Snowmelt Timberdoodles: and Other Excursions
by Herschel Raney Jr.
Category: Nature

Memory is the electric skeleton for the visual life. Here are trips into marshes and swamps, forests and stream valleys and the associations triggered from such simple experiences. Whether we go to forget or to remember, these are the traces of one walker's year among insects and birds, through the seasons in the Mississippi and Arkansas River Valleys. Neither biography nor diary, it is at times personal narrative and at times just the moment conveyed as purely as possible. We are sometimes only what we have seen and who we recall in the seeing. It is the joy of going, even for an hour. This is the come-back-and-tell-it part. Among dogs, armadillos, songbirds and children, sometimes it is best just to be humble and stay out of the way. Sometimes you laugh and write it down.