Hawk Mountain Sanctuary will host a free talk, Gone for Another Day, by the Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Scott Weidensaul at 4 p.m. on March 29 in the Visitor Center gallery.
During his talk, Weidensaul will share highlights from his most recent book, Gone for Another Day, a sequel to Gone for the Day by the late Pennsylvania naturalist Ned Smith, and featuring nearly 50 years of unpublished field sketches, drawings, and hand-drawn maps by Smith.
Weidensaul, who is a long-time board member at Hawk Mountain, says it’s a pleasure to talk about Ned Smith at the Sanctuary, and that it 'feels appropriate.'
“Hawk Mountain was a favorite place of Ned Smith's," explains Weidensaul. "His connections to the Sanctuary were deep, and he made annual hawk-watching pilgrimages for many years,” he adds.
“In 1984, he marked the Sanctuary's 50th anniversary with 'Hawk Mountain Gold,' a painting of two golden eagles passing the North Lookout. It was one of his finest works, and among the last before his death,” Weidensaul says.
Smith was among the premier nature artists of the 20th Century, and over his 45-year career, created thousands of paintings and drawings for publications like Pennsylvania Game News, National Wildlife, Field and Stream, and Sports Afield, along with dozens of originals, artwork for books, and fine art prints.
Gone for Another Day includes previously unpublished entries from the personal nature journals of the artist, many from Pennsylvania, but also from his trips across North America.
Weidensaul spent two years scouring entries from Smith's journals. The final selection offers a variety, stretching from the summer of 1936 when Smith was 17 years old, through his very last entry on April 22, 1985, the day before he died of a heart attack at age 65. It also features dozens of illustrations and photos of the artist with his late wife Marie in the outdoors.
A Schuylkill County author, naturalist, lecturer, and field researcher specializing in birds of prey, Weidensaul has written more than two dozen books, including his most recent, The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery and Endurance in Early America.
For more information, visit the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary website.
