It was the last weekend of August when I traveled up to my parent’s house to go hunting for shark teeth at the Calvert Cliffs in Maryland. This is something I have done once before (as a family excursion), but now I was fueled by want and perhaps the need to collect animal artifacts. The morning of the trip I woke to the sudden knowledge of perhaps the ultimate source of my animal-based artwork over the past 2 ½ years. While lying in bed I thought of all the influences I had grown up around within my very own house.
I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and grew up with animals and the wilderness within my own home. My dad was a hunter so we had a caribou head, a preserved hammerhead shark, a bear head and hide, and many variations of furs throughout the house (and sometimes hanging over the fireplace). A family friend, Bob Cracknell was also a hunter and quite an amazing man who collected everything from his own animal trophies to found arrow heads, shark teeth, and even a human skull. I once saw this skull displayed it in a sort of glass cake dome in his basement- but that’s a different story. He found ways to frame his findings and made my parents several pieces that hung in our house. His work and stories made a huge impact on me during my childhood that I am just now realizing.
[Please pardon the photography. I had my parents e-mail me photos specifically for this blog!]
There were other ways I encountered this “primal” learning. My grandparents had a whale skull over a foot long sitting in their garden for many years and my next-door neighbor had Baleen whale teeth. Much of my childhood was spent visiting the Outer Banks where my uncle (and childhood hero) was a fish cleaner. I became very hands-on with the process of baiting, reeling, gaffing, and cleaning fish. Once I even ran into a dead beached whale that was well over the size of a pickup truck. I wanted to become an elasmologist (shark biologist) when I graduated from college, so I had originally been attending Christopher Newport University for two years as a marine science major before transferring to VCU.
I long to go back to the days of my childhood and relive these moments in a new light. Sadly, Bob Cracknell passed away several years ago and my parent’s no longer own a house in the outer banks. I want to be one of those people that surround themselves with the essence and remembrance of life, wilderness, and their beauty.
This was a scan inspired by Bob Cracknell.
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