Waiting for the snow to melt…
BORN 19 July 1947 Denver, Colorado CURRENT POSITION Freelance Author and Biologist BOOKS 25 including Wintergreen, The Thunder Tree, Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide, Chasing Monarchs, Walking the High Ridge, Sky Time in Gray’s River, and Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year FIELD GUIDES The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies and Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest HIGHLY CITED PAPER “Butterfly Conservation Management” Annual Review of Entomology 329 citations AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS John Burroughs Medal Fulbright Scholarship Guggenheim Fellowship National Outdoor Book Award (2) Washington Writer’s Award (3) Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award HONORS Honorary Fellow, Royal Entomological Society Three lepidopterists: Robert Michael Pyle, Charles Lee Remington, and Lincoln Brower (1992). Paul Ehrlich, regarding these three, exclaimed “My god! It’s a clade!” (Photo by Paul and Sandy Russell) Robert Michael Pyle is a lepidopterist, naturalist, author, teacher, poet, and founder of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (www.xerces.org). He has lived in Colorado, California, the Pacific Northwest, New England, Great Britain, and Papua New Guinea. At the University of Washington, he earned a B.S. (Nature Perception and Protection, 1969) and M.S. (Nature Interpretation, 1973), and a Ph.D. from Yale University (Ecology and Environmental Studies, 1976). Pyle has stated, “My time at Yale afforded me almost daily encounters with an intelligence and resolve so formidable that I was alternately intimidated, entertained, and thrilled, but ultimately reinforced in my own ambitions beyond what I’d ever imagined.” He worked as Ranger-Naturalist in Sequoia National Park, butterfly conservation consultant in Papua New Guinea, Northwest Land Steward for The Nature Conservancy, and co-manager of the Species Conservation Monitoring Center in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He has taught in many academic and other positions. Pyle is a prolific writer and has published more than 1,500 articles, essays, short stories, columns, reviews, peer-reviewed papers, poetry collections, a flight of butterfly books, and a novel—Magdalena Mountain. He co-authored The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Invertebrate Red Data Book, which is the global authority on the status of invertebrates and measures needed to safeguard them. He collaborated with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselić and guitarist Ray Prestegard to produce an album of poems and acoustic guitar songs, Butterfly Launches from Spar Pole (butterflylaunch.com). His book Where Bigfoot Walks was adapted for a feature film, The Dark Divide (darkdividefilm.com). Robert Michael Pyle has authored or co-authored 25 books on butterflies, natural history, local culture of the Pacific Northwest, and the enigmatic creature Bigfoot. (Photo by Marlin Rice) A lifelong lepidopterist, Pyle is co-coordinator of the Northwest Butterfly Survey. For his work on behalf of butterfly studies and conservation, he received the John Adams Comstock Award from the Lepidopterists’ Society, and a Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation Biology. This interview occurred on the front porch of Pyle’s home in rural Gray’s River, Washington, on 22 August 2020. The interview is edited for length and clarity. Pyle was 73 years old. In The Thunder Tree, you describe numerous adventures with your older brother, Tom, along the High Line Canal in Aurora, Colorado. The two of you were essentially “free range” kids, fully immersed in nature and following your hearts’ desire. From your descriptions of those adventures, you’re fortunate to be alive. There was a great hailstorm the summer of 1954. We were used to hail in Denver, but we had never seen this kind of hail before. It came on kinda quickly and got to be the size of marbles, and that started to really hurt. I was a little kid, seven years old, and I got scared. Then it got to the size of shooters*—that’s when we started running toward a big ol’ hollow cottonwood tree. We were some distance from it, and we had to cross a canal. I was crying and we were getting welts already. We made it, and Tom shoved me into the bole of this tree and covered my back like the operculum of a snail. And I believe that saved our lives. Now the hail was coming down the size of baseballs and softballs, and Tom took a hailstone to the head and got knocked out. I wondered if he was dead and I was scared to death, bawling my eyes out. Pretty soon the hail backed off and quit. Then he did wake up. Later, a truck appeared—it was the local farmer, who used to yell at us and throw us out of his barn, but this time he took us to the farmhouse. His wife gave us hot cocoa, put a blanket around us, and called our mom. She was frantic. Our cat was killed in the hail; every roof in town had to be replaced. But Tom and I were saved by that hollow tree. This is a heck of a story, so later I researched it to get the details right for my book, The Thunder Tree. The hail really was the size of grapefruits, as photographs in the Denver Post show. I spoke to George Swan, the former ditch rider on the canal for the Denver Water Company, who used to throw us out of the ditch. You weren’t supposed to swim in the ditch; everybody did, of course. He was 93 years old when I interviewed him. He said, “Bob, you know about the cows, right? In that field next to you boys, six cattle were killed. Their backs were broken or their heads were smashed by the hail.” He had to bury the carcasses. That made a better story all the way around. So that canal meant everything to us, and eventually made me a biologist; but on that particular day, it almost meant our lives. I had begun as a shell collector from the age of seven. My first great passion was conchology. Let me tell you, Colorado is a dumb place to be a young conchologist. Not much satisfaction—little stream snails. So it was a matter of diminishing returns, or unrequited love. I spent all my allowance on shells at the Denver Museum of Natural History, and I belonged to a shell-of-the-month club. But I began to notice there were more butterflies around than mollusks. When I started seeing black swallowtails, I thought, “Wow! Butterflies are cool!” So I began collecting on the High Line Canal out to the open plains. It was subtle ground, but it had water, and therefore plants and insects. That was the habitat that first inculcated me to butterflies. But the moment that really did it for me was a miraculous one—with a small “m.” It was my second summer of collecting. We did get to the mountains now and then. My father had remarried, and my stepmother’s family owned a little cabin in Crested Butte. At that time, it wasn’t a fancy ski town; it was a dusty little coal town. I’d go off with my butterfly net and those mountain meadows were rich with butterflies and so fragrant with clover. One day I wandered up the East River and came to a ridge. When I looked down, what to my wondering eyes should appear but about a hundred people with butterfly nets. Or at least that’s what my memory told me. It may have been twenty or thirty, but I had never run into a single person in the field with an insect net—not one. Very near my twelfth birthday. I had amateur collectors in Denver who took me out and they got me involved in the Lepidopterists’ Society. But now I was actually confronted with a whole cadre of entomologists, and I was a terribly shy kid, so it was very hard for me to go down amongst them and say, “What’s going on?” And it was Charles froggin’ Remington and Paul Ehrlich. No, that’s a way of emphasizing Charles Lee Remington. They were with their graduate students at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, which was over the hill on the site of the old ghost town of Gothic. Remington said, “Hello, I’m Professor Remington, and we’re doing a mark-release-recapture study on Speyeria mormonia” (the Mormon fritillary). I knew Remington’s name because I belonged to the Lepidopterists’ Society. He was the founder, and probably flattered, no doubt, that I knew him. And it was just the most extraordinary “hail fellow, well met” moment, because here were scholars doing what I was infatuated with, and it was the first time I ever saw a real, professional entomologist. The great thing was that they encouraged my curiosity and didn’t make me feel like a dumbs*** little kid. And I remember Remington saying [in a slow, deep bass voice], “And what are your particular interests?” [I said,] “Well, I’m really interested in the genus Cer-SY-oh-nis.” [He said,] “Ah, Cer-see-OH-nis.” It was that moment of encouragement by a real entomologist that made me feel special. So for the next three summers, they encouraged my coming up to Gothic. Either Paul Ehrlich or Charles Remington would sometimes drive down to Crested Butte and pick me up or drive me home at the end of the day if my dad took me up. On my twelfth birthday (this is soon after I first met Remington), I said, “I’d really like to find the Magdalena alpine butterfly.” And Charles said, “Go past my cabin, up Copper Creek, and in five miles you’ll come to Copper Lake. Look on the rockslides above it.” I got to Copper Lake and I caught my first all-black Magdalena alpine, with which I’ve been infatuated all my life, and which is an of my Magdalena Mountain. So after Remington that day and my first all-black Magdalena alpine there was no going A years the two great Remington so to you it got from the first to the Remington and Ehrlich encouraged me summer I up to Crested Butte. It made all the The the of the Lepidopterists’ Society took place at Gothic. That was extraordinary of for me. I got to a of other I knew from the But I met my own and that made a big So with that I I the of and when many young out. The of a butterfly net is but because I was an I had just that I get with a I to of I to study but as I wasn’t that great with I had with I had an I to be natural and I did get an from the great It was his of after But I didn’t like the They were very and it was because there were a of field but You a from and I was dead on doing I almost out because I wasn’t the and I a who to a studies with It and I up getting a with the name of Nature Perception and I on hard and had to a of later But I got what I and that got me into a in the of There I met of my other great of the field of nature My was an field to Washington butterflies, which my first And from that I got my Now I’m coming back to Remington. I had no what was going to come next because I had this in I it, so what I was doing this as a Fulbright with a of and in the It was probably the of conservation with an in They were on to and nature I to a by from the Museum of Natural on the which was about to in I was going back on the and because I didn’t know what was going to come from all of And I thought, my our Xerces back in It occurred to me that We have the Xerces for for butterfly and that’s I it to have been that on the The next day I to John and he backed me up. I started out of this Xerces Society of to Remington. He and said, come to for the Annual of the Lepidopterists’ Society and your Xerces Society That was the of Charles said, “Bob, you come to Yale and a I said, Remington, I’m really flattered, and I’m you’re about but I and I near never going to me into And I wasn’t I He said, Yale but you have a a Fulbright a of you this and I have a in the of and Environmental So I that and was with no They never me if I had my doing had to I’d never had it, and I never did, because they never I had in and and they didn’t me an time of But I to come up with a It was an of the butterfly of Washington in of and to and for of And what I did was that to the of for conservation the which took more of the that the and studies put them and came up with an of the in the conservation in Washington, as told by the butterflies, that had a out that this was A whole field doing that of and it as a front in I had of the first studies ever to Remington. He didn’t make it but he made it all that came So it was for a to a Ph.D. at but it worked out very well in the We my it was We had to that did in I was I near killed doing that Ph.D. in three Remington had never a Ph.D. in three and the wasn’t the were that the worked and my was of a New was a in those I was and we were broken into an to for I spent that by at a place called the of and with as of the That to my with the of in Papua New Guinea. I got to some and a of conservation, and to a of a of extraordinary of and of course. One of my great of my was seeing a are the up to a in the in the New was an for a young is the thing that ever I was interested in the Bigfoot from One a about But I had an extraordinary three at the University of Washington from the great of Northwest and One thing he that most me was that all the American up and down the have a Bigfoot in their stories, and this is what he didn’t know an who actually lived by the or in the who didn’t the of the as of their of but as a of their local like and and butterflies. I that was Robert Michael you out (Photo by Marlin Rice) a Bigfoot book by John the head of at the by saying a of and that he would it to or there is an in those which he He said, come to the over the A years books, I got this no ever a really book about Bigfoot. A book by a a and a a out to it So I put a and for a Guggenheim Fellowship and got It was But I they were by the that I wasn’t to it, it, find it, or like but there was actually an of I was into the and of the the and the the And I was interested in Bigfoot as a or of My study on an called the Dark Divide, the in I’ve been a and all my life, and I wondered the Bigfoot coming out of the to the nature of the I spent a to and with everybody from to Bigfoot to I the of which I didn’t have at first and But I to go into the for but for my of what Bigfoot to after a of study of the from every every So I this called the Dark Divide, rich in with a It is a of to the with Adams on the and on the I the of my Guggenheim which was had to with that Dark they for I to a the Dark Divide with a but I had to that because an of So I to which with day and a of a little on My was to find out what I really about this in of in the was the it was is there or to these stories, that are the or have we them to a So I spent a in the Dark a of a about the the a big up I came out had and including by in the I’d had all those natural and I’d been a for many I have a in the of and The in the Dark Divide was my from the I came back on little more time and to a to the Dark One One all I and I started up by which is very to the of from The and were from or that I and they were to I at in At of my book in some just to say, you to know this we and we and we came to your to if you it with as They made me very and Then they the and that was what I had out So I’m to the and about to get out with my when the of my And at that you the that I didn’t my but if an old on a I And I got a down the and said, going to you up I back and it was no to be so I and I came back in three It’s a day, and the and my was a on the I had off at which is the Bigfoot which But on the the had come were the and with a I know I you was a great I said, more these are The two I was to were right the and to the of the by Professor at Washington the academic who was in that said, is coming at this in the you know what this It a it a but that’s the way it It me to come out of the with an open I I’m a this day, people all me to at the Bigfoot I’ve you I the Bigfoot a out if I a I to I because is to and as would say, I on the And what I have an open on the I’ve seen and have that is to by and the the following twenty I have had two more in the On the back of Where Bigfoot the said, like the book very I know you were so the A of said, going to as a Bigfoot the of your six butterfly books, I’m about as But the other thing I that if I it people it me. I have who all my books, but they that one. their A is a My two are that if we to a of Bigfoot or Bigfoot we have to some of the on But if the we no there are the and we it of the of the the and I as a but I as a or it out to be a It’s that this is the that came and I’m I’m very because the of it has been in many we the we a great more than just a of what be but if we the So that’s of the of the The other is that I for an open to the A for a and a dumb because I a to if that That but when you at the Book, been an our to Not right I the Service and to some of by if they didn’t believe it, of Bigfoot in the would make the like a So there are that find this an thing to I would my as much as I like and But I would some me I would And two to three other people of big to put Paul Ehrlich, at the I’d a with two or three of the Bigfoot and their we and the all the Then I’d in the Then we it At this would the people with come they probably But by the would be to the and a for the habitat would be well you very much for that I have an in The called to It’s have to with a there are I I had been a of a lepidopterist, because a are so And or for that get from you have to doing a and you’re But if they know you’re collecting butterflies, you’ll get people you on the head with their I like to butterflies, but I by that and collecting in In to I make the that everybody to we our own as to to and the is on in the by with that of his had a toward Bigfoot. He said, first person to a Bigfoot should get a and the second should go to He it was but to have a to describe the as a and all the that would come after that would our in conservation but in every field from to to a but that may be a But to the for a I the This if it be in the genus as us, in the probably be our is it a very to as a the I and it run to my on butterflies if you that it to all but there are for So I very much to the of collecting in and for but in some But I we make an the of the first two American books on the some me the of in this But I’ve and There is no or more to than the insect For my I a My have to the the and the Center in But I involved in In a Paul and I the Mariposa butterfly and This was on of more than from I have three other in all and The conservation of out and So I I going out this to find butterflies in River a I’ve never been an For butterflies get up about I make and I it back to and It’s a and way to make I get some Then at I a of and the in I In and I in the and but the The most books of were two very and on the by I at almost I like of and I and The of and The of about which was a and I my I single and my is I like a and and I’m a but I to I but I tell the and when I for a of single I really So what get than A on my book about for Or about a album with Krist the bassist and of the He was He up on Gray’s of the of he came back for a more life, and now over from me in we have collaborated on a of conservation and other local And as we made this album of his and my poems with the local Ray One of our The of the every from of our from the local water, and But our has been to a called next to his And when we took and they a of as this little is at least as as Bigfoot. For it all these and in my
Items connected by shared entities, co-authorship, citations, or semantic similarity.