The last 25

Edwin Carter began life as an Upstate New York farmer.  His parents and grandparents had been farmers.  But he decided to break the mold and in the 1820's he packed up and moved west. He had no family, and it is supposed the family did not now have enough land to parcel sections out to the next generation.

He worked for a while in a dry goods store in Council Bluffs,Iowa but he had been an avid hunter and sportsman in New York and he missed the woods.  Besides, he was living on the Mormon Trail, and every day he saw wagons filled with seekers of new land and a new start rolling through his town and in and out of his store.  It was time to move again.

Denver was his goal this time.  He'd heard that with the original citizens of the Rocky Mountain Front Range pushed farther west there was land for farming to be had.  Then the Colorado Gold Rush hit.  Edwin packed up yet again, still single and unencumbered with family, and set out for the streams of the Hoosier Pass and the new town of Breckenridge.

In just a couple of years Carter, unlike so many of his fellow gold seekers, was becoming one of the richer hydro-miners in the region.  he had brought investment money with him and he bought equipment and hired men to blast the gold out of the creek walls with water as if shot through a fire hose.  The practice was catching on all over the gold fields of the west but in breckenridge Edwin was first and best at it.  It was 1874, and a huge change was about to occur in carter's life.

One day he looked at the valley's and hills he and others had been scouring with their water cannons and realized he and they had ruined this land forever.  The ecology was smashed, and he was sure the miners had doomed most of the wild species he loved to hunt to extinction. Some birds and small animals he had known just a few years before were already missing from sight.

So, still single and without other obligations he took all of the money he had earned through gold digging and built, himself, a strong, high ceilinged cabin. He learned taxidermy from friends and became, in a short time, one of the most sought after taxidermists in the central mountains.  But Carter wasn't after a new way to get rich. No, he had a grander plan. He would shoot, and mount, one of every animal and bird of the Rocky Mountains so that despite his former days as a destroyer of the environment he would spend his latter days saving it in form, and by action help create the first environmental protection group in Colorado.

From 1875he created a museum of  mounted animals of such  quality he began shipping them to the Smithsonian, and the British Museum. By the end of the 19th Century he had also decided that his finely made but small cabinwas too small and too far from the people that needed to see his collection. So he signed over much of it to the new Natural History Museum in Denver. 




He became ill and died in 1900.  He is buried in Breckenridge and is considered, along with John Muir, savior of Yosemite, and Enos Mills, Father of Rocky Mountain National Park, one of America's premier environmentalists.

Edwin was a simple farmer, dry goods clerk, and finally a successful gold hunter.  Then he stepped back from what he had been doing to his own beloved country and realized that he and others had to stop, and he could save at least the look, feel, and form of the creatures around him.

The last 25 years of his life added up to more value for himself and his world than all the years that had gone on before.  Some say he could do this because he was, as I wrote earlier,'unencumbered by family'. But the truth is any of us, possessed of a dream we believe is God-sent and Godsupported, can with our own God-given gifts learn new crafts and skills and become or do whatever God has in store for us to do.

Edwin was a deist, not a Christian, but he believed in the Creator God who gave man all that is, and he believed that with God's help he could turn a region around which he had been instrumental in destroying.


Today while on a gondola ride up the side of PEAK 8, here in Breckenridge, Mona and I saw a female moose.  Moose are becoming more and more prevalent in the central Rockies again after nearly 100 years of being hunted and starved out. 100 years after Edwin Carter's death, they are back.

Who knows what impact you or I may have on others?  And age, or experience, or training does not matter.  We can get new training.  And age only gives us more experiences to draw our wisdom from.

When I came to Douglassville, PA, I met a leader in the United Methodist Church who was surprised that a 47 year old would be involved in a restart of a church.  It seemed a young man's game to him.  I realized today, and now have discovered, that that Pastor Carter, of Boston, Massachusetts, is a distant relative of Edwin Carter. I believe Edwin would have told him, as I did in 1997, "I may be older than some, but I might make a few less mistakes along the way.  Maybe I did.

Now Mona and I are embarked on this great 'retirement' journey of ours. Literally on wheels.  I wonder what purpose God will give us as we travel this great continent with Him? Probably not taxidermy.  But maybe another kind of environmental protection- for a species called human, in the name of Jesus Christ.

-Ken


PS: While walking the streets of Old breckenridge today we came upon a treasure and a memory.  PUMPKIN, or at least one of Pumpkin's cousins.

In 1974 we traded our red and white VW bus in for a bright orange VW Camper.  She became named Pumpkin almost immediately.  She was our family car, and wonderful travel home for more vacations and weekends than I can remember.  I had my very first RV accident in her while camping at French Creek State Park with son Jim when I was pulling out and backed the right rear bumper over the hibachi. Hmmm.  Shades of things to come!

Anyway, this Pumpkin was a bit worse for wear, but still being used as a home on the road by someone.  I'm thinking a single guy by the condition of the inside decor. But what a well of memories shot up for Mona and I as we walked around her and imagined, with slightly squinted eyes, Jimmy and Jenny running to get into their beds; Jim to the canvas cot cleverly hooked over the two front seats, Jenny into the strong canvas fold out cot in the pop up roof tent. Memories, man, memories!

Wouldn't it be amazing if today's Pumpkin was THE PUMPKIN?