John C. Goodlett

John C. Goodlett was a professor of plant geography at Johns Hopkins University. But no matter where his professional or his military career took him, his heart remained in central Kentucky, the place of his birth. At an early age, he wandered the woods near his home and discovered a fascination with the flora and fauna that surrounded him. He eventually turned this passion into a career, doing field work for the U.S. Geological Survey and sharing his knowledge of the woods and the plants that inhabited it with his university students.

Goodlett died unexpectedly at age 44 in 1967, but he left behind grateful students who had inherited his passion for field work and had been forever touched by his down-home sense of humor and his Kentucky ways. He also left behind a journal he had kept as a young biology student at the University of Kentucky in the 1940s. That journal reveals both his joy in the outdoors and the early firings of a scientific mind.

It is that journal that is at the core of The Last Resort: Journal of a Salt River Camp 1942-43, published 75 years after Goodlett began documenting his trips to a cabin he had built on Salt River. It's an engaging melange of field notes, boyhood antics, and high drama: a perfect reflection of the scientist and the compassionate adult he later became.