October 16, 1985

President Reagan said today that the Administration viewed a United States space shield against nuclear weapons as a ''moral'' obligation that would improve the prospects for an arms agreement with the Soviet Union. ''This program is an historic turning point,'' Mr. Reagan told an enthusiastic Republican audience in Boise, Idaho, today, referring to his space-based defense program. ''We will not bargain this research and testing program away.'' He added: ''For the first time, energy and resources are being put to use in an attempt to find new technology that is aimed at saving lives. If we are successful, it will improve the opportunity for arms reduction because missiles, no longer the ultimate weapon they are today, will be more negotiable.''

UP in the Catskills on Lookout Farm in Napanoch, N.Y., a deer nibbles on fallen apples. A wild turkey disappears into the bush. Roses, first cultivated in 17th-century France, bloom in unlikely shades of lilac, peach and blood red. The scene is bucolic but hardly a still life - for here, Eugene and Beverly Gregan transform everything that grows into a feast for the senses. In November, a friend who hunts brings deer, which may be cut into sashimi, paper-thin slices of raw venison arranged as petals around a mound of wasabi, Japanese horseradish. Wild duck, quail and other game birds will be cooked and served with herbed sauces. Roses will be picked and arranged as subjects for a painting by Mr. Gregan, then dried as potpourri. Fruits will be dried and their skins made into decorated containers. For Thanksgiving, wild turkey will be stuffed with Canadian wild rice and chestnuts. After the feast, a thigh bone from the bird will be carved into a knife handle. The Gregans, it seems, have refined the 1960's cliche of living off the land into a remarkably sensuous life.

Ore carriers, grain carriers, oil tankers and other ships bearing hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo backed up at the ends of the Welland Canal today after the St. Lawrence Seaway was closed Monday by the collapse of a lock's concrete wall. Seaway officials believe they can complete temporary repairs before the shipping season ends, about two months from now. So far, however, they have not been able to stabilize the damaged wall of the canal enough to drain the water from the lock and survey the damage. ''We're talking about weeks, not days,'' said Kenneth E. Ludwig, the director of operations for the Seaway Authority.

A front-page picture caption in some editions on Sunday, about the Achille Lauro hijacking, misidentified a man shown with Marilyn Klinghoffer, and a correction in this space on Monday specified the error incompletely. In early editions, which pictured Mrs. Klinghoffer at the bottom of the page, an unidentified man stood beside her. In late editions, showing her at the top of the page, the man alongside her was correctly identified as Jay Fischer, a lawyer and family friend.

A dispatch from Tokyo yesterday on Japanese economic changes misstated the time it would take for the changes to produce extra growth in Japan's gross national product. According to Japanese economic officials, they should generate extra growth by October 1986.