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Do yourself a delightful favour and read this book
Book Review
By Derryll White
Cartwright, Colin (2020). A Trail That Needs Riding.
Wild Horse Creek Press has done it again, bringing to the public a book about our area that speaks clearly to why we live here. Colin Cartwright draws on a life of experience living and working in southeast Kootenay. He tells story after story of the drainages and hidden valleys that surround us in the Rocky and Purcell mountains.
Anyone who has hunted, hiked or spent time chasing morels and huckleberries will find familiar places or spots here long thought about. Colin has a book full of funny and poignant stories about himself and those he travels with. He lifts the reader’s spirits with the beautiful possibilities of the trails he has followed and the adventures encountered. Anyone with a horse will relate to the peculiarities and challenges encountered by Cartwright and crew.
This is a book that takes the reader out of the town and into the wonders and glories of the wilderness all around us.
Do yourself a delightful favour and read this book.
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Excerpts from the book:
FISHING – The water in these mountain creeks is never very warm, a fact Dave commented on as he worked frantically to free the hook which he finally managed to do, and then hurried back to shore looking a little blue. Back at camp, the episode had to be described in detail to Kathy and Jill with only a bit of exaggeration on my part and a lot of denial from Dave, after which Jill accused Dave of fishing with a worm.
LUXURY – After camp was set up and the horses looked after, I decided to make a bough bed to ensure a more comfortable sleep than we had the previous night. For those who have never experienced such a thing, a bough bed can be the ultimate in sleeping comfort when in a situation such as we found ourselves. To me, the best branches to use are those of the balsam, as they are softer and generally have more of a curve to them. The larger branches are laid out close together and overlapping and then smaller branches are shoved in among the larger ones until a cushiony mattress of the desired dimensions and about eight to ten inches in depth is formed. It can then be covered with a tarp or in our case we set our tent on top of it, with the result being a soft and somewhat springy foundation on which to sleep. The only bad thing about making a bough bed was that thereafter it was hard to convince Kathy that I shouldn’t have to make one every place we camped.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
