Richard 'Nels' Nelson, naturalist, anthropologist and author, died on November 4. He was 77.
In an obituary, the Anchorage Daily News wrote, "Half wise elder and half wondrous child, Nels had little attraction to money and an infinite fascination with--and deep regard for--the natural world. He slept hundreds (if not thousands) of nights on the ground and greeted each new day as a gift. He was funny, compassionate, scholarly, culturally sensitive, deeply loved and widely admired."
The News also noted that "Annie Dillard once said she didn't care much for nature writing, but that she'd 'crawl through broken glass' to read Nelson."
Nelson wrote The Island Within (1991) and Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America (1998), both published by Vintage, and was the Alaska State Writer Laureate from 1999-2001. He also spent years living with Interior Alaska Native communities and wrote a series of ethnographic works on the Iñupiat, Gwich'in and Koyukon Athabascan people, including Make Prayers to the Raven (1986), Shadow of the Hunter (1980) and Hunters of the Northern Forest (1969), published by the University of Chicago Press.
His show Encounters, which regularly aired on public radio nationwide, "would take listeners across Alaska on an intimate journey to places many would otherwise never experience," KCAW remembered. Nelson recorded, among other things and creatures, tides, polar bears growling, peregrine falcons crying, killer whales splashing.
Lisa Busch, executive director of the Sitka Sound Science Center, commented: "Sometimes I step outside my door, and just like everybody else in Sitka, you might hear a kingfisher or a squirrel or a thrush and maybe you don't think anything of it. But, for me, I often stop and think, 'What would Nels say about this?' How excited would he be and enthusiastic would he be about this sound and what it means to us? And what it means to our heart and spirit?"
Susan Bergholz of Susan Bergholz Literary Services recalled that Nelson was "a mountain climber who, despite that, once got lost in Central Park on his way to the old Random House building. This amused and delighted him."