“Hunting, fishing, drawing and music occupied my every moment,” — John James Audubon

   It’s a nice, tree-lined drive away from the traffic on U.S. 41 in Henderson into the shade and serenity of John James Audubon State Park - just enough of a drive in to the centerpiece stone-and-timber museum to forget about the cars and convenience stores left behind.
   It is the entrance to a retreat of some stature. The idyllic preserve honors the man many regard as America’s father of wildlife habitat preservation and illustration who lived and worked here for almost a decade.
   John James Audubon was born in Haiti in 1785 on a sugar plantation owned by a French military officer. He spent much of his childhood in France and came to America at age 18 with an interest in birds and the outdoors that would last his lifetime. A renaissance man of sorts, Audubon played the flute and violin, was an avid hunter and frontiersman and loved to draw.
   “Hunting, fishing, drawing and music occupied my every moment,” he wrote later in life. “Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.”
   He became an artist of some stature while he ran a general store in Louisville, which at that time was the primary Ohio River port between Pittsburgh and New Orleans. In 1810, he moved down river to Henderson, where he and his wife began raising two sons and lived in a log cabin.
   “Audubon’s artwork keeps growing in popularity,” said park manager Mark Kellen. “There is still a lot of interest from European countries where he sold much of his early work as well as from the states. It’s both birding enthusiasts and American art enthusiasts who come here to see his work.”
   Unlike many white settlers at the time, Audubon held no malice toward the native Americans living in the area.

I F  Y O U  G O

John James Audubon State Park is on U.S. 41 North in Henderson, just across the Ohio River from Evansville, Ind.  For cottage or campground reservations or information, call 270-826-2247. Or visit the Kentucky State Parks’ Web site, www.parks.ky.gov.

   “Whenever I meet Indians, I feel the greatness of our Creator in all its splendor, for there I see the man naked from His hand and yet free from acquired sorrow,” he wrote.
   “Audubon was as much a naturalist as an artist,” said Kellen. “We’re talking about the early 1800s, and he was an accomplished outdoorsman who earned the Indians’ respect. Our museum has a full set of Indian dress that was given to him by native Indians.”
   In Henderson and later in New Orleans, Audubon did the lion’s share of his work on his “Birds of America,” still regarded as an iconic contribution to early American art.  This huge compilation of paintings included more than 400 hand-colored prints of American birds the artist had studied.   There was immediate interest for the book in Great Britain due to British people’s continued fascination with the former American colonies. The cost of printing the book was astronomical for 1826 - $115,640 – and the work was acclaimed abroad and at home as masterful.
   John James Audubon State Park has the largest collection of the artist’s work on display in the world. The 700-acre preserve also has cabins and a full-service campground, hiking trails and a nine-hole golf course.
   The park is very personal to me because I worked there for a year and a half while I finished my degree in journalism at the University of Evansville, just across the river in Indiana, in the late 1970s. I worked at the park as a campground manager and groundskeeper and played the wooded golf course on late afternoons when I probably should have been studying.

By Mac Lacy
SPECIAL TO KENTUCKY FARM BUREAU