Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness (review)

sounds in the country ("First Light"), or a sudden birdcall ("A Turning"). Fishing , a remnant activity from the old days, has a similar effect: the Brier is shown happily fishing in "On Trammel Creek" and being distracted by airplane views of fishing places in "Brier Ambassador ." The Brier has also mellowed in other ways. For one thing, he has more of a sense of humor (he always had a sense of humor, but it was harder to be funny when people were taking knives to him). His humor appears in such poems as "Brier Coming of Age," "The Brier Grows Wild," "The Brier Plans a Mountain Vision Center," and "Brier Ambassador ." But does all this evidence mean that the Brier has adjusted? I don't think so. The Brier's pain might have lessened, but his principles remain the same. The final section of Brier, His Book, titled "The Country of Conscience" after the main poem, corresponds to the "Brier Sermon" section of The Mountains Have Come Closer. Here, in the "Brier Plans a Mountain Vision Center," the Brier has given up preaching but is still trying to get his people to see clearly. More importantly, the long title poem suddenly introduces an international perspective. While it is true that the poet rather than the Brier speaks in "The Country of Conscience, the poem echoes lines from the Brier poem 'On Trammel Creek" and, as noted, the poet himself has become more closely identified with the Brier (in a recent reading at Hindman Settlement School, Miller prefaced the poem with "The Brier says . . . "). Suggesting international parallels to Appalachia (I am reminded of Czechoslovakia as portrayed in Milan Kundera's The Joke and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting), "The Country of Conscience" concludes that a person has two countries, two histories-an official one represented by the state and an unofficial one represented by the person's native culture. There s not much doubt here which way the Brier would side. A Brier is a Brier is a Brier. -Harold Branam Kephart, Horace. Camping and Woodcraft : A Handbookfor Vacation Campers andfor Travelers in the Wilderness. Introduction by Jim Casada. Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 1988. Paperback, $10.95. History professor Jim Casada's fine introduction in this edition should rekindle interest in Horace Kephart's life and writings. Horace Sowers Kephart was born of Swiss stock in East Salem, Pennsylvania , in 1862. His formal education at six prestigious colleges and universities served as an academic base for his writings . Frequent trips into the Ozarks and then the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina gave Horace Kephart the skills and training that made him an outdoorsman of great ability, and thus experiences which enabled him to write Camping and Woodcraft. First published in 1906, this book passed through seven editions in ten years. In 1916-1917, it was expanded into a two-volume edition. The current facsimile edition in two volumes is placed under one cover. Volume I is about camping and is divided into 23 chapters plus an index and contains 109 illustrations. Subjects covered include camp making, camp fires, tents, camp fixtures, camp cookery and provisions, and pests in the woods. Volume II is about woodcraft, is divided in 23 chapters, and contains 193 illustrations . Informative treatment of many topics including woodcraft, compass use, mapping, hiking, cave exploration , concentrated foods, axemanship, marksmanship, shelters and cabins, knots and lashings, tanning skins, bee65 hunting, edible plants, living off the land, and first aid in the back woods. In reviewing the facsimile edition, one concludes that 80 years after the initial publication Kephart's skills and experiences are still valid guides to the wild regions. This reprint deserves to be a working tool of every friend of the wilderness and life in the out-of-doors. Horace Kephart, a latter day Daniel Boone, leaves with a reader of his works "the charm of nomadic life in its freedom from care, its unrestrained liberty of action and the proud self-reliance of one who is definitely his own master." -John Frazier King Lyon, George Ella. Borrowed Children. New York: Orchard Books, 1988. Harback, $12.95. As any diligent reader can testify...