The year Kevin Patrick spent “connecting with White’s Woods” may have been, as a blurb on the back of Near Woods says “In the spirit of Walden” but the resulting products are not the same. Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond was an experiment in self-sufficiency and the book he wrote some years later documented its success. His observations of nature and seasons were generally used to support some aspect of his minimalist lifestyle and not to educate the reader. I suppose some of Patrick’s observations are also made to reinforce some philosophical viewpoint, but he is a lot more subtle and he helps the reader share the raw observation as near as possible. Exactly one-half of this book’s pages are filled with some excellent photographs.

The word “spirit” also appears early in the book’s text. There Patrick says it is written in the spirit of other nature books and mentions, in addition to Thoreau, Emerson, Muir, Cousteau, and others. I believe what he means is the sharing of observations as accurately as possible and in a manner that promotes a real appreciation of what is being observed.

I’m not all that familiar with many of the authors named but did find myself making some comparisons with an author and book Patrick does not mention. In PrairieErth, William Least Heat Moon makes a deep dive into a single county in Kansas. In some sense, Patrick’s deep dive into the 250-acre White’s Woods is closer to Moon’s product than to Thoreau’s but that comparison is also far from perfect. By trying to look at that county from every possible angle, PrairieErth can sometimes seem like a writing class exercise. Near Woods looks at its subject from a lot of angles but not, I think, every angle. Just the interesting ones.

Of course, Near Woods is better looking than either Walden or PrairieErth. To some degree, that’s just something that color photographs do for a book. But these high-quality and well-chosen photos do more than make the book pretty. They are the “raw observations” mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. The book’s design incorporates the photos wonderfully and helps make reading the book a pleasure. Every lefthand page contains one or more photographs. Righthand pages are all text. Captions are in the extra wide inner margins of the text pages. It didn’t take me terribly long to recognize the beauty of this. Every page turn resulted in a new image that could be studied as quickly or slowly as desired before tackling a new page of text.

Sometimes there is a direct connection between text and photo and sometimes the connection is loose or non-existent. At one point a loose connection led me to believe that Kevin had cheated me or at least made a major goof. One of the more interesting finds in White’s Woods is a quad-trunk tulip tree. I really wanted to see this oddity as I read about it but the pictures next to the text were of something else entirely. A photo of the tulip tree in winter appears a page or two later and I realized that this is the image on the book’s back cover. The front cover shows this extraordinary tree in summer. I wasn’t cheated and the goof was all mine. Doh!

Photographs show the woods through one year of its life and the four seasons are used to organize the book. The woods’ history and possible future are mixed into the reporting of seasonal changes to provide some very pleasant lessons in natural and human history, horticulture, geography, and geology.

Near Woods: A Year in an Allegheny Forest, Kevin Patrick, Stackpole Books (May 1, 2023), 8.5 x 11 inches, 258 pages, ISBN 978-0811772211
Available through Amazon.

In the prologue of Philippines, Palau, and Guam, Matt Cohen says he considered but discarded the idea of organizing the book along the lines of the Philipines’ four ‘B’s — basketball, beauty contests, boxing, and beaches. I guess that was on my mind as I scanned it for the first time and found myself registering three ‘C’s — color, culture, and composition.

That last ‘C’, composition, is an obvious element of all photographs. Sometimes composing a photograph really means physically posing the subjects and I don’t doubt that there was some of that employed here. But I believe that most of Cohen’s composing consisted of positioning the camera and framing subjects he had limited, if any, control over. Mountains and buildings never move in response to a photographer’s instructions and the same is often true of people. In some cases, composing continues after the shutter clicks with selective cropping and such and Cohen seems to be adept at this as well. Given the book’s title, it is probably also obvious that culture has a big role. One of the attractions of these islands is the fact that their culture is different than that of mainland USA and one of Cohen’s goals was to document those differences. The bulk of his photos contain some aspect of island culture. That island culture is filled with color is pretty obvious too. The most common sources are brightly colored food and clothing but bright splashes are frequently supplied by the land itself.

Although it is not presented as such, the book really is a travelogue of sorts. Most if not all of the travel photos were taken during a single extended trip taken by the author and his wife in early 2023. After deciding not to use the four ‘B’s as organizing tools, Cohen went with a fairly straightforward geographical organization. The Philippines gets three chapters covering the three areas where they spent the most time. These are Manila, North Luzon, and Cebu/Bohol. Palau and Guam each get their own chapter. Each chapter begins with an actual postcard that the Cohens mailed to themselves from the region covered by the chapter accompanied by a brief description of the region. A map, with locations of interest marked, follows.

The chapters are then filled with pictures of people, places, and things accompanied by text ranging from a few words to a few paragraphs. Most questions I had when first encountering a photo were answered in nearby text. The places pictured range from mountains to markets. Things range from colorful new balloons offered for sale to an abandoned Japanese tank slowly being claimed by foliage. People include unnamed workers, islanders in native dress, a mayor, a governor, a president, and a would-be bride left at the altar.

Had I really wanted to include a fourth ‘C’ in my list of components, I guess I could have used cockfighting. I was surprised and maybe even a little shocked to come across two photos of fighting cocks in the book. The photos are not particularly graphic but they nonetheless gave me pause. At the end of that pause, I accepted them as part of the documentation of a culture and a reminder that not every aspect of every culture — most definitely including our own — is pleasant.

Philippines, Palau, and Guam includes an appendix where Cohen provides more technical information on the photos and even shares the itinerary of the trip that produced them. The book is self-published and at present the best way to learn how to acquire it is to contact the author through his website at MattCohenTravelPhotography.com. I will update this review when other information becomes available.

I know Terri Ryburn as the owner of historic Sprague’s Super Service in Normal, Illinois, and as a key ingredient in the Miles of Possibility Route 66 Conferences. I know the picture on the cover of the book from a copy hanging on the wall of the former gas station that Ryburn has turned into a Route 66 information center, gift shop, and photo op. I knew that was Terri seated on the fender with her dad and older brothers standing beside her because she told me when I spotted the photo on the wall. She may have told me that the photo contained only half of her total family but if she did I forgot. From reading No Crybabies Allowed I learned (or maybe relearned) that, while Terri was the youngest family member in this particular photo, she would be in the elder half of eight children after two more brothers and two sisters came along. None were crybabies.

I didn’t care much for the book’s title when I first saw it. I may have liked it even less after encountering it in the text for the first time. Terri’s brothers started a “boys only” club which she, of course, wanted to join. When being told that girls were not allowed brought on tears, they told her that there were no crybabies allowed either. I was still calibrating the book in my mind at that point and I seriously feared that I was in for many pages of the boys driving their sister to tears then laughing at her or her refusing to let tears actually form to prove she was no crybaby. By then I’d read enough to know better but I guess I just didn’t.

But it wasn’t long before an entirely different view of the title started to form. The Ryburns were poor. Often very poor. Often very very poor. They lived in an apartment when Terri was born but were soon living in a tent and carrying water from a neighboring house. It was quite a step up when her father built “a windowless 10′ x 16′ tarpaper shack”. I’ve read more than a few tales of people living in poverty. It often seems like the writers make lots of comparisons and toss around adjectives to stress just how poor someone is. That is infrequently the case here. Situations are described in enough detail that comparisons can easily be made but they are not forced. I don’t believe there is a single instance of “we were so poor that…”. I began to think of the book’s title as Terri’s instruction to herself. Tell your story accurately but don’t whine about it.

The family’s financial situation was not helped by Ray Ryburn’s wanderlust. Their frequent moves over the western two-thirds of the country were always instigated by Terri’s father, sometimes with apparent justification and sometimes not. A typical move had them downsizing their already meager belongings to fit into whatever timeworn vehicle was in their possession at the time then cramming themselves into what space was left while Hazel Ryburn counted her offspring as they boarded to make sure none were left behind. That seems a little like the Joads and I don’t doubt that there were times when the Ryburns in transit resembled people fleeing the dust bowl a couple of decades earlier.

No Crybabies Allowed is autobiographical. It covers the first dozen years of Terri Ryburn’s life in chronological order. However, it is done with anecdotes that, in many cases, could stand alone as short stories of life in the 1950s or of being a child in any decade. Some, like the neighborhood prayer meeting, are hilarious. Others are about as far from funny as it is possible to be.

While the Ryburns are living in San Francisco, a very young Terri is invited to a prayer meeting by a Spanish-speaking neighbor. As the adult women pray loudly with hands in the air, a non-Spanish-speaking Terri joins them. For the most part, she relies on copying the other voices with a syllable or so lag but she also tosses in a few phrases of her own (e.g., caballero dog) that she learned by watching Zorro on TV. Some of the emotional women had begun to cry but the tears stopped as they opened their eyes to look at the enthusiastic visitor. Ending the crying, she decided, was proof that her prayers were working.

For an example of something at the other end of the scale, the bonfire scene as they prepare to leave Illinois for California is one that sticks in my mind. The bonfire is the final step in downsizing. Useless furniture and other items not making the trip go into the fire. The boys make a game of tossing their few toy cars and trucks into the fire. The same fate has been decreed for Linda, Terri’s doll. Terri at first refuses but eventually tosses the doll into the flames while tears flow. Linda has been through some rough times including the brothers using her head for a ball just a few pages earlier. She’s in pretty bad shape and somehow considering the doll’s sorry condition makes the toss acceptable. Maybe it’s just rationalizing the inevitable but that’s not a bad skill to master when dealing with the inevitable crops up so often. Ryburn didn’t write the following and maybe she didn’t even think it but I did. Sobbing over a doll does not make you a crybaby.

Terri (actually Theressa, I learned) Ryburn and I are about the same age so some of her childhood experiences parallel my own. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane and I remember ordering books from the Scholastic Book Club. I remember weak Kool-Aid and peanut butter sandwiches. I suppose the familiar bits that brought back my own memories are one reason I enjoyed this book. But Ryburn and I don’t remember these things exactly the same way. I don’t recall ever having a problem getting a few quarters for my Scholastic Book Club order and our Kool-Aid almost always had some sugar in it. And we never moved beyond a few miles and not at all during my school years. Maybe — and I feel a tiny tinge of guilt saying this — I enjoyed the book because it made me appreciate the circumstances of my childhood even more.

The book can be purchased from Amazon via the link at the end but a better way would be to get an autographed copy direct from Terri at Ryburn Place, 305 Pine St, Normal, IL. Terri would also be happy to mail copies. Call (309-585-4103) or email (ryburnplace66@gmail.com) to arrange.

No Crybabies Allowed: The Past as Told by Me, Dr. Terri Ryborn, Independently published (December 9, 2019), 7 x 10 inches, 405 pages, ISBN 978-1093973686
Available through Amazon.

This makes two consecutive book reviews that are seriously belated and that’s hardly their only connection. I wasn’t even aware of either the book or its author when I arrived at the 2022 Lincoln Highway Association conference but, John Jackson, co-author of that other book, was. More importantly, John was aware that Thompson was at the conference to get some insight into the days of named auto trails. He is working on a book based on the true story of a 1920s medical emergency that involved the Yellowstone Trail. John was also aware that I had recently traveled the Yellowstone Trail and he intended to get the two of us together at the conference. John wasn’t actually present when Thompson and I first met but, because of his earlier comments to both of us, no introduction was required when we found ourselves sitting at the same table for a presentation.

I know I’ve mentioned before that I do not read much fiction these days so it is unlikely I would have stumbled across Omar on my own. Thompson and I had several discussions about the Yellowstone Trail and early automobile travel in general, and that gave me the personal connection that made me want to start reading the book. The book itself made me not want to quit once I had started. It’s a page-turner of the first order.

By simplifying the plot to a ridiculous degree I can describe it as a race between terrorists and government agencies to reach a treasure. The treasure isn’t a simple stash of cash or gold bars but an exquisitely bound book that went down with the Titanic. Those elements alone bring bookbinding, deep sea exploration, and maritime law into the mix. Toss in an airport bombing, high-speed shoot-outs, kidnapping, and some professional rivalry and betrayal and there are enough plot threads to all but assure at least one is left dangling suspensefully every page or so.

And the bookbinding and sea exploring aspects are not dismissed with a few words of awe and wonder. They are covered with some serious discussion of craft, technology, and even a little chemistry.

I started this review with an admission of being late to the game but I’m not just a little late; I’m over twenty years late. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing is mentioned a few times in this book as an example of a major terrorist attack. It surely loomed large in Thompson’s mind as he constructed this novel in the latter half of the 1990s. On the day that Omar was published, August 1, 2001, people knew that terrorism on the scale Thompson describes was possible but not many thought it likely. Less than a month and a half later we knew better.

Omar Craig O. Thompson, StrataGem Press (August 1, 2001), 5.25 x 8.25 inches, 624 pages, ISBN 978-0967520711
Available through Amazon.

I have probably known John Jackson for nearly ten years. John was instrumental in establishing the Lincoln Highway association’s “Bernie Queneau Coast-To-Coast Lincoln Highway Recognition Award” in 2014, and I know we met while he was actively working on that. Maybe before. He has continued to be quite active in the LHA including serving presently as treasurer. Several standout articles written by him have appeared in the association’s official publication, The Forum.

I realize that by telling you all of this, I’m really spotlighting just how late I am to digging into Trail of Trees. The book had existed for at least a couple of years before I met John and the events it tells of happened a decade or more before that. I think I may have heard something about John and his wife Joyce planting some trees but I’m not certain even of that. l am certain that what I heard — if anything — did not reveal that “some trees” equaled 252 and the planting involved all fifty states and the District of Columbia.

This book is important because the project it documents is important. It started as something to occupy Joyce’s mind as she underwent chemotherapy. That’s pretty important, of course, but the project soon grew to involve her immediate and extended family and small groups of strangers in every corner of the country. Some of those strangers were involved ever so briefly and no deeper than their official positions required while others took wholeheartedly to their piece of the project and stayed in contact with the Jacksons far beyond the day of planting and the planning that preceded it.

In terms of time, I’ve little doubt that planning was the biggest part of the project. The concept is deceptively easy to describe: plant some trees at a place with a Jackson connection in every state. But just identifying those places was far from easy. Sure, many states have a city named Jackson and there are a couple of Jacksonvilles but others seem to contain not even a hint of Jackson. There Joyce had to get creative and tie in the names of their children for plantings at places with names like Christina River, Robertsville, and Stevens Village. The names Joyce and John also got pulled into the mix.

Of course, picking a location was just the beginning. They weren’t the only challenges facing the Jacksons but finding someone in the area to coordinate with, scheduling travel, and arranging for the actual trees to be planted were the biggest. They tried to arrange plantings in clusters to get the most out of long trips and, of course, they had to schedule those plantings around all their normal real-life requirements. It’s an impressive accomplishment.

The book contains no huge surprises in the normal sense. The Jacksons set out to plant trees in fifty states and they succeed. On the other hand, I was somewhat surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it. The plantings are covered in individual chapters in chronological sequence. In addition to details of the actual planting and the leadup to it, the chapters typically include background information on the town or area including its history. Sometimes reaching a site was as simple as driving there from their home but more often it involved flying and renting a car big enough to hold five, ten, or fifteen trees. In Alaska, the final leg of the trip was by boat. There’s a little travelogue in every chapter.

The original ten-year target — which was met — is an indication of the project’s size. Its complexity is hinted at by the schedule and travel challenges I’ve mentioned. There really isn’t a similarly simple indicator of its long-term impact but a sense of that is available to some of us by thinking of trees planted by previous generations of our own families. There are trees planted by my father and grandfather without ceremony that can stir up memories. Imagine the memories connected with 252 trees whose planting involved thousands of miles and hundreds of people. It is, for certain, a legacy.

Of all those trees, only five were known to have perished by the time this book was published. Embarrassingly, those were the trees in Ohio, my home state and the Jackson’s current residence. I checked with John after reading the book and learned that they managed to get the trees replaced after moving to Ohio. That’s great news but I’m still embarrassed.

Trail of Trees, John and Joyce Jackson, Printing Arts Press (October 2010), 8.5 x 11 inches, 261 pages, ISBN 978-0615397146
Available through Amazon.