Following his English setters into thickets in search of grouse and
woodcock, Mark Parman feels the pull of older ways and lost wisdom. How
rare it is, in our high-tech world, to find oneself completely off the
track, bewildered in the wild, and then find the path home by sight and
scent and memory. Among the Aspen interweaves tales of companionable
dogs, lucky hunts, and favorite coverts where fat birds lurk with
ruminations on the demise of hunting traditions, the sale of public
lands and the privatization of places to hunt, the growing indifference
to science, and the loss of wilderness on a planet increasingly
transformed by the sprawl of humanity.