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