A special e-mail from Rick Sowash (April 15, 2020):

The Cabin Down the Glen

Hello -

First the link, then the saga.

Forty six years ago, I bought a copy of Donald Zochert's Walking In America, an anthology of short pieces of writing about, well, just that, walking in America. One of them was a selection from Odell Shepard's The Harvest of a Quiet Eye. I was immediately taken with the quiet dignity and wistful beauty of the writing in this selection.

The book from which the passage had been excerpted, a collection of essays and poems originally published by Houghton Mifflin in 1927, had been long out of print but I located a beautiful first edition through inter-library loan. Such a lovely book! Broad margins, richly expressive illustrations, text and illustrations both printed in dark green ink!

What do you do when you love a book? You read it again. Then you track down everything else by the author. I read all of Shepard's books, some of them twice. Then what? I learned all I could about the man and I read at least one book by each of the many writers about whom he enthuses in his own writings.

Eventually I set to music three of the poems from The Harvest of a Quiet Eye. I wanted to enter my scores in a contest for new choral music but I needed written permission to use the texts.

I wrote to Houghton Mifflin (publisher of the book) and was referred to Mrs. Marion Shepard, the author's daughter-in-law and literary executrix. I wrote to her, requesting the necessary permission also asking if she could answer some questions about the book, and refer me to others who were interested in Shepard. I was particularly curious to know if any of his personal papers were still intact, perhaps a journal.

Mrs. Shepard replied cordially, giving me the permission I sought, putting me touch with several other interested people from whom I eventually learned that Shepard's papers are preserved in The Watkinson Library on the campus of Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

On a windy day of March, 1990, while on tour in New England, I visited the Watkinson Library. My schedule allowing only a few hours, I went straight to the Shepard Collection's index of materials. I was very surprised to find there a brief description of an unpublished manuscript titled The Cabin Down The Glen.

My timing was could not have been better. Shepard's papers, ignored for years, disorganized and uncatalogued, had finally been carefully collated by a junior staff member of the Watkinson Library. The newly-completed index listed biographical information, Shepard's correspondence, manuscripts of his books and shorter writings, lectures, clippings, and photographs.

I had imagined that I would spend a few hours happily shuffling through the early drafts of some of my favorites among his books and perhaps become acquainted with Shepard's handwriting; I hadn't the remotest notion of making an important discovery. I assumed that an author as successful as Shepard had been in his day (he won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Bronson Alcott) would have had publishers eager to snap up everything that poured from his fertile pen.

I could justly claim to be an authority on Odell Shepard. I had read all his published writings and learned all I could about him. His portrait hung in my study; I had set his poetry to music; I had corresponded with his family and remaining friends.

Yet The Cabin Down The Glen was a title unknown to me!

I eagerly asked the Watkinson Library staff to let me see this mysterious manuscript. The parts I had time to read that day impressed me very much. It appeared to be the complete manuscript of an unpublished book by one of my favorite authors, an unjustly forgotten writer whom I regard as one of the finest essayists of the last century! Few are privileged to experience the excitement of making such a discovery.

I saw immediately that the book was intended to be a sequel or companion volume to The Harvest of a Quiet Eye. This in itself was very exciting: Harvest is, in my opinion, a masterpiece, a classic of the literature of walking, Shepard's best book. The prospect of a fraternal twin to this, one of my favorite books, set my heart pounding.

Imagine if the manuscript of a sequel to Walden should suddenly turn up in a Concord attic! Such a discovery would excite me only a little less than the moment when I, with pounding heart and trembling fingers, removed from its box, Shepard's typed and hand-corrected manuscript of The Cabin Down the Glen.

Harvest and Cabin are both collections of reflective essays, culminating with a poem or two, but while Harvest is about youthful wandering, Cabin is about mature rootedness. It recounts Shepard's experiences of solitude while dwelling alone in the woods of northwestern Connecticut. It is a re-creation of Thoreau's great experiment on Walden pond -- appropriate for Shepard, who edited the best-known anthology of Thoreau's journals (The Heart of Thoreau's Journals) and who might be best described as a latter-day transcendentalist.

When I returned home, I immediately set about corresponding and negotiating with the Watkinson Library, and, after several months, the staff sent me a photocopy of the manuscript. I requested and obtained permission from Watkinson Library (owner of the manuscript) and Mrs. Shepard to edit the work and to seek a publisher for it.

When I first encountered the manuscript I believed that it was complete, but this was based upon the very brief perusal I had made of it while at The Watkinson Library. When I had the opportunity to give it a closer examination, it turned out to be not quite complete after all. Three of the essays mentioned in a Table of Contents were missing and the order of the existing essays was not clear -- four of the essays were not mentioned in the Table of Contents. Also there were several versions of some of the essays and it was not clear which version was final. I had to do quite a bit of stitching and sleuthing.

I also had to do a fair amount of work on the type-written text itself, puzzling through nearly illegible hand-written corrections, tracking down translations of quotations in several languages, and correcting Shepard's often casual spellings and punctuation. I corresponded with the Watkinson Library staff and with Mrs. Shepard on these points and all were helpful.

The manuscript runs to 70,000 words and the physical labor of typing it into my computer was a challenge in itself. It was a great pleasure all the same, a fascinating, once in a lifetime exercise, bringing this fragmented, unorganized collection of essays and poems into some kind of order.

I can only guess why The Cabin Down The Glen was never published. It was written in the early 1930's, during the Great Depression. The Harvest of a Quiet Eye had been published in the late 1920's, during a time of great prosperity and, very likely, Shepard anticipated that a companion volume to that book would be welcomed. But the Depression deepened before the manuscript could find its way into print and a great many publishing projects were doubtless stalled as publishers cut back or went out of business altogether.

By the time the Depression and WW II had passed, the modest success of The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1926) had been forgotten, American society had changed drastically,. Few publishers and readers were interested reflective essays on solitude and Nature.

But society continues to change. The Environmental movement spawned a new generation of readers who might very well embrace this book as it has embraced similar books, such as Sand County Almanac, The Outermost House, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek and the writings of similar authors such as Edward Abbey, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson, Colin Fletcher, John Muir, Edwin Way Teale and many others.

Then there is this very recent, utterly sobering change brought on by the advent of the coronavirus. A book written by a man discovering richness and depth during a period of self-imposed isolation might speak to our present circumstance in ways I could not have imagined when I brought the book to light in 2006.

What is this book, The Cabin Down The Glen? It is a book about the reconciling of opposites that enables a mature manhood, a state arrived at, in Shepard's particular case, by means of connections with Nature through solitude, husbandry and paternity. Most of the essays explore this complex, masculine theme.

lt is also a simple book about simple things -- bird song, a starry night, trees, spring water -- but the deeper themes, never obscured for long, might best be briefly expressed as Shepard's subjective wrestlings with Great Questions: What is a man? How shall he become wise? How shall he regard his maturity and demise? What are the signposts of a man's inward journey? What problems are unique to the American man's quest? Is it useful to try to discern a masculine beauty in Nature? How shall it be distinguished from a feminine beauty? How shall a man "husband" and "father" the land he loves and, by extension, the earth and what we call Nature or, more often nowadays, 'The Environment?'

These are timeless themes, and yet very current! - think of climate change! Shepard approaches them as a literary artist, through the genres of the essay and the poem. We, his readers, lacking his literary gifts, may find solace and fascination in observing his grapplings with problems so intimately a part of our own existences. In this and in the superb quality of the writing itself, lovely, musical, consists, for me the value of The Cabin Down The Glen.

It was extravagantly exciting for me to discover this manuscript and to realize, as I eventually settled down to read it, that I was the first to lay eyes on it since Shepard had filed it away in 1935, sixty years earlier, and to feel that whatever modest critical faculties I possessed could, for once, be brought to bear untrammeled by any pronouncements already passed upon the book by other, previous readers and critics.

What made this adventure especially keen, aside from the novelty of it, was the great relish I already felt for this author's work. How often I had pined for another book as good as The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, a book I have read at least two dozen times. And all the while the book I yearned for was quietly waiting for me in manuscript in the Watkinson Library.

Finding an audience for The Cabin Down The Glen was the remaining and on-going task in the resurrection of this remarkable, long lost book. In 2006, I published it, gave away copies as liberally as I could, sent many to reviewers, sold just enough to break even on the cost of the design and printing. I set to music a few of the book's many lyrical passages. I have quoted it frequently in these emails you permit me to send to you. I have only three first-edition copies left but a second printing is being prepared and the book will soon be available again in a hard-copy format.

And now, having established a base of friends and fans who kindly permit me to send emails pertaining to my life's work, I can share this book with you by means of the internet.

Here, then, again, is the link that will take you to a PDF of the book which you may read on line, download, even print out if you wish.

Free. My gift. Perhaps it will speak to you in a special way during this time when so many of us are isolated. I hope you find meaning and value in it. I hope you will enjoy it.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
April 15, 2020
www.sowash.com