Written over the course of 20 years by the founding editor of Gray’s Sporting Journal, each of these 70 short pieces was originally meant to stand alone. Taken as a whole, they form a very personal and moving memoir of a thoughtful life spent in the outdoors with his growing family and a few like-minded and unforgettable characters. By the end of this book, they’ll all be etched in your mind, too.

Along the way, you’ll leave bootprints in salt marshes, share fire rings above the treeline, reach for flies lost in streamside alders, and come away with a set of memories as vivid as if you had lived them yourself.

“That’s why this year we’re going to do it big,” writes Gray in Purpose, “with all the edges in place, and we’re going to make as rich a frame as the time and place will allow. Because I know that somewhere up there, with Becky and the new dog, a mile away from the tent and the wood smoke, and somewhere near a pair of ruffed grouse, there’s going to be that good moment’s picture. Bright and without warning, it will appear to me. And when I reproduce it later, you won’t be able to tell it from the original.”

Here is where he has reproduced it. Come see for yourself.