Pathfinder by Robert Love

Collection of Poetry, Essays and Tales by Montana Logger Robert Love
Purchase Pathfinder by Robert Love

“Pathfinder, Selected Poems, Essays and Tales” by Robert Love

Up On Big Rock Poetry Series, a Shipwreckt Books imprint, Winona, Minnesota, 2023

ISBN:978-1-7376685-9-6.

By James Ross Kelly

I go to Montana about every other year, and my wife goes every year, as her mother lives there—she’ll be flying out there this year. Last year we drove, and it is a long drive from Northern California. Robert Love came to Montana from Pennsylvania about the same time I went back to Oregon after the Army and college in the early 1970s. Back in Oregon for decades, everyone I knew that went to Montana did not come back. When I finally got to see it, I knew why–there’s a special something. Robert Love’s new book Pathfinder is part of that special something. He, like some of my friends, did not go back. This book is organized as half poetry, and then essays and tales.

Selected Poems 1973-2022

The poetry Love gives us is studied verse after 20th century American poets. The introduction by Ken McCullough makes a comparison with Gary Snyder, and this is not off the mark at all with a deep rich notion of the natural world that is not one of a day hiker in for quick walk up some of the Montana trails in August then slamming down a poem for the New Yorker. Robert has lived the life of Montana as a logger. Yet, this poetry is not unlike William Carlos Williams the MD from Patterson, New Jersey that turned modern poetry on its head and sent the century on and away from the stale rhymes of the past. But Love made a living as a timber faller among the confluence of many rivers and lakes out of Western Montana down to the Absaroka Mountains. The comparison to Williams the MD to a timber cutter might seem far-fetched unless you’ve been in the industry even a little bit. Timber fallers are resolute intelligent men who have to be as careful as surgeons, or they may be casualties—not losing a patient’s life but their own. Love’s rich panoply of Rocky Mountain material and capturing this: the there and back of it, from a life of cutting logs and hunting in Montana. These poems are as important as “The Red Wheelbarrow,” American literature has never really been mainly urban. One or two of these poems should be in the New Yorker.

Robert Love creates poems that may be as good as any now in American Literature. “Cinders,” while completely different than Williams, “Widows Lament in Springtime,” is just as powerful. Love’s poem, “Four Elk Dreams,” about elk hunting then dreaming about the elk turning into people that give voice, share empathy, and understanding about using them for food, ends as an other-worldly type of experience for a few moments with a cognizant idea that he should eat something else. “Reading Bukowski: Lunchbreak” has Love reading a well-worn book and other than the title he never gives the big guy a mention but turns it into an homage amidst a break with logging gear. “The Pine Martin on the Gut pile,” wisps you into a Montana scene, you read it, and know it happened, and it is simply not like anything else.

Essays and Tales

Since the 1970s there has been a rage over forests in the Pacific Northwest. Love has been embedded into this and reports back. Tree planters, loggers, Forest Service employees, have seen the result firsthand. Making a living in the middle of clearcut forests is a visual experience not unlike seeing a hell scape aftermath of war. It will grow back if left alone. The problem is it will not be a forest for one hundred to five hundred years. That educated men traded forests for money via schools of Forestry funded by timber barons is the way of the world. Robert Love, after cutting timber for Plum Creek for twenty years, left the big and much maligned company and has for some time now been advocating something else. There has always been a way of cutting timber that was friendly to ecology, the land, the animals, and the great beauty of this land. Love left Plum Creek and began logging small scale for private parties with a method of considering that landscape as it is–this is a friendly method. Love’s subsequent essays here pop with a scintillating prose that explains the dilemma. There are methods and reasoning to change tactics from the industrial forestry that eliminated forests in favor of tree farms— to advocate for kinder and gentler way of leaving larger trees and managing species as they are adapted for ever present forest fires. The first essay “Signatures on the Land,” begins with a quote from Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac. So, if you know anything about the rage over forests you then know you are in good hands. Then you read:

It appears our forests in the Northern Rockies have been over logged, but in light of what fire ecologists are learning about presettlement forest densities and fire patterns, it’s more often true they’ve been poorly logged. While forest densities may have once been lower than they are today, average tree size was larger. The extensive forest and the prolific elk herds that our ancestors knew have been whittled into isolated remnants, and the genetic reservoir of mature, dominant individual is steadily evaporating.

We know that we have landed in the patch of a truth teller. It is the crux of the landscape of the entire Northwestern United States and Canada. Robert Love is telling us the truth with his essays. Timber management has generally been portrayed in no other manner than production and the bottom line. These are not essays of reminiscence of the good old days as a logger-—they are from a study of the land firsthand and the available literature to find out true science and a better way. “The Forests of Lookout Ridge,” bring us up close and personal into a forested watershed in the Rocky Mountains and see a complexity that is deep and abiding and quite unlike a plot of vegetables.

A poignant moving piece well into the book, “Grandfather’s Gun,” about a Thanksgiving deer hunt around Love’s property with his son who has come of age and is out with his father to harvest a deer with Love’s Grandfather’s gun. The simplicity and bare and accurate description of the humanity of his family, landscape, and wildlife are more than a workman like product. We know the territory from the poem “Cinders.” There is a completion here and we see why this was not, two slim volumes poems and essays—yet the connection stays random.

After completing the essays and a revealing “Journal of a Feral Shaman,” toward the end we see something that was revealed in the poetry, and our dilemma is we want more of the poetry, but not fewer essays.

The richness of dreaming of talking elk, burying a friend who had requested a grave on Love’s property and the heartfelt descriptive sanctity what that entailed, it all comes around that there’s a special something about Robert Love’s poetry and prose—this book will take you down into some Montana trails and truthful notions as if you were not a tourist.

 

Bob Love at Home in Columbia Springs, Montana
Bob Love at Home in Columbia Springs, Montana

The Sailing Master, Book Three: Letter of Marque

 

Lee Henschel Jr.

 

 Fans of The Sailing Master Books One & Two, the wait for the third and final volume is over!

Click to purchase

$17.95 – buy a print copy of Book Three

 

 

 

$16.95 – Buy a copy of Book ONE online

 

$17.95 – Buy a print copy of Book TWO online

 

 

The Sailing Master Book One: Coming of Age, the ebook, is available from Kindle. Or borrow a copy from the Kindle Lending Library. $4.50 – Buy The Sailing Master Book One for Kindle

Red Bricks

Love and treachery in the old southwest

by Anne Muccino

$17.95 – buy a print copy online

Red Bricks, the debut novel by Kansas City writer, Anne Muccino, is set in the desert southwest circa 1930. JT Swain is just seventeen when he loses everything that matters to him, his father and the ranch he grew up on. The young man sets out on horseback to find the connectedness suddenly gone from his life. He meets Dalia Jackson, the fifteen-year-old, half-Nahua Indian, half-white daughter of a wealthy New Mexico rancher, and quickly discovers that the rebellious young woman sees her place in the world as equal to that of any man. Strangely drawn to Dalia, when JT learns that she has disappeared, he sets out to find her, challenging the law when he must, tracking her into the barrios of Juárez, Mexico, where he witnesses firsthand the cruelty of human trafficking.


In prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, at once savage and tender, Red Bricks by Anne Muccino offers no easy outs, instead asking us to contemplate the paradoxical nature of loss and redemption, of the razor’s edge between life and death. Muccino’s stunning debut explores both what it means to be harmed beyond recognition and what it means, finally, to recognize one’s own strength. This is a riveting and deeply moving novel, one of the best I’ve read in a long while. Anne Muccino is a talent to be reckoned with.
—Abigail Dewitt, author of
News of Our Loved Ones


Anne Muccino’s debut novel is a literary gem. It is rich in detail and remarkably authentic. Catch up on your sleep. The time and place in Red Bricks are so vivid, with characters so real, so poignant, you will not want to put this book down. This is a beautiful, moving, absorbing experience, destined to become a classic.
—Dawn Shamp, author of
On Account of Conspicuous Women


Amazon reviews—

From Georgesreview: Work of Art! Triumphant debut into the literary world for Anne Muccino. Her character building is engrossing from beginning to end. A wonderful story of ones love for another and what the main character will do in his pursuit for justice and happiness, all in superb literary flair. Ms. Muccino is a talented author and I cannot wait for her next novel.

Deborah Cook says: Inspiring Novel. In a superb debut novel, Anne Muccino tells an endearing story of a young man suffering tragedy and loss as he battles his own inner turmoil. As he travels through locales described in vibrant and realistic detail, his character artfully unfolds and triumphs through courage and love. A compelling work of literature well worth reading.

Eileen Farley: Red Bricks was amazing! Great book! Loved the storyline and characters! Looking forward to reading more books from Anne Muccino.

From Amazon Customer: Excellent read. I received this moving book as a Christmas gift, and what a gift it is, indeed. The story kept me engrossed and the characters stayed with me long after I finished the last page. I immediately lent it to my sister whose response after reading it was to recommend it to her writing group. I can only hope this is the first of many such novels by Anne Muccino.

Into the Backlands—a Peace Corps Memoir

Ken Fliés

An uplifting two year odyssey of a young man to Brazil and back home again.

 $17.95 – buy a print copy


A spirited memoir of Ken Fliés’ wild odyssey from the dairy farm in southeast Minnesota to the Backlands of Brazil in 1962, where he learned about the frustrations and joys of rural community development, the satisfaction and longing that comes from genuine friendship, and back home again, a principled young man eager to take on the world.

Reviews:

I was present at the creation when the bright flame of conviction took hold in the imagination of the country and the Peace Corps became a promise fulfilled.—Bill Moyers


Into the Backlands, a Peace Corps Memoir, by Kenneth E. Dugan Fliés, reminded me of reading Eric Sevareid’s classic coming-of-age book, Canoeing with the Creed. While Sevareid paddled a canoe 2,250 miles from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay in 1930, Fliés followed President Kennedy’s challenge and joined the Peace Corps in 1962. His anecdote-ladened account of a dairy farm kid’s journey to Brazil resonates as a wide-eyed adventure during climatic times.

From training in the Deep South as racial tensions began to explode, to venturing to South America just as the Cuban Missile Crisis ratcheted up, there’s a Forrest Gump-esque feeling of witnessing history first hand. I can’t help shrugging when I think of today’s youth, glued to their screens, Twitter and text messages. Writers like Sevareid and Fliés rekindle the spirit of adventure I hope still percolates in our youth.

“Lived to its fullest, the hero’s journey results in the ascent or flight of an individual from unconsciousness to illumination and to a newfound freedom of understanding,” Fliés writes. “The flying white dove on the Peace Corps emblem fittingly symbolizes this ascent. In this way, my work and adventures in Brazil as a Volunteer expanded both my world-consciousness and self-consciousness, leading to a deeper understanding of life. Brazil became my portal of transformation. I crossed a great divide and came back with a new perspective on life.” Ken’s account will widen and broaden the reader’s perspective as well.—Curt Brown


Amazon Reviews—
From Bruce: This is a fascinating personal story of a Peace Corps volunteer. This book provides insight into the early, somewhat bumpy first few years of the Peace Corps. Told through the eyes of a talented, inquisitive, and sincere volunteer, the historical context and difficulties of making a difference in Brazil make this an excellent read.

Bill says: Great well written book. The story line flowed very nicely and the book is well written. Background information was provided throughout to bring a sense of the moment and give it context. I truly enjoyed the adventures that the Author endured. I Highly recommend this book.


From Elliott: A Wonderful Suspense, Adventure and Love Story.This memoir is a compellingly woven tale with so much depth, touching on themes of adventure, coming-of-age, religious faith, family, politics, and above all – love. I found it to be a “page-turner” that you want to keep reading to find out what happens next. The author’s vocabulary and imagery are first-rate and in my mind I could see it as a movie while I read the book. What a great window Flies has provided to us into the 1960s, the “Backlands” of the Brazilian frontier, and into the heart of a young man leaving home for the first time ever heading off into the adventure of a lifetime to serve his country and the people of Brazil. And, in the end, the underlying love story with his long-distance girlfriend back home make this story complete and utterly satisfying.

Bob Flaco: “Peace Corps brings an idealist down to earth!” Sargent Shriver. Want to know what Peace Corps was like then and now? Into The Backlands, a Peace Corps Memoir takes you by the hand into the early years of JFK’s Peace Corps and the spirit and challenges of the times…1962-1964. Ken Flies was 19 years old when he reported to Training at the University of Oklahoma as part of Brazil II, one of the first. I doubt if Ken knew what he was getting himself into, and Brazil…where’s that?

Ken’s Memoir shares the beauty and innocence of Kennedy’s “kiddie corps” as the press portrayed the first Volunteers. The isolated community of Correntina would be his home, and his adopted Brazilian family…something he never considered prior to his arrival to Brazil, and speaking Portuguese! Ken paints his new home with words and emotions that are new to this 19 year old. And Ken will never be the same, and Brazil will always be his second home! He found himself, faced the challenges of being a Volunteer, and added new friends and adventures beyond his expectations…and the two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer would be the foundation of who Kenneth Flies is.The beauty and charm of the early years of Peace Corps, with Giants such as Shriver, Jack Vaughn, Warren Wiggins and Frank Mankiewicz laid the ground work for what we have now, some 50 plus years later. The fears, frustrations, happy moments, love of our neighbors, and meeting people that will be our “families” is what Peace Corps is all about. Ken and Dave, a fellow Volunteer…made a path that we followed…and still do. Meeting new Volunteers in 2018, is like talking to the newbies of 1962…the current Volunteers seem a bit smarter than us…but they have that flame of pride and warmth of friendship they want to share. That flame is still within us, I can feel the warmth and strength. Be proud of what you and Brazil II brought with you Ken. Padre Andre saw that in you, and so did Millie.

As you read Ken’s awesome Memoir, remember what Mankiewicz believed in…”Volunteer’s first job is to get to know the people and the setting of their lives; the Volunteer starts building a community.” It isn’t the monuments you leave behind, but the communities that are now a part of you. I recommend Into the Backlands to RPCV’s, Trainees, PCV’s, and Peace Corps staff. Jody Olsen, I am sending you a copy! Ken gave us a message…The Peace Corps community is as strong now as it was in 1961! Don’t let anyone tell you differently. I encourage you to read and learn from this Memoir, share your thoughts!

As Ken would say, bate papo, chew the fat. Thank you Ken for sharing your life in Brazil and the person you became. I read your Memoir twice, had to relive my memories. My family is very Peace Corps, my brother Ron went to Peru 1963-1965 and I went to Colombia 1964-1966…I believe we were one of the first brothers to serve at the same time. Changed my life

Sixty-one

Larry Johnson

$17.95 – Buy a print copy online

   Drafted during the Vietnam era, Larry Johnson filed for conscientious objector status and served as an Army medic in Germany, carrying no weapons. The life-long peace activist from Golden Valley, Minnesota, answered JFK’s call in 1961 and hiked 50 miles. At age 61, he hiked 61 miles down Highway 61 with his grandson Tyler. To commemorate his 70th birthday, Larry completed a 70 mile hike.


Amazon Reviews—

Andy of Minnesota writes: Integrity, Compassion and Modesty. Well-written remarkable stories of some key events in the life of a man of great integrity, compassion and modesty. In these indecorous times it is encouraging to read the tales of someone who has dealt with life’s challenges in such a principled way. A must read for those now coming of age.