Flat Rock Journal: A Day in the Ozark Mountains

If you read this without expectations as I have you'll enjoy it for what it is. If you expect it to be like the classics of the past you may be disappointed. Flat Rock Journal is as good as the nature classics it just is not "like" them -- I call it a "modern nature classic". We could all benefit if we take time out for Mother Nature to clear the cobwebs in our rat race world.

Flat Rock Journal is a kind of autobiography, and it is indeed about the author and his life-history, so those readers who want to learn about Ozark ecology will be frustrated or find the author egocentric. But "person in the woods" tales are not natural history, they are stories that begin from Thoreau's "Most people live lives of quiet desperation" and procede to show how the author escapes from this. The trees, birds and frogs -indeed the whole landscape of Flat Rock - is a kind of prop for this, however lovingly described. Carey is aware enough of this at his best, as in the chapter where he tries to get frogs to sing Handel. His life isn't meant as a model for everyone's, except insofar as he definitely escapes quiet desperation, and wants the rest of us to do so too.

Ken Carey is a brilliant writer whose past experiences bring relevance and meaning to the things he sees on a spring journey through his "backyard" forest in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri. He uses his keen spiritual insight, naturalistic knowledge, and reponsible way of life to show how man and nature are linked--inseperable. I am a native of the Ozark region and thoroughly enjoyed reading his accounts of the natural history of the Ozarks and of his adventures abroad.

"I heart-fully enjoyed an excellent book about the authors experience spending the day in the forest. I could feel the wholesome adventure and spiritual richness come through." -Ed McConnell... More reviews within the following non-profit web site... http://www.concentric.net/~Edmc/frj.html