Gale Lawrence, respected and loved author, teacher, naturalist, gardener, walker, and detailed observer of nature, passed away on August 22, 2024.
Gale was born in 1941 in Springfield, Vermont. She spent most of her childhood in Pennsylvania and Texas. She received her undergraduate degree from Earlham College in Indiana and her master’s degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She then traveled and eventually moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught at the National Cathedral School.
Thirty years after leaving Vermont, she returned in 1975 with her cat, Hussy. She bought an old farm in Huntington to embrace a more natural life after years of dwelling in urban areas. Her boundless curiosity drew her to Bob Spear, who knew the names of trees, birds, and stars. He had founded the Audubon Nature Center next door, where Gale began to work as a volunteer. Before long, they fell in love. Bob shared her home and life for the next forty years.
Together with Ed Everts and Raven Davis, Gale and Bob created the Birds of Vermont Museum. They rebuilt the farm’s old barn into a place to house Bob’s ambitious retirement project of carving all the birds of Vermont.
While Bob was carving hundreds of birds for the collection and directing the museum, Gale continued to follow her own passions. She taught English at the University of Vermont, and she began to publish weekly columns of natural history in local Vermont newspapers, including the Barre Montpelier Times Argus, The Huntingtonian, the Richmond Times Ink, and Vermont Woodlands. Her articles were based on her careful observations of nature during daily walks around the old farm and surrounding land. Whatever aroused her curiosity that week, she would research and write about, in a clear, engaging way that drew readers from around the state.
After several years, she collected some of the articles into a book she called The Beginning Naturalist. This book was soon followed by several more: A Field Guide to the Familiar, A Naturalist Indoors, and The Vermont Life Guide to Fall Foliage.
Gales shared many stories orally and in her journals, including one about how each year for her birthday she took a two-week break from the noisy world. She pitched a tent in the beautiful, sheltered meadow across the brook from her home, enjoying solitude and sometimes skinny-dipping in Sherman Hollow Brook. She cooked her meals, mostly from food she raised in her garden, over a wood fire, kept her beer cool in the brook, and spent her days roaming the woods. At night she watched the stars and listened to coyotes howl.
She also used this time to write, not for her business, but for her pleasure, filling notebooks with observations, reflections, and poetry. Bob often joined her for an evening meal, but this was her time to retreat from the world and focus on herself.
After several years of this, Bob decided that Gale’s trusty old tent deserved an upgrade. He built her a small, one-room building with a loft and a woodstove, where she would be able to stay warm and dry during her retreats. Large glass windows overlooked the view and opened to admit the sounds of the brook, the birds, and the coyotes. Gale loved her new quarters, and the building became known as Gale’s Retreat, just off Bob’s trail at the Birds of Vermont Museum.
During the rest of the year, Gale continued to teach and write professionally. Eventually she transitioned from teaching UVM classes to individual mentoring of home school students and young professionals. She created a large network of friends who would bird, look for ferns, and explore bogs with her. She kept journals documenting the world as it went through its annual cycles. Some parts she posted online, joining the community of bloggers when it arose across the world wide web.
In addition, Gale supported environmental education in many forms. She made generous contributions to the Birds of Vermont Museum and other Vermont conservation organizations, as well as to her local library. Gale’s gifts for conservation and her words about birds, butterflies, wildflowers, and more, will continue to inspire, educate, and connect us all to Vermont’s natural world for many years to come.
Gale was pre-deceased by Bob Spear (1920-2014) and by her parents John Lawrence (1911-2000) and Janet Beal Lawrence (1918-2002). She leaves behind her siblings Carol Matzke, Rod Lawrence, Anne Wessel, and Johanne LaGrange, her caregiver Nancy Scagnelli, as well as numerous cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends.
There will be a celebration of life at the Birds of Vermont Museum on September 22, at 2:00. Please bring photographs and memories to share. If you are not able to join us on that day, feel free to send memories to the Museum, and they will be added to a memory book that we will assemble. Donations in Gale’s name can be sent to the Birds of Vermont Museum, 900 Sherman Hollow Road, Huntington, VT, 05462, or you may use the donate page.