| (from notes Dr. Savage read at one of the evening sessions on an early Palaver) |
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As a student in Riverside Junior College in 1926, I took a class in General Zoology under Edmund C. Jaeger. This began many week-ends into the Mojave Desert with "Mr. Jaeger" -- we never called him Edmund in those days.
Dick Jones (another student) and I were recruited to be his companions of the trail. Dr. Jaeger was undertaking a comprehensive cataloging of all plants and trees of the Charleston Mountains of Nevada. These few notes cannot really describe that summer's events but is used as a framework to describe events illustrating Dr. Jaeger's impact on his students. We three left town in a heavily laden Model "T" Ford touring car, sporting an addition of the marvelous "Ruckstel Axel" (a compound low gear). Dick and I drove but we were never allowed to exceed 25 miles per hour. We always chose a wayward dirt road whenever possible to avoid a main road. We had no time or distance limits so could, and did, stop to observe a special plant or bird or reptile. Mr. Jaeger (as he was then) hated the advertising signs that were planted on "his" desert. On occasion he would remark to no one in particular, that a particular sign did not look too sturdy. Then he would look up and down the road and notice that there were no other cars in sight. He didn't need to tell us to, but we reacted by attacking the offending sign and post till it fell flat. Mr. Jaeger often cooked our evening meal which was usually a Mulligan Stew with pan-fried toast. His stove was a shallow trench sided with two flat rocks. A small amount of dead roots and pieces of wood were converted to hot coals in the bottom of this trench. He had two oval-shaped straight rods which bridged across these coals and served to hold the pot close to the coals. Small, dead sticks were added as needed to keep the pot or fry-pan hot. When we left the following morning, it was no chore at all to kick sand into this trench, pick up any of our debris and leave the spot with little sign that anyone had camped there. At the end of the dirt road leading up to about three-fourths of the elevation of the Charleston peak, was a small, dead-end little valley in the pines. We rented a very small cabin to house our supplies, but slept outside on the ground in our bedrolls most of the time. Very few other people were in this area. Our days consisted of daily walks through different areas of this mountain collecting what we thought to be different botanical specimens. When I say "walk" I mean just that. Mr. Jaeger always moved slowly, observing minute details closely. He brought to our attention many worms, insects and other life that Dick and I would have otherwise missed. He discovered a new species of small snail on one of these walks which still has jaegeri as one of its names. He showed me my first Water ousel, or dipper, inhabiting a small, year-round stream. This stream was fed by the snow banks existing on the top of this mountain in the middle of a vast desert. We spent quite a bit of time observing this land bird that did not have webbed feet, got all of its food from the bottom of streams, swam underwater with its wings and nested back under waterfalls. Truly a bird to make one marvel at the quirks of evolution of lif e. Nature is full of such evidence but the thoughts suggested by this bird were intriguing and new to us students. When we climbed to the top of Charleston peak (some 11,000 feet high) we came upon a large bed of fossil brachiopods, the remains of an undersea animal. We looked from these fossils out to endless miles of dry desert. The reality of vast geologic changes of this planet in the past was realized far more clearly here than by reading it in a book. Our afternoons and evenings were spent in sorting and throwing away most of our collections as duplicates and by pressing specimens of the new ones. I don't recall being bored during the full two months. I later achieved an A.B. at Stanford in Zoology and nearly chose to stay in that field. I still retain my strong interest in nature with its many ramifications. I surely owe much of that persistent enjoyable interest to Edmund C. Jaeger. |
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