Audubon: Audubon in Action

The death of Marie Aull at 105 last August 30 gives those of us who knew her another chance to celebrate her unique gifts to environmental education. Her contribution was, first of all, deeply personal. And so at her passing I relived the many pleasant moments my wife, Ada, and I shared with her in the garden called Aullwood that she created on the edge of Dayton, Ohio.

The garden came before the nearby Aullwood Audubon Nature Center and Farm she made possible 45 years ago and which lends that extraordinary environmental-education facility a part of its aura. At its heart Aullwood is a forest garden, its colors muted by the thick trunks and lush foliage of southern Ohio, but spilling out into the sun around the old brown-clapboard house where Marie lived and died. Even as she approached her 90th birthday, she liked to have us arrive early in the morning during our springtime visits to Dayton. She would always be up long before we arrived so that she could greet us with a big breakfast of coffee or tea, bacon and eggs, sometimes pancakes.

Even as Marie cooked and served us she never seemed out of touch with the life in her garden, just outside the breakfast room's bank of windows. She would pause to point out a pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds at a feeder or an early Baltimore oriole whose arrival she had been anticipating for several days. After breakfast there was always a walk through the garden, where she stopped to point out some rarity, or to remember the name of a friend who had given her a particular plant.

"I see plants individually, and I associate each kind with someone I have known," I remember her telling us. "That hosta over there comes from a clump my mother gave me as a child. I pulled it apart, and I'm still growing it. That hosta, to me, is mother."
Gardening and wildlife were always part of Marie's life. At the University of Cincinnati, which she attended during World War I, she pursued studies in botany and education, which were to be her lifelong interests. In 1923 she married John Aull, a prominent Dayton businessman 31 years her senior, and moved to the old farm he had bought years before as a weekend retreat. Together they nourished its woodlands and gardens and opened the grounds to visitors seeking some kind of spiritual refreshment in those rural surroundings. Before his death in 1955, John Aull uttered the words that influenced everything Marie did for the rest of her life. "Remember that this land is ours only to hold in trust," he said, "to pass on to the next generation as beautiful as it was given to us."

A longtime member of National Audubon, Marie told John Baker, its president at the time, of her plan to leave some 70 acres to the society in her will. Baker immediately saw the land's possibilities as a nature center. "Why wait until after you are gone?" he asked her. "Why not give the land now so you can have the fun of seeing people enjoying all its benefits?"

The persuasive Baker also suggested that she visit other Audubon camps and nature centers, where she could gather ideas on how she would like Aullwood to carry out its educational mission. Marie enrolled in the Audubon Camp of Wisconsin, and while there she met an educator named Dorothy Treat whose knowledge and patience impressed her so deeply that she brought her to Dayton to help her pull the center together when it was dedicated in 1957. Five years later Aull bought an adjacent farm, where her plan was to educate children about barnyard animals and the farm experiences she had observed as a girl. Today, with additional land leased from the Dayton Airport, the Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm stands on 350 acres and is recognized as a regional treasure.

Marie Aull was a hands-on person. The garden is a product of the hours she spent digging, weeding, watering, and pruning its individual plants. From the beginning she worked with Dorothy Treat and other staff members, planning the trails and shaping the center's approach to environmental education. As she aged, she was still a presence in the garden, mingling with the many strangers from the area who came to enjoy her flowers. "As you can see," she once said to me, "all along I have been the one to benefit from what has taken place here."

Charity Krueger, Aullwood's current executive director, puts Aull's achievement in a broader context. "Each day young and old find peace walking under the towering sycamores and oak trees that Marie treasured," she says. "The waving tall grasses in Aullwood's prairie are a lasting tribute to Marie's desire to preserve natural areas. To many, Marie Aull was the godmother of the environmental movement in southwestern Ohio."

for information: Gifts in remembrance of Marie Aull may be sent to Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm, 1000 Aullwood Road, Dayton, OH 45414.

Birders often speak of the exalted feelings they have in a mountain forest or seabird colony linked in their minds with the birds they love. This mysterious alchemy, acting on Margery Nicolson of Pacific Palisades, California, draws her irresistibly to Nebraska's Platte River in spring, when sandhill cranes fill the air with their beating wings and haunting calls.

"It is just a sensational experience," Nicolson says. "My husband, Iain, and I traveled to faraway places for many years, backpacking in majestic regions like Switzerland and Nepal. But watching these magnificent cranes descend on the Platte inspires a special awe—they carry a sense of their very ancient lineage."

Photo by Michael Grecco

This from a native Californian who taught biochemistry at the University of Southern California Medical School and later worked for a large biotechnology company. Nicolson always hoped to give something back to the wild areas that are now a special part of her life, and in 1989 she and Iain started looking into a number of environmental groups. They determined that National Audubon offered them the best opportunity to establish a charitable trust.

Wayne Mones of Audubon's development department invited them to spend a weekend at the Lillian Annette Rowe Sanctuary and Audubon Center on the shallow, meandering Platte, in northern Nebraska. Each year in March and early April, half a million sandhill cranes—80 percent of the world's population—pause there on their northward migration to feed and rest along a hundred-mile stretch of the river. Returning again and again to listen to the cranes' clangorous calls, the Nicolsons lost their heart to the Platte. Although Iain died in 200l, Margery remains a faithful attendant to the cranes' annual arrival. "I've served as a guide at the sanctuary, leading visitors to the blinds in the wet meadows," says the unassuming Audubon board member-elect. "I've even washed dishes here."

A prime mover in the fund drive for the new Iain Nicolson Nature Center at Rowe, she contributed more than half of the $870,000 needed to erect the building that, after it opens in March, will educate thousands of visitors a year. (As a board member of Audubon Alaska, Nicolson also made a sizeable gift to its state program in 2001 in her husband's memory.) "It was a revelation to watch Margery and Iain open themselves to Nebraska," says Dave Sands, executive director of Audubon Nebraska, who accompanied them on explorations of its rivers, sandhills, and pristine prairie ecosystem. "They have both made a lasting contribution here."

—Frank Graham Jr.

for information on the Rowe Sanctuary, call 308-468-5282, e-mail ptebbel@audubon.org, or log on to www.rowesanctuary.org.