Vestige of a Naturalist

Most of all, Banker Thomason was a naturalist. He spent most of his adult life wandering a 100-square-mile area of land in central Newfoundland, carefully mapping every hill and creek, each grove of trees, every rock formation. The resulting maps, or “Earthagrams,” as he called them, were works of divine beauty; art, but accurate in every detail.

Thomason’s Earthagrams are no longer with us. Some were destroyed by fire, others ruined in torrential downpours. The remainder cannot be traced; however, Thomason has left us with an unusual, and unrelated, little-known legacy.

He lived in a one-room abode that had been built, inhabited, and long ago abandoned by a pair of sheepherders. Thomason, who nicknamed himself “Father Nature,” outfitted his small home in such a way as to bring the outdoors inside. He painted the ceiling with a dye made of flour, water, and blueberries to simulate the sky. The floor was dirt and sported what very well may have been some of the first houseplants. He covered the inside of the window cavities with groups of decorative vines, providing curtains of protection from flying insects. The walls were covered with birch bark and pine cones.

At night, this nature-lover’s home was illuminated by five brass and glass lanterns that housed candles Banker had made himself. He affixed layers of living maple leaves to the glass in each lantern to achieve an early-morning forest glow.

The effect was serene.

One day Thomason left “the home of Father Nature” and never returned; perhaps he went to seek another uncharted territory. Only young lovers, mischievous children, and cross-country explorers ventured into Banker’s vacant domain. Somehow word got back to the townsfolk. Maple leaf-tinted lighting became extremely popular. Almost every household had a favorite room in which the inhabitants would proudly light what we still know as “Banker’s Lamps.”