SALISBURY — Lifelong community member and environmental activist Nicolas C. Osborn passed away peacefully at his home in Taconic on Oct. 8, 2022, surrounded by family and friends. The first born son of long time Salisbury residents Robert and Elodie Osborn, Nic was 75 years old. Artist, builder, teacher, and outdoorsman, Nic was a “bear” of a man with an instinctive ingenuity. His was a different way of doing things. With humor, humility, and enthusiasm, he unapologetically bushwhacked a path through this world.
Much of what evolved into Nic’s core values were deeply rooted in everything he was drawn to in his youth. Foremost among these was a calling to nature and the wild. As soon as he could turn a doorknob, Nic headed outdoors, eagerly exploring the environment in which he would feel “most at home” for the rest of his life. In his earliest years, he was fascinated by animals, their habits and habitats. His pets were turtles, snakes and salamanders. In the winter he dug snow caves. In the summer, he climbed trees and slept out under the stars. For the entirety of his time on earth, getting out into the natural world would ignite his curiosity.
Attending Salisbury Central School, Nic built friendships that broadened his sense of being a part of a community. He excelled at “learning by doing.”
Building models and projects that engaged his creative strengths were to his liking, but the great outdoors remained his classroom of choice. Camping, fishing, and skiing fueled his development. In his teens, he embraced white water canoeing in the Canadian wilderness and downhill ski racing around New England. Closer to home, he fostered his growing interest in ecology and the critical role of wetland environments during countless hours spent wading, paddling and observing wildlife in the Schenob Brook basin.
From his twenties through the end of his days, Nic developed a multifaceted career that fused his passions with his beliefs.
He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Maryland Institute College of Art with the intention of becoming a painter. Within a few years, he turned toward still photography and filmmaking. Those mediums proved more conducive to illuminating the visual excitement he found in nature’s “chaotic design”. In 1975, with supplemental funding from The Nature Conservancy, he completed an experimental movie shot in Sages Ravine.
He became a carpenter, made furniture, built walls of stone and sculpted landscapes. Gradually, his attention turned to constructing post and beam buildings, utilizing massive tree trunks with limbs still attached to create a feeling akin to living in a forest. Over time, he became highly skilled at repurposing organic forms to his aesthetic and functional advantage.
When not working, Nic could most often be found seeking out whitewater to paddle in or deep snow to ski through. A fixture on the whitewater racing circuit, he won dozens of downriver and slalom canoeing events, including four national titles from 1978-81. While sharing his passion for engaging in the outdoors, he delighted in meeting new people. Teaching windsurfing on Twin Lakes, showing many how to safely navigate a whitewater rapid, or guiding adults and teenagers through swamps and woodlands, Nic was in his element. An accomplished back-country skier, he produced, filmed and distributed instructional videos on telemark skiing.
Beyond these accomplishments, and really, above all else, Nic was a “force of nature”. His “family,” of which he was a fierce and strident defender, was every living thing that exists in the wild and the land on which all of us are transient residents. In Nic’s eyes, this earth belonged to Mother Nature. He viewed our human presence (including his own) as an unfortunate intrusion into her domain. He didn’t need everyone to share those beliefs. He simply stood firmly for them, like a boulder in fast moving water. Nic was a “wavemaker”. He spent the last few years of his life rallying neighbors to save farm fields in Taconic. A partial list of the local and national environmental groups he supported would include Greenagers, Housatonic Valley Association, The Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy, The Salisbury Land Trust, Berkshire Litchfield Environmental Council, The Wetland Trust, The Nature Conservancy, and Defenders of Wildlife.
Nic particularly enjoyed working shoulder-to-shoulder with all those involved in making The Jane Lloyd Clambake and SWSA’s Jump Fest happen. He held dear his spiritual connection to this place and this community. May your remembrances of Nic resonate within you whenever they occur.
Nic was predeceased by his parents. He is survived by his wife Robin Sweeney, his father-in-law Paul Sweeney, his three brothers-in-law Kevin, Joe and Matt Sweeney, his sister-in-law Kimberly Wallace, his brother Eliot Osborn, his sister-in-law Louise Lindenmeyr, his four nieces, Rosalie and Nicolette Osborn, Selma and Leona Sweeney, and two nephews, Tucker and Dylan Sweeney. Nic’s family is grateful for the compassionate assistance of individual home health aides and Visiting Nurse & Hospice Care in our time of need.
