March 2008
Walking with the Big Cats
by Craig Springer
Walking through the portal of his 1890s Hillsboro home, you pass into a world where the historic meets the present, and a world where books matter. The hallway is garnished with shelves of old books with little dust, because they are used.
Then there’s the great room. Harley Shaw, a writer and a retired wildlife biologist, sits on a sofa and chats about his career with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and what brought him and his wife, Patricia Woodruff, to this small Sierra County town.
Behind Shaw there is a long, towering wall. It is one big book shelf, and "a big reason why we bought the house," says Shaw. In an outbuilding, Patricia operates her bookselling business, Aldo’s Attic, as it is called at abebooks.com.
The books that reside in the great room speak to the man. There’s Game Management by Aldo Leopold, another writer-wildlife biologist with ties to the Southwest. Henry David Thoreau takes up shelf space. There are many other titles on the history of the Southwest, natural histories, and ecology.
Shaw is the author of "Soul Among Lions," the cougar as peaceful adversary, and "Stalking the Big Bird," a tale of turkeys, biologists, and bureaucrats. And both are essentially the products of 27 years employed as a field biologist.
Shaw earned a bachelor’s of science in wildlife management at the University of Arizona and then a master’s at the University of Idaho where he studied white-tailed deer habitat selection. He started a PhD at Washington State, but had to head back home in 1963, where he hired on with the Arizona Game and Fish Department and jumped into a long-term deer study.
By the 1970s, interest in cougars took an interest among the public and the politicos, and Shaw was called to lead a long-term research project on the big cats. He radio-collared and followed the tawny cats in Arizona, learning how and where they live, and how they behave.
Retirement has Shaw in a new routine: writing early in the morning, gathering firewood, walking, and doing chores like fixing cars and tending his horses.
Like his first two books, he has ownership in the next one. He’s researching the diaries of J. Stokely Ligon, a wildlife biologist employed by the U.S. Biological Survey (forerunner to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) who traversed all of New Mexico at the turn of the 20th century documenting its natural attributes. Ligon took photos, too, now housed at the Denver Public Library. Shaw will trace Ligon’s path, re-take some photos and write about wildlife and the land, comparing then and now.
Shaw says he and Patricia’s attraction to Hillsboro was unexpected. The Prescott, AZ area where they lived sprawled, and they escaped. Shaw says he has fascinating and talented neighbors, artists, writers, ranchers, the devoutly religious and the uncommitted, and newcomers.
"Almost seven years after moving here, I get excited over the array of people I can meet by simply walking to the post office. It is special that way. I can’t tell you why so many writers and artists live here. But the town attracts some very interesting people." Arguably, Shaw is among them.
If you know anyone who’d make a good profile for this column—including yourself—let us know at sespinoza@enchantment.coop.
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