1.
avid Jordan was born on an apple orchard in upstate New York in 1851 at the darkest time of the year, which is perhaps why he became so preoccupied with the stars. “While husking corn on autumn evenings,” he writes of his boyhood, “I became curious as to the names and significance of the celestial bodies.” He could not just enjoy their twinkling; he found them a mess he needed ordered, known. When he was about eight years old, he got his hands on an atlas of astronomical charts and began comparing what he saw on the page to what he saw above his head. Night by night he went, creeping out of the house, attempting to learn the name of every star in the sky. And according to him, it took only five years to bring order to the entire night sky. As a reward, he chose “Starr” as his middle name, and wore it proudly for the rest of his life.
Having mastered the celestial, David Starr Jordan turned to the terrestrial. His family’s land swelled and rolled with its own unique constellations of trees, boulders, farm buildings, and livestock. His parents kept him busy with chores, shearing the sheep, clearing brush, and—David’s specialty—sewing rags into rugs (his flexor tendons learning early how to wield a needle). But in between chores, David began to map the land.
For help, he turned to his big brother, Rufus, thirteen years older, a quiet and gentle nature lover with deep brown eyes. Rufus taught David how to settle the horses, with long strokes down the neck, where in the thickets to find the juiciest blueberries. Watching Rufus demystify the earth, David was transfixed; he says he held Rufus in “absolute worship.” Slowly, David began drawing intricate maps of everything they saw. He drew maps of his family’s orchard, his walk to school, and when he finished the land he knew, he turned to places far away. He copied
