"Of Woods And Wild Things"

Kevin Coolidge

This morning I wrestled a bear in my pajamas. Now, how he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know. That’s right give a man a fish and he’ll eat for the day, but teach a man to fish and he’ll be drinking beer and spinning tales before you know it. I grew up loving the woods and the wild things in them. Heck, I thought every ten year old knew how to identify a large-mouthed bass, or a pileated woodpecker, and knew that rattlers weren’t really poisonous, but venomous, and believe me, there’s a big difference if you are hungry I still find it hard to swallow that city folk think food comes from a grocery store, and that they can’t get milk from a bull. Milk comes from a cow. You try milking a bull and let me know how it goes.

See, the land doesn’t belong man, and by man, I mean humanity as a whole, It is the other way around. Man belongs to the land, the earth. I believe that the spirit of a place can call to a man. Some folks just belong in certain places. Blood calls to blood and spirit calls to spirit. It sings to you, draws you in and once it has you in your grasp. Well, I’m getting ahead of myself again.

I love stories. Stories are webs, connecting threads to threads to threads, each following to the center, because the center is the end, each person a thread of the story. Of Woods and Wild Things, a collection of related vignettes by Don Knaus, has some good yarns that weave into the tale of a man, and his relationship with nature.

The first rule of writing is to write what you know. It gives the writing a sense of verisimilitude that certain something that gives ones writing the sense of trueness, of realness. Although, Of Woods and Wild Things is a work of fiction, there’s more than a hint of the autobiographical. The stories follow a young man through his life from novice fisherman and hunter to seasoned woodsman.

There’s fishing and forests, hunting and hiking, camping and canoeing, but the stories are about more than woodcraft and the outdoors. It’s about family and friendship, memories and mentoring, youth and yearning and a rite of passage that is becoming all too uncommon in our modern society.

Each story stands on it’s own, some are humorous, some carry a sense of nostalgia and some just tell a tale. Being a ridgerunner myself I loved seeing the names of people and places I grew up with and around. The face of Wellsboro may have changed over the years, but the process of growing up remains unchanged. Each generation thinks it is the first to discover a new love or a new place, but the heart is the heart, regardless of the Age.

Don Knaus was born and raised in Wellsboro Pennsylvania. His book, Of Woods and Wild Things can be found at several area businesses in Wellsboro, as well as on his website www.donknaus.com , and check out his weekly column in the Wellsboro Gazette named appropriately Woods and Wilds.