When I was a little kid, I came across this book at my elementary school. I don’t recall now if it was a library book sale or exactly what, but it was discarded from the school’s library. 

I ended up getting two other books as well, one about a bobwhite quail and one about a trout. All three were written by the same author, R.W. Eschmeyer, and illustrated by Roy K. Wills. Each book imparted conservation themes in the telling of an individual animal’s life. 

Willie Whitetail was my favorite of the three and I read it many times. It is very well-made, nicely bound, and is the kind of book that is pleasing just to hold in your hands.

I’ve always felt close to wild places, from wilderness areas to drainage ditches to the cool underside of overturned rocks, and all that one finds in such places. Much of this is born simply, I think, of much time spent outside growing up. It’s an inheritance of my father’s love of nature and my mother’s patience and natural curiosity.

I looked for rocks and fossils and artifacts, caught frogs and snakes, walked through meadows of tall, yellow-brown grass, found skulls and antlers, bones and rodent teeth, made fishing poles, laid down in hollowed out deer beds in the grass, picked up leaves, whittled sticks, slept outside under the stars in every season, caught beetles and boxelder bugs and crawdads and salamanders, trudged through swampy floodwater, swam in creeks, canoed in lakes, felt the soft white wood of dead cottonwoods under my fingers and watched the breeze sift through the glossy leaves of the living.

With my eyes closed, I have been swimming through the past, remembering the days of my childhood, and smiling as the sunshine from those days warms my heart as it warmed my neck and arms as I played back then. I have this old book, with its cloth cover and sturdy binding, and the character of Willie Whitetail to thank for this sudden flood of pleasant memories. Or rather, perhaps, I have Eschmeyer and Wills and the old school library to thank.