Life is a journey filled with moments of laughter and tears. In “First Woods” and “My Old Man's Saddle,” David Bottoms explores his childhood to the present day. Bottoms travels through memory and the natural world to focus on his old man. In "First Woods", Bottoms describes remembering riding in a truck with his old man and uncle over rough terrain while on a raccoon hunt. However, in "My Old Man's Saddle", he explains that he remembers a piece of news that led him to play in his old man's saddle. The images from his travels used in the poems focus on the journey through a life with the speaker's loved ones. The path of a life journey will not always be easy. Bottoms states, “Bumps and jostles, the road quickly falls into a rut, a ditch, a washout, / a constant bounce between my old man and my uncle” (1, 3). The speaker immediately uses sound to explain the road trip with his family and the importance of each day. Throughout the road trip, Bottoms encounters challenges that he must face. He declares: “but above all I kept the pot and the pitch, a clearing of cut hay, / the moonlight that rusts a tractor, and out / in the wheat...