Nelson Bryant, ‘Supreme Chronicler’ of Outdoor Life, Dies at 96

After the war he was a deckhand on a schooner, working for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

He married Jean Morgan in 1946, and they had two sons and two daughters. The marriage ended in divorce in 1989, and Jean Bryant died in 2012. Besides Ms. Kirchmeier, Mr. Bryant is survived by his sons, Stephen and Jeffrey; his daughter Mary Bryant Bailey; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His daughter Alison died in 2009.

Mr. Bryant returned to Dartmouth and earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1952. He began his newspaper career as a reporter for The Claremont Daily Eagle (now The Eagle Times) and from 1954 to 1966 was its managing editor. He also occasionally wrote outdoors columns.

Unable to make ends meet, Mr. Bryant quit the paper, returned to Martha’s Vineyard and was building docks to support a growing family when he learned that the author of The Times’s “Wood, Field and Stream” column, Oscar Godbout, had died. He applied for the job and was hired.

His first Times column, on Oct. 31, 1967, offered thoughts on pickerel vs. trout, and hints of the writer to come: “The thought of fly casting for a fish that bears a superficial resemblance to a snake may be more than some purists can stomach. Trout are beautiful and wise, pickerel are neither. However, a man cannot always chase rainbows.”

For many years, his columns were illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings by Glenn Wolff.

Mr. Bryant was the author of “Fresh Air, Bright Water: Adventures in Wood, Field and Stream” (1971); “The Wildfowler’s World” (1973, with Hanson Carroll); “Outdoors,” a 1990 collection of his columns; and a memoir, “Mill Pond Joe: Naturalist, Writer, Journalist and New York Times Columnist” (2014).

In a valedictory in The Martha’s Vineyard Times in 2012, he confessed to being a romantic about the outdoor life.

“More than anything else, I wanted to be alone in the forest primeval,” he wrote. “I didn’t want to encounter another hunter. I enjoyed sitting on a rocky ledge looking down into the valley through which an enchanting trout river, the Dead Diamond, flows. I enjoyed sharing my backpack lunch with chickadees and chipmunks, then wandering so deep into the woods, I knew that darkness would fall before I made it back to the cabin.”

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/sports/nelson-bryant-dead.html?emc=rss&partner=rss