electric companies that protect the birds from high-voltage power lines. He worked for The Peregrine Fund, helping raise publicity through Disney films about the role of DDT in the decline of the falcon population. And his earlier experiments using imprinted falcons as surrogate parents helped with the captive breeding program that successfully brought the bird's numbers back up. Reflecting on these, Morley says: "I think one of the most important things that I ever did was to protect the Snake River Canyon, but the motion pictures I did for Walt Disney were what made everything else possible."
    Morley's story isn't over. In his 80s, he's still coming up with new film ideas to educate the public. He remains committed to the birds he loves and the issues connected with them. He has strong opinions on the fundamental issues of soil and water. He is what one of his many admirers calls a "centurian"-someone who comes along once in a hundred years-and Stuebner's book is an important tribute to this man who always looks skyward.

Hawk Chalk
The Newsletter of the North American Falconers Association
December 2002

Cool North Wind: Morley Nelson's Life with Birds of Prey
Matt Mullenix, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

   From the dry hills above Boise, Idaho, much of the history of American falconry sweeps into view. It's a characteristic of the region, home to a remarkable collection of raptor landmarks and luminaries: the World Center for Birds of Prey, the Archives of American Falconry, The Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, and the Boise State University graduate program in raptor biology. A thriving community of celebrated falconers resides in and around Boise, including the one whose life's work ties this community together.
   Morlan Nelson, moreso perhaps than anyone in two centuries, is responsible for the field of American raptor conservation. The very notion of predatory birds as creatures worth watching and protecting can in large part be attributed to the man. A falconer, a filmmaker, a soldier, and effective if reluctant politician, Nelson's influence spans generations and all social boundaries. His life and substantial history of achievement are the subject of the recently released Cool North Wind by Stephen and Stuebner and Caxton Press (2002; $24.95 in hardcover).
   Organized in loose chronology and broadly by topic, Stuebner's book puts flesh on a man too easily regarded as legendary, even in life. In Stuebner's telling, each phase in Nelson's eclectic career carries the theme of a life devoted to the protection of birds of prey. Nelson's fascination with raptors began early with the sight of a peregrine striking a teal and progressed through adolescent attempts to capture and train other local raptors. A chance meeting with famous eagle man Captain C.W.R. Knight set Nelson firmly on his way in falconry and in particular toward a life surrounded by eagles. Such chance meetings would characterize Nelson's career: from near fisticuffs with George S. Patton to rich collaborations with Walt and Roy Disney, John Denver, Paul Newman and many others. Few chapters in Nelson's life lack notable cameo appearances.
   The appeal and power of Nelson's personality ensures him an audience wherever he goes. His enthusiasm is infectious; his message simple and clear, delivered with the same words to environmentalists, ranchers or corporate boards. It is an approach to raptor and wildlife conservation that has enjoyed obvious and undeniable success. Nelson's life serves as a model of how effective communication and compromise can secure wide mutual benefit. Stuebner's telling of it reveals a high adventure whose final chapter remains unwritten.

American Falconry
December 2002
Taking at Pitch: A book review
by Steve Heying and Eric Tabb

Eric Tabb Boise, Idaho
   I knew I would meet him sooner or later. After reading about Morley Nelson's falconry exploits for many years and seeing his work with film, I already felt like I knew him. Being a newcomer to Boise in 1979, I was anxious to meet this pioneer but not so forward to just call him out of the blue or show up at his door. After finding a sales position at a long time Boise area feed store, I had a feeling that I would run into local falconers before long. Sure enough, after only a few weeks there, I carried a sack of wheat out to a muddy truck with a big German shepherd in the front seat. A rugged looking man with a weathered face and fifties crew cut that I recognized instantly, opened the back of the truck for me. I placed the sack alongside what was obviously a falcons perch and asked Mr. Nelson what he was feeding the wheat to. He proceeded to tell me about his homing pigeons and how he had fed them only wheat all these years because they did great on it and how he used to be a wheat farmer in North Dakota who still watched the commodity prices closely. He had no interest in the fancy five grain pigeon mix I tried to sell him. After talking pigeons and farming for a while I introduced myself and thanks him for buying his grain at my store. No mention was made of falconry by him or me. The next time I saw him was at his house after I called to ask if he would like to examine a fresh passage prairie falcon I had just captured. He sounded like a boy about to see his first falcon. The big female was still hissing at the touch but was settling down nicely in one of my Anglo-Indian hoods. After expressing approval of both the falcon and the hood, I felt like we were old friends. He had just been given a big black gyr/peregrine falcon, one of the first bred by the Peregrine Fund. I could tell he was uneasy about her genetic makeup and would have rather had a passage prairie. In the twenty plus years since, I've had the good fortune to have seen Morley Nelson in action with birds, people and a community. This new book about his life has told me even more about the things he has done and experienced. I think anyone trying to achieve a falconry identity of their own or do something positive for wild creatures and places of any kind would benefit greatly by reading Cool North Wind.
   Author Stephen Stuebner has done a marvelous job with this "Auto/visual" biography. He really was the perfect person to write this book having reported on and written about outdoor topics in Idaho for as many years as I have been living here and then some. His friendly research was an intensive two-year experience of reviewing taped conversations and interviews, and searching through long stored away mementos of Morley's entire life. From boyhood beginnings on a farm in North Dakota (which he visited with Morley), to World War II experiences with the famed 10th Mountain Division, to his long career as falconer, filmmaker, hydrologist, family man and friend to many. He has written a fairly lengthy book because his subject has been a busy guy in he eighty-six years. Caxton Press has produced a very handsome book to showcase the material within.
   Jim Fowler, one of Morley's friends of celebrity, wrote a terrific introduction about his experiences filming Wild Kingdom episodes involving raptors with Morley. Each of the sixteen richly-detailed chapters to follow highlight different aspects of Morley's life. I particularly enjoyed the accounts of practicing falconry in Boise in the fifties and sixties when the area was rich in open land, raptors and game. It is still rich in comparison to many parts of the US. Much has changed, however, and not for the better as far as the natural ecosystems are concerned. The Snake River Birds of Prey Natural Area which Morley discovered for what it is, and was instrumental in its designation, has experienced a serious decline in quality and productivity since those early days thirty and more years ago. In the vast expanse of time, long after our kind has removed our ruinous behavior from the planet, the canyon and steppe may once again team with life as it once did. Still, it is an amazing and dramatic place and a fitting monument to a determined man's efforts. Chapter 12 explains how the refuge came to be. Other chapters involving the quest for gyrfalcons in Alaska and travels in the Middle East to see Arabian falconry were also wonderful to read as well as Morley's role in the restoration of peregrine falcon populations worldwide.
   Having read many reports from and about Morley in the Journals of the American Falconer's Club, starting with the earliest issues in the early 1940s, I was impressed with his enthusiasm for and success with game hawking in Utah at a period in early American falconry when such hunting was a rare occurrence. Morley was also a master at flying his falcons to the light lure and was a showman at heart. With his full voiced, leather clad energy, Morley lure flying a prairie falcon was an amazing spectacle to people not familiar with falconry and pretty darned impressive to those who were. There was nothing half hearted about it for man or bird. Demonstration falconry in this country has "evolved" from Morley's dance to spectators staring upward with binoculars for hours for the chance to see vertical stoops from thousands of feet in the air. Better falconry? Perhaps, by some's definition, yet somehow less connected to the human part of the equation. It is hard for the unknowing to appreciate the role of the falconer with a falcon that flies directly into the heavens and takes hard flying birds such as the prairie grouse and homers in a monumental stoop or two, then eats her fill on the ground from the vanquished quarry or the dead lure. This level of are is Morley's legacy to all of us even though he did it his own unique way. There is something about being able to see into a falcon's eyes as she bores in on her intended prey, be it live or artificial, that strikes admiration and a little bit of the quarry's fear into the human heart.
   Then there was the time Morley's white grykin "Thor" pressed a raven into the clouds and back again for nearly an hour at the Idaho Falconer's Association meet and then sailed in to take a game farm pheasant in a crowd of admirers shivering in the snow. Or when one of his eagle would swoop low over your head after soaring to a speck above Table Rock. Going "hawking" with Morley was always an adventurous event. As he would say, an inspiration to mankind.
   There are so many aspects and tales to this book that it would be hard for me to try to give you a feeling for them all. Suffice it to say that you will be startled by some of it due to the honesty of the subjects. Morley's contributions to some fields of research and recreation may come as a surprise as well. We have learned so much from this "bullet holed, old soldier." Thanks to this book his memory will continue to soar.

* * *

Steve Heying Ashland, MO
   The only thrill in life bigger than meeting, honoring, hawking with, and being a friend of Morley Nelson's is to introduce someone else to the power, patience, and patent knowledge that is Morley Nelson. In the summer of 1999, on August 20th, during the celebration connected with the delisting of the peregrine falcon from the Endangered Species Act, I was able to introduce to him, two former Missourians, husband and wife, now new neighbors up the hill in Morley's neighborhood in Boise, Idaho. Since visiting a son in Boise, they have become absolutely enamored with the "Idaho West" and now, since meeting him. The Morley Nelson West. Merle and Bev Wright have now joined millions of people who are better off knowing Morley Nelson, as will all who read Cool North Wind: Morley Nelson's life with birds of prey by Stephen Stuebner.
   After a brief "trip around the block" in the get acquainted chapter in which Morley Nelson is labeled, catalogued, and compared to others of his ilk and kind in regards to his drives, motivations, skills and abilities, his entire life is laid out chronologically so as to effect a complete understanding of what makes this great American operate. Starting with his birth and youth on his grandfather's farm in North Dakota, where he learned life's hard lessons as well as falconry with a redtail hawk, kestrel and Cooper's hawk, and met C. W. R. Knight and "Mr. Ramshaw," a golden eagle, at a high school lecture, the book pathes the reader through major experiences of Morley Nelson's life, up through the peregrine falcon delisting celebration on August 20th and 21st 1999. The book ends, first, with a collection of personal anecdotes that pay a lasting tribute to Morley's life through first person recounts of encounters and lasting impressions from people very closely associated with Morley. The final chapter consists of a montage of what Morley is most recently up to including but not limited to guiding trips on the Snake River, making and coming up with new ideas for movies, and entertaining the parade of people and personalities that are still needing the skills of Morley Nelson. It is clearly a case of never a dull moment! As Morley would say, "Hell, the whole damn book is a chronicle of never a dull moment!"
   So one is to ask where is the falconry in this sort of book? Well I'll put it to you, it's in the character expose' of this guy and Mr. Stuebner's description of the way Morley handled the falconry situations that came up in his life. Hidden within this book are the descriptions of the right way to do things in falconry that are best described by detailing the methodology of someone doing them. There is none better to document than Morley. Even when a mistake was made in his life or with the birds, Morley and Mr. Stuebner were not afraid to chronicle the whole event. This openness, frankness, and attention to detail makes this book very worthwhile as a growth or learning tool in both the humanity aspect and the falconry world. One has to read carefully to discover these tidbits and bechins of falconry knowledge in this book, but they are there and highly worthwhile.
   There truly are at least two levels a book like this could be read on. The obvious is the level of the first person tale of a great American life, which we could all hope to emulate, if not to at least understand. This man is a true hero, a champion in his own rights, and a true pioneer on many fronts. The other level is the value as a document giving witness to the truly amazing things Morley Nelson is responsible for. These comprise a tremendous list of firsts, onlys, and majorly important accomplishments that are only now clearly given credit to Morley and clearly delineated in this book. In this regard, to those of us that know Morley, it seems to be about time, and may be the only time and way that Morley Nelson will stand up and take a bow for all he has done for falconry and birds of prey. Here's to you Morley, and to Stephen Stuebner for getting the job done. It is truly an amazing book, and a fun, entertaining, and enlightening read!