A new version of a Kephart classic

The opening pages of this re-issue of Camping and Woodcraft invites city-dwellers to shed the “sights and smells and clangor” for a blessed interval in the outdoors. Its author, Horace Kephart, played a pivotal role in the founding of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park despite the fact that it was founded in 1934, three years after his death in 1931. Kephart, a librarian who worked at Cornell, Yale, and the St. Louis Mercantile Library (Mo.) before settling in the Smokies in 1904, penned articles for Field and Stream that influenced the way that Americans viewed vacationing in the outdoors and preserving its wild areas. He loved America’s wilderness because “there were no shams in it.” Nature offered folks both physical and spiritual refuge from the industrialized world. And of course his seminal book, Our Southern Highlanders, was influential in how the rest of America and the world viewed those who lived in Appalachia.

Though much of Camping and Woodcraft was written prior to his move to Bryson City, N.C., Kephart filled the book with lore, anecdotes, and personalities who captivated him. The book is a classic, covering the enduring values of outdoor life along with basic outfitting concepts and indispensable items needed for a stay in the woods. Though it is in some ways dated due to modern technological innovations in camping gear, the essentials in regards to supplies and techniques for wilderness survival remain the same. Kephart’s love for language is sure to tickle the reader’s fancy as he names twenty or so devices for items used to suspend or support cooking utensils over a fire.

Most fascinating is that as early at 1906, Kephart advocated featherlight camping kits weighing no more than six pounds. This limited campers’ bedding and shelter to the barest minimum, which is predictive of modern practices of minimal packing so as to leave no trace or impact on wilderness when we return to our homes. Boy Scouts may remember having encountered Kephart’s writing because as an authority on outdoor life, he contributed articles to Boy’s Life in the 1920s on topics that ranged from hiking rations to Cherokee blowguns.

Kephart captured and conveyed timeless skills that had been transferred between generations for millennia. Those lessons remain valuable even today.

The Curious Gardener: A Year in the Garden by Anna Pavord. NY: Bloomsbury USA, 2012.

Finding gardening books written by authors reminiscing about weeding, cutting, pruning—all the demands of horticulture and agriculture of our immediate region—is about as impossible as killing honeysuckle, lamb’s ear, or other hearty plants. Thus vicarious gardening pleasures may be gleaned from Anna Pavord’s work, The Curious Gardener, which features 72 of her best columns. 

It’s a hybrid collection that marries memoir with the best of gardening advice and practices from Pavord’s place of residence and writing in Dorest, England. It is the manner in which Pavord writes about gardening, however, that takes it to another level. Consider this line: “the more you go on, the less you realize you know and the more extraordinary the whole process seems.” In the introduction, readers learn that her parents gave her and her brother gardens of their own when they were children, but she didn’t learn the point of gardening until she lived long enough in one place as an adult to grow roots. She grew to love growing food of her own and feeding her family, but ultimately, growing roots mattered in more ways than one. 

Pavord’s lessons about gardening make me want to order a few seed catalogs quick-like so I can practice this in earnest and be ready to welcome spring. After several decades of gardening, Pavord reveals that gardening is all about the process and not the end result. She promises that gardeners never need to visit “the shrink” because working in the garden with the soil and soaking up the sun provides succor for the soul and is nature’s therapy. However, she cautions that plants are living creatures with needs and desires of their own and sometimes it is best to let them have their own way. 

Of course, I connected with the deep, philosophical aspects of the book, but it is chockablock full of advice on growing early varieties of potatoes, when to plant them, how to protect them, which variety is best for what purpose, etc. If you’re an Anglophile, no doubt you’ll love this book. I’m not, but I found it charming nonetheless. At the conclusion of each month Pavord lists “tasks for the month” that can keep you on track if you’re new to gardening and haven’t a clue about where to start.