Why read Kephart? Who cares?

Horace Kephart died in 1931. A long time ago. Why would anyone still be interested in another dead white guy woodsman writer? A guy who liked to go camping and loafing in the woods with his friends, roast a wild turkey stuffed with chestnuts before a high bank of hardwood coals, and have a noggin or two of the local ’shine?

Well, first, he’s just fun to read. Kephart is an engaging, sympathetic writer with an often elegant style, a love of detail, and a dry sense of humor. These attributes set him apart from many writers of his time and of ours, for that matter.

And we read him because the subject matter is still interesting. Not everyone likes to browse through old back issues of Field and Stream and Outdoor Life in the library, just to see how it was to fly fish for trout with a split-bamboo rod rather than space station graphite carbon-fiber, or sleep in a canvas tent in a blanket roll. But there’s something to be said for looking back at simpler times in the woods, and a cadre of devotees identify with their great-grandfathers’ experiences. Even if Kephart’s advice in some cases is dated , the fundamentals are sound and timeless (“Ideal outfitting is to have what we want, when we want it, and never to be bothered with anything else.”)

Camping and Woodcraft still appears regularly in the “must-have” lists of survivalists of all stripes:

“Kephart’s book is the real old-timer’s bible and, even though most of the equipment mentioned is obsolete, it is still among the first outdoorsmanship books one ought to own.” –Notes from a survival sage, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/Survive1.html

We read him to share his attractive vision of what we could think of as “the ideal life” of the vacation camper, roaming the forests, free from the daily grind of a job, and with “unrestrained liberty of action, and the proud self-reliance of one who is absolutely his own master, free to follow his bent in his own way. . . .” His themes are contemporary–and perhaps even more relevant today than they were in his own time. His “Visions of green fields and far-rolling hills, of tall forests and cool, swift-flowing streams” especially resonate today, because the fields and forests and streams are disappearing, and you’ll need permits to ramble in what’s left.

His work gives us a perspective on a bygone era of the outdoors, when a hiker could build a campfire and cut balsam boughs for a bed with no concern for decimating the forest (there weren’t enough hikers to make a dent). Kephart appreciated the value of being not just capable but comfortable in the woods. And for the historical outdoor gear-head, his books and articles provide a fascinating view of the evolution of outdoor gear.

Kephart wrote more than books and articles about camping and woodcraft. His book about his neighbors in the Southern Appalachians, Our Southern Highlanders, for example, is still in print. And for those in my profession, librarianship, who are interested in the arcane history of our discipline, his writings on being a librarian in the last decade of the 19th Century are a rich glimpse into our past.

And Kephart is a Man of Mystery. Seventy-five years after his death, he is still a mysterious figure. He was not especially forthcoming about himself, and not a great deal has been written about him, given his prominence in his day. The closest thing he wrote to an autobiography is a four-page article that appeared in the North Carolina Library Bulletin in 1922, in which he teasingly sketched his life with a few broad strokes, and ends the piece by writing, “. . . Much . . . has been left out. . . . The best stories are those that are never told.”

How different from our age, when we routinely blog our innermost thoughts for a potential audience of how many millions, and all the evidence of this solitary unveiling of our souls could disappear in a random rush of wayward electrons.