Oh, and here's something else cool: Kentucky's Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources has a weekly TV show called "Kentucky Afield," and a few years ago one of the segments was on this book. The then-host of the show, Tim Farmer, took the author Ron Ellis down for a squirrel hunt and talked about the book, and then recreated a poignant scene -- when the father put candles in a grove of cedars on a snowy evening.

It's only about 8-9 minutes long.

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- kypaddler

I first read "Cogan's Woods" some 10 years or so ago when it came out, and I quickly "borrowed" a great idea: Whenever I have a successful hunt, especially with one of my kids, I take the empty shotgun shell or rifle shell, write a little note about that day, roll it up and slide it into the shell. I have a wooden box of these shells representing deer, rabbit, squirrel and whatever I've shot, and many many memories. The most valuable ones are those when I was with my son, now 17, and my daughter, now 19, representing the deer or squirrel they took.

It's a treasure chest of time capsules, so to speak.

- kypaddler

Having coffee on Thursday morning with a guy named Ron Ellis, who compiled and edited “Of Woods and Waters,” which is probably the best anthology of outdoor literature in Kentucky ever put together, and who also wrote a book called “Cogan’s Woods.”

I’m wondering if anybody has ever heard of either of these books.

“Cogan’s Woods” is a fictionalized memoir by a son whose father used to take him squirrel hunting as a little boy, and how the love of the outdoors and hunting was passed down as a legacy through those trips and the people and stories they encountered.

I’d recommend “Cogan’s Woods” to any outdoors enthusiasts who remember how it used to be, and particularly those whose fathers or mothers took them out fishing, hunting or paddling – and who want to pass on the same tradition to THEIR children.

To steal some words from the cover jacket, “In the end, what settles into the author’s heart is this simple mantra, shared with him first by an old gravedigger through a haze of lantern smoke and then years later by his dying father in a darkened room: It’s important to remember, it’s so important to remember.”

- kypaddler