A sage on Rough Creek 

Notes from a life outdoors 

OFTEN, WHILE READING a handwritten note from Mark Keller—usually coupled with one of his pencil sketches—I’m reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s 19th century essays and other works from his alone-in-the-woods-days on the shore of Walden Pond. 

Although Thoreau spent two years and two months on Walden, Mark Keller has spent 30 years on Rough Creek in Breckinridge County, living his own near-hermit life of simplicity. 

Keller, too, is a naturalist, essayist, philosopher and poet. Now in his early 70s, he leads a solitary life in a shanty without television or internet service, but does have electricity from Meade County RECC. He visits the local library to email friends copies of what he calls “Rough Drafts from Rough Creek.” 

“Here I am,” he wrote, “in this place of bounty, wonder and beauty; a poor man living a rich life.” 

Many of his observations are first penciled into notebooks during hours in the woods, or while he and one of his hounds are running his trotlines on Rough Creek: 

“I can see from my canoe the raspberries are about to blush and the blackberries are taking their green shape. Every manner of bird is busy with the work of introducing the new world to their newly-fledged young. Their songs and music are the daylong reports of a world celestial and a Great Design.” 

Growing up in a close family with six siblings in eastern Jefferson County, Keller remembers always being drawn to the woods. Although he attended the University of Kentucky and earned a teaching degree from Brigham Young University, his greater education grew from working as a cowboy in Texas, a lodge staffer at Yellowstone National Park, teacher in Utah, salmon grader at a cannery in Alaska and fishing guide at a remote Alaskan camp reached only by floatplane. He’s been a zookeeper, caring for elephants, giraffes and cheetahs. He has worked at a veterinary clinic and has been a dog trainer, property manager, carpenter, housepainter and stonemason. He’s been a news and sports reporter for a local radio station and a maker of fine archery bows crafted from native Osage orange. 

When a friend, who had saved all of his many emails, returned hard copies of the collection, Keller was urged to compile a book of short stories. 

Among the many subjects are taxes, tattoos, a lost summer love, full moons and a warm remembrance of a long-ago fly fishing moment with two of his nieces, Jenny and Annie, then about 9 and 11.

“‘Hush…listen’… Annie insisted… It was so quiet that we heard water dripping off my paddle back to its place. Then…that voice…that bird’s song that so enchants me. He was singing his evening vespers some place up Copper Slick Hollow…What I next heard did not come from the hollow, but from the inspiration-filled heart of a little girl sitting in my boat with a fly-rod in her hand. She turned to address us: ‘I’m in Heaven!’” 

Now, three decades later, such moments live on in Keller’s Rough Drafts from Rough Creek.