Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, occasionally chews on one of the keeper’s books, and he seems to appreciate the attention. Authors, with their egos in tow, appreciate any attention, but it does not often come with the thoroughness and depth of a recent review from Jerry Davis, who read “Treeson, an APOLOGIA to Trees” backwards.
We’ll likely run out of newspapers before trees but W. Forrest Stokes makes a case to think about all the cambia going dormant for keeps in his book, “Treeson: an APOLOGIA to trees,” 2022. A pleasant surprise is this book is not just a package of columns from Stevens Point, Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago newspapers were Bill reported from. There are explanations of how each column or story came to be, mainly ordinary people doing ordinary things, or famous people doing ordinary things. Living life; and some dying along the way, too, and other animals, farm and wildlife. The cover shows a column, “Why I hunt deer: further thoughts.” The chapters, 29 total, do not allow a title, so I paged through the book looking for the deer piece, which appeared in one of the later chapters. As long as I’m here in the book’s end, I may as well read the book backwards, not line by line of course, but by Chapter 29, 28 and so on. One advantage, I found, was when I finished a chapter and moved ahead to the preceding chapter the page number told me exactly how many pages to go before getting to the beginning, without any math. To honor the tree, as Bill did, I used an American chestnut leaf as a marker. I highly recommend reading this book, written and published by Bill, with the help of Phyllis. Read it in whatever direction you prefer. It makes grand reading, either way.
–Jerry Davis
Thanks, Jerry
“Treeson….” and other books by the keeper are available from Amazon or from him at www.billstokesauthor.com
Photo by Bill Stokes