Tom Huggler

"On an August evening we sit at one of those curbside Paris cafes near Hotel de Ville, my new bride and I and another American couple—who, coincidentally, are celebrating their fifth anniversary—sipping a digestif and talking about how the city is relatively deserted in August (the month the French go on vacation) and other subjects of insignificance. Dusk is gathering and with it come pools of light beneath the street lamps and a decided coolness to the slight breeze. A jaundiced leaf, curled dead perhaps from pollution, skips across our white linen tablecloth. Grabbing the leaf, I open it and hold it to the light. Round and slightly serrated, the leaf looks like that of an aspen. "What does this remind you of?" I ask my friend Tom.

 

"'Grouse and woodcock hunting," Tom says without hesitation. "What does it make you think of?"

 

"'That and Bird Camp," I reply. "In six weeks we'll be there again."

 

Tom smiles. Our wives share knowing glances and resume their conversation."

 

Nearly forty years later, I still smile upon reading that passage and recalling that evening. I wrote this book as a tribute to my favorite upland gamebird. Published in 1996, the book features original black-and-white acrylic art and both original and reprinted color plates by my friend Jim Foote, a giant among American wildlife artists. Limited to 750 specially bound copies, the book was quickly reprinted in hardcover and remains in print today, thanks to a paperback release by Skyhorse Publishing.

"This collection of observations, impressions, recollections, and tales of one sort or another constitutes a celebration of life in America's heartland.

 

"The celebrant is a native Midwesterner who grew up to become an English teacher, a part-time farmer, and eventually a full-time writer, and a good one. The outdoor life runs through almost everything Huggler puts down on paper. That is not to say that this is merely an array of hunting and fishing stories. Far from it.

 

"Huggler has a practiced eye and a fine way with words, which is another way of saying he is a keen observer who can tell a good tale or construct an amusing essay. He is equally at home developing a tragic story like "A Special Summer" or spinning a light-hearted sketch like Coffee Hound."

 

From the foreward by Kenneth S. Lowe, former editor of Michigan Out-of-Doors magazine. Published in 1984, this slim volume of 28 pieces was a joy to write. Printed by Avery Color Studios in Au Train, Michigan, the book is handsomely illustrated by gifted artist Clark Sullivan and has been out of print for many years.

First bike. First baby. First book. Nothing that comes after the first of anything could be more memorable. After all, the first is the one and only. Such was the thrill I knew when my first book was published, way back in 1978 by, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs.

 

I wrote Westwind Woods for my eighth-grade general English students who complained bitterly about having to read library books and write reports. I told them they better read my novel because there were no Cliff Notes, and I knew how the book ended.

 

They loved the story, especially upon learning they were among the characters, too. Here's what the late Ben East, an Outdoor Life editor and stalwart among outdoor communicators, wrote in the book's foreward:

 

"Between these covers, Tom Huggler is telling young readers something about the wild things that live in his chosen tract of woods, marsh, river and pond. He is relating how the birds and animals live, what makes them of interest, and why they need certain measures of protection. Once his readers know these things, wildlife will never be beyond their fields of interest. If they know enough about the outdoors, they will almost certainly also be concerned with safeguarding it from abuse

 

"It is the purpose of this book to help bring that about. The man who, as a boy, has learned where the woodcock nests and how the muskrat lives beneath the ice of his winter pond sees the outdoors and its wild denizens, as well as the woods and wetlands that are their home, through different eyes. Knowing something about them, there is little chance he will be indifferent to their well being."

 

Nearly a half-century since the book came out, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs is still fighting the good fight and continues to publish Tracks magazine for school-age children, the first few issues of which carried the novel in serial form. More than 15,000 copies of Westwind Woods found their way into the nation's classrooms, from elementary schools to junior college ecology courses.