Forest Runes: Poems on Living and Hunting in the Mighty Natural Wilderness of North America

George Washington Sears tributes the great outdoors with a collection of poems chronicling life among nature in all its rugged glory.

A committed outdoorsman, Sears was most at home among the trees and hills of America's wilderness. Each poem in this anthology chronicles a different aspect of life spent camping and living in the depths of nature, with only creatures for company. The author's affinity is plain to behold: he describes watching how a given animal behaves, how the weather unfolds amid the forest, how a camp feels like home, how overarching nature's majesty is.

The invigorating aspect of being outdoors is admired by the author; the mountain air, tinged with the scents of trees, was thought to benefit health in the 19th century. Other aspects of the book recount movements of the era; temperence from alcohol, and conflicts with the Native Americans, are alluded to.

George Washington Sears felt a sense of awe and wonder about nature while still a boy: his parent's books featuring Native Americans depicted a vast and beautiful habitats. Growing up to be a great lover of nature, Sears would often camp in the forests between working as a journalist and poet. He was an early proponent of the canoe as a means of exploring the rivers, and would undertake tours using these boats.