Flashes of Panic

As a Christmas gift, I got a copy of Bradford Washburn’s autobiography, Bradford Washburn: An Extraordinary Life. I’d never heard of Washburn before, but as it turns out, I’ve enjoyed his work; among other things, Washburn ran the Boston Museum of Science for 41 years, starting from a tiny institution in downtown Boston and doing the organizing and fundraising that created the landmark building on the Charles River which I remember visiting (via the T!) on a visit to my Cambridge-resident aunt when my age was in single digits.

Now she’s back in Maine, and I’m the one who’s the pretext for Boston visits by my nieces. I read Washburn’s biography in about a week. He doesn’t discuss the museum much, but that wouldn’t make much of a biography anyway; instead, he writes about climbing Mt. Washington at age 11 (he later made maps of the mountain; I suspect we used one when we climbed it last summer,) growing up in Cambridge and New Hampshire, learning to fly, and his many summers on expeditions in Alaska. Washburn logged several “firsts” in Alaska, but he was more interested in technique and technology—trying out winter weather gear for the Army, learning new cartographic techniques, and applying new photographic technology to both artistic and cartographic photography of the mountains. He noted with some amusement that even though it is claimed that the University of Alaska doesn’t give honorary degrees, he had one. (He also had honorary degrees from my current University and my brother’s college.)

And within a few weeks of finishing the book—and noting that Washburn was born in 1910, so he had reached a pretty advanced age even at the time of writing it—I find his obituary in the Globe. It seems somehow backward to me that, in the space of three weeks or so, I should review all of such a long life—as though it was playing at double speed, or something.

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