This one matters.
Wildlife Columnist Gary Bogue has died. “Bogue, whose legacy includes founding the country’s first wildlife rehabilitation hospital and inspiring the creation of Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation, died Thursday in his Benicia home. He was 81.”
Gary was the original curator at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum and started up the operation lo, these many years ago, with one valiant rescue worker at his side. This happens to be our own beloved VP, Cheryl Reynolds, who regarded him as a dear friend and was heartbroken by his death. In fact it’s hard to imagine a world where Cheryl ever got interested in our beavers without that first life-shaping chapter.
Gary was the first respected voice of support for the Martinez Beavers, writing often about them in his column and nudgingpublic opinion in their favor. Beyond this he was the respected member who persuaded the East Bay Sierra Club to get involved in the first place. When I was called unexpectedly to appear before a council meeting one night in downtown berkeley and they voted to draft a position letter on the beavers one of the groups leaders told me privately they never would have gotten involved if it weren’t for Gary. Their unusual letter (At that time the Sierra Club rarely got involved with wildlife issues) was a big factor in the outcome of the beavers fate.
But the Martinez beavers are just one of the many, countless wildlife stories Gary’s compassion touched and saved. (In my narrow mind of course the most important one, but he affected the lives and hopes of many many wild things and people.) Think of all the children that grew with Lindsey Wildlife and went on to become docents and are now working in related fields as adults.
“He taught certainly a whole community, if not a whole world, how to respect and live with the natural world around them,” said Bogue’s wife, Lois Kazakoff, who retired from The Chronicle in May after 26 years at the newspaper.
Their are lives that make a difference, and lives that make a sea change. Gary was the latter. He forged a path to the wild world that countless numbers of adults and children are still following. He touched our hearts and made us remember that we ourselves were wild once and needed a kind of rescue.
However you spend your windy Sunday afternoon, take a moment to watch a seed-gathering bird, a scurrying squirrel, a lean coyote slipping over the horizon and think of Gary Bogue, who made the wide wild world familiar to us all.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
