He wasn't housebroken

Remembering the old man of the North Woods

Not long after joining the environmental community, I realized that some of its members were, uh, unorthodox. When we came in contact with people from the political life, it was like planets colliding.

I remember driving a carload of advocates to Detroit to meet with the staffer of a newly-elected governor during the transition period. The purpose of the get-together was to present a policy agenda to the staffer, who would write a memo to the chief of staff. Some of the items on our wish list might get to the new governor for consideration.

The meeting did not get off to a good start, or a good end, for that matter. The staffer was a policy expert, but not on the environment. She was a veteran in human services policy. My group of five and she had difficulty communicating. And she was writing almost nothing.

Finally, frustrated with her noncommittal remarks, one of our group, a fellow wearing something like a plaid shirt, blue jeans and hiking boots demanded to see her notes to make sure she was actually writing down what we were saying. I reddened; this was not good political etiquette. There was a long silence. She coolly rejected his invitation, and the meeting ended shortly after.

On the way back to Lansing, the fellow who had made the request sputtered that politicians expected environmentalists to be “housebroken,” and that he would never be. The image of dog waste sitting on the Governor’s office carpet cracked everyone up.

The same week, as a new (and only) staff person at the Michigan Environmental Council, I received a phone call. After uttering my greeting, I heard nothing for a couple of beats. Then, a gruff voice asked, “Is this Dempsey?” I answered affirmatively.

“You’re the new guy?” I confirmed the fact.

“This is Sheppard.”

Ah! The outdoor writer I had been hearing about. Publisher and editor of the North Woods Call. The legend. The iconoclast. The guy whose publication’s creed was, “An admittedly biased newspaper dedicated to the proposition that there is only one side to any issue involving natural resources: NATURE’S!”

From his lair near Charlevoix, this authority on Michigan conservation had called me up for an interview. After nervously admitting I didn’t hunt or fish and being told that was too bad, but he wouldn’t hold it against me, I listened to him cynically dissect the “front office brass” of the Department of Natural Resources, a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats. He invited me to agree with him. I said I respected his opinion but was too new to know anything about the DNR. He cut me some slack and said he would call back in a month.

That was the beginning of a nearly 30-year association. I was a source for him at times, a whipping post at others, but always a fan. Shep, as we called him, was biased. He was rumored to have made up quotes. He was a sexist (but slowly evolved). But he rocked the boat. He did not simply publish news releases.

It was Shep to whom inside sources turned with the news that the politicos didn’t want told — misspent game and fish funds, partisan politics intruding on decisions that science should determine, the failure of the state to make habitat preservation a priority rather than just managing species.

Shep also wrote lovingly about his hunting dogs and crusaded unsuccessfully for the designation of the chickadee, a year-round friend, instead of the robin, a fair-season friend, as Michigan’s official bird.

The shaven-headed editor had outsized impact, given that his eight-page publication had maybe 8,000 subscribers. But it was important reading for DNR staff, advocates and other journalists looking to keep up with things. He told enough truth that a DNR director once banned the North Woods Call from the agency’s conference center on Higgins Lake.

A sampling of Shep’s quotes from a 1979 Detroit Magazine article:

On dams: “They are sinful. If God had wanted a lake there, He would have put still water there.”

On the DNR: “The DNR needs to be completely dismantled. We need to start from scratch, giving field staff more responsibility.”

On snowmobiles: “People must hate themselves who ride them. They get their kicks because of damn noise…the snowmobile should be outlawed.”

This all came to mind because a friend is researching Shep, who passed away in 2011. With him went decades of institutional and subject matter memory. Nobody has replaced him, although there are still plenty of characters, even oddballs, in the conservation/environmental world.

But we need more non-housebroken journalists, sleuths, advocates and public servants willing to expose the environmental truths that the public never hears about. More Sheppards. Whence will they come?