TRAILS OF A WILDERNESS WANDERER

by Andy Russell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1970

Horse traders and story tellers know how to do a bit of currying and brushing,"" Andy Russell (of Grizzly Country) remarks somewhere midway in his book. Russell, who ""grew up in the shadow of the Rockies"" in Southern Alberta by Drywood Creek, where one was respectful of danger, writes of fifty years as boy and man in Western Canada. Fisherman, hunter, horseman, trapper, guide and outfitter, among other things, Russell writes from a plenitude of experience and takes the time to tell a story well. He writes of tickling trout or trapping a wily coyote or making friends with a mule, of the Hareskins, whose language so resembles that of the Navajo down South, of men who gave the West its flavor -- trapper Jos Cosley whose sign was a lonesome heart scratched on an aspen, or remittance man Lionel Brook out from England, who once took a taxi from San Francisco to Pincher Creek, Alberta. Horses Jennie, Jimmy, Amos, Sally, Elk and Ace take their place in the pantheon of personalities that animated his world. The years as boy and man come through with a campfire tang. Russell's book ends on a harsh fact that pulls the reader up short as a lassoed steer: civilization has come to Drywood Creek in the form of pollution; the wilderness stream is dead. So are many of the men and ways that made the west. But Russell -- the genuine article -- survives.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION