Jimbo wrote on Dec 17
th, 2022 at 6:56am:
In fact, I have one old paperback that I brought so many times into the wilderness that it's pages have fallen apart. So, I collected the pages, put them back in order, and then into a plastic baggie. Then, I continued to take that very book into the parks with me. It was a trip ritual of mine to reread the danged thing every year... and I enjoy it, every time. Some stories never get old and I take comfort in reliving this one, time after time. So, I'm probably overdue to bring that baggie with me yet again, so maybe the Kindle gets to stay home next summer.
The book? It's an obscure volume⁹ written by a fellow named Hugh Fosburgh, entitled "The Sound of Whitewater." I've written about it in the QJ books forum. It has an "early Hemingway" vibe about it. Anyway, time to bring it again... and, no, not for combustion purposes. Yet.
Later,
Jimbo
The volume that I brought with me for years (until it too began delaminating and it was an old sewn in hardcover) was Faulkner's
Go Down, Moses. My contention being
The Old People, The Bear and Delta Autumn being three of the greatest wilderness stories ever written, and that despite the wilderness that is the subject being the Atchafalaya swamp the opening of
The Old People was always deeply reminiscent of waking on a cold fall morning in the Q. "At first there was nothing. There was the cold and constant rain, the gray and constant light of the late November dawn.." Despite his reputation for difficulty the stories made for great reading out loud at a campfire in the evening. Brilliant.
May have permanently damaged my son after reading
The Bear out loud when we were stranded for two days and nights on Elk in October when he was 3 and the wind screamed out of the NW at about 35 degrees with spitting rain and snow depending on the temp.
Still make sure it's on the Kindle whenever I go.