Nelson Bryant

Mill Pond Joe: Naturalist, Writer, Journalist, and NY Times Columnist Nelson Bryant

When Nelson Bryant was managing editor of the Claremont, N. H. Daily Eagle he enlivened his telling of bedtime stories to his two young sons with the adventures of a Martha's Vineyard Island youngster he called, "Mill Pond Joe."

"I was Mill Pond Joe, and my yarns were based on actual events during my boyhood. I spent fifteen years as managing editor of the Daily Eagle and devoted another thirty to writing an outdoors column for The New York Times."

Bryant began writing the Times Wood, Field and Stream column-later called Outdoors-in 1967, and continued to do so until 1998. Born in 1923, he moved with his parents to West Tisbury on the Vineyard in 1932. A dedicated environmentalist, he writes with passion, sensitivity, and humor about the natural world; its flora, its fauna, its human inhabitants, and their hunting and fishing rituals. Currently living on the Vineyard, he has traveled widely gathering material for his pieces in the Times and other publications.

Shortly before his 90th year he decided to chronicle Mill Pond Joe's adventures.