By SUZANNE MOORE
PLATTSBURGH — Just the sound of a burbling brook tumbles Mark Fraser back in time.
Back to childhood, when his father taught him the wily ways of the brook trout.
"I come to a brook, and I think like that," Mark said.
"It's like he's right there."
Mark, of Chateaugay and Draycot, Mass., absorbed Clay Fraser's lessons of nature as they tramped the Adirondack wilderness.
Mark grew up to become a naturalist, sharing his love of flora and fauna with others in hopes they, too, develop a sense of responsibility toward the natural world.
Technology like the Internet and iPod leaves young people disconnected from the outdoors, he says. And they, one day, will take charge of the planet.
"If nobody gave them that bedrock, that anchor that my father gave me, what's going to happen?" Mark said.
His passion, though, had been his father's necessity — and one born of tragedy.
HORRIBLE MEMORY
The story of Mark Fraser's family is one of partings and reunions, of family divided and rejoined. Two memories crystallized that theme for Clay from the age of 5, both of his mother, Florence.
In one, she paddles a small craft on Butternut Pond at the base of Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain, a crown of braided lilies on her hair.
In the other, she was dead.
One dark night in 1933, 5-year-old Clay was riding with his parents in a horse-drawn wagon in the Town of Chesterfield when they were struck by a car.
Florence, thrown against the vehicle's windshield, was decapitated.
"Of course, when you're 5 years old, your mom is everything," Mark said. "It kind of burned a horrible memory into his psyche."
Clay wound up in foster care, Mark said, where he was so badly abused that he ran away.
"He reconnected with my grandfather."
And in the Adirondacks, they lived off the land.
"They had nothing but each other."
MAKING PEACE
Percy Fraser, nee Percy Pease in Marlboro, Vt., was well acquainted with fending for himself. Legend says he ran a moonshine still during Prohibition.
"At some point, an 'incident' happened," writes Mark in an account of his family's history, "causing a barn to burn down and Percy to flee southern Vermont and head further north, deep into the Adirondacks."
It seems that was when he changed his name.
He and Florence Ryder had wed in 1913, and after her husband skedaddled, she was unable to provide for their four children. Authorities removed them from the home, and she never saw them again.
But the newly named Percy Fraser sneaked back to get his wife, and they made a simple life for themselves near Keeseville. There, their fifth child, Clayton, was born.
Father and son were hospitalized after the accident that took Florence's life; intent on survival in the Great Depression, Albert never learned where she was laid to rest.
Once grown, Clay tried, too, without success.
In his teens, Mark took to walking cemeteries, looking for Florence's headstone. Over time, family and friends took up the task, too. Chesterfield Town Historian Grace Good dug up many details about the Pease/Fraser family but not Florence's place of burial.
But the extended effort found some of her lost children — Clay was able to reconnect with Maude, with Ruth. Marion, Mark said, was located in New England. And just recently it was learned that George had died many years ago.
And their descendants gathered at a family reunion in 2002.
"The biggest theme was, 'somebody has to find Florence,'" Mark said.
Before Clay's death from pancreatic cancer in 2000, he made his peace with those warring images he had carried for so long. He asked that his ashes be spread on Butternut Pond.
And he gave Mark a sacred charge: "If I ever found (Florence's) grave, to put lilies on it."
NEARLY THERE
A few weeks ago, Mark's sister Cindy Watson discovered a Press-Republican story about Clyde M. Rabideau, who has collected vital statistics and cemetery records in book form for much of the region. He, in turn, found a 1933 Essex County Republican article that describes the accident that killed Florence.
The family's hopes rose at the final line: "Interment will be made in the Evergreen Cemetery, Keeseville."
But no headstone there bears her name. Nor do records show it as one of five known to be interred in the unmarked Potter's Field section, according to June Venette, president of Evergreen Cemetery Association.
That doesn't mean Florence isn't there, though, Venette said, for not all the voluminous records have been read. And if the association had access to ground-penetrating radar, it might show the location of more unmarked graves.
"It's tantalizingly close to closure for this long search," said Mark.
He doesn't give up hope that one day he'll braid a ring of lilies for Florence's final resting place. But meanwhile, he continues filming episodes of "Nature Walks with Mark Fraser," which air on Discovery News, and making documentaries, such as "Secrets of the Northern Forest," which will air March 18 on Mountain Lake PBS.
Mark doesn't call himself a filmmaker.
"I'm a naturalist using film as a medium to make a point. What I care about is helping the environment."
That's a legacy he traces straight back to his father, to his grandfather and the lore he passed on when the two fled the horror of Florence's death to live off the land.
In Mark's mind, his passion is the good that came from long-held grief.
"It all started with that accident so long ago."
E-mail Suzanne Moore at: smoore@pressrepublican.com
