Carew Papritz, also known as The Cowboy Philosopher, is the author of the multi-award-winning book The Legacy Letters. Though fictional, The Legacy Letters has won acclaim as a life lessons book for all generations, gaining the distinction of being the only book in publishing history to win awards in both fiction and non-fiction categories. Carew kindly agreed to an interview.
Carew, can you give us a glimpse into your first year of life?
The first day of my life was lived in Yosemite National Park. To be born in Yosemite Valley, the land of John Muir, and in the shadow of Half Dome and El Capitan—what a great beginning. Why Yosemite? My dad was a backcountry ranger, and my mom, a teacher. I was delivered in the small rock house that served as the doctor’s clinic for the Park and spent the first year of my life in a tent cabin.
Breathing in the glacier-infused mountain air from the Sierras and the lush grass of Tuolumne meadows, I would spend hours at time playing in my crib outside the cabin or swaddled up in my mother’s arms, gazing up at the Lodgepole pines and Cedar trees. My Yosemite DNA was the wellspring for my tremendous love of the outdoors that would be integral to every adventure I would seek for the rest of my life.
Tell us a little about your stint on an American children's television series. Please explain the thought process that brought you to write a book that afforded you a national writing award at the young age of 12.
My debut television appearance was as a guest “Romper-rite” on the national children television series, “Romper Room.” As a kindergartner, I was fascinated with the magic mirror, loved the reading time segment, and couldn’t wait for the daily riding of the stick pony! Oh, for the simple pleasure of being a kid . . . I asked my mom if I could be on Romper Room, and she said okay—as if it was the most natural thing for a mom to do. In kid time, it seemed like forever to get on the show. And to this day, I have no clue how my mom pulled it off.
Next thing I knew I was on Romper Room! I have three very distinct memories of my time on there.
To my delight, the riding of the stick pony came first. I remember the glee I felt riding around in circles on that wild mustang of a stick as if in some wild west cowboy race. The fun was making my horse go as fast as it could which meant bumping the other horses out of the way. That’s what five-year old cowboy did back then . . .
Then came the magic mirror moment. I vividly recall the exact second the teacher brought out the magic mirror from her desk, waving it in a circle until the alchemy of TV made the middle of the mirror disappear. Sitting right next to the teacher, I so wanted to watch the magic before my eyes. She started moving the mirror as the TV camera moved in closer. Here it was . . . the moment I had been waiting for! Then she stuck the magic mirror back into her desk and pulled out a mirror frame with nothing in the middle. I was both crushed and fascinated at the same time. Crushed by the discovery that it wasn’t magic. Fascinated how adults could so easily claim it was magic.
My last memory was during the reading time. The teacher read “Rich Mouse, Poor Mouse.” I couldn’t understand why Poor Mouse couldn’t be like Rich Mouse. I raised my hand to ask the fated question: “Why?” “Why what?” replied my teacher. “Why couldn’t Poor Mouse be like Rich Mouse?” “Because he wasn’t the Rich Mouse.” A perfect adult reply meant to immediately quell all curiosity . . . It was at that exact moment my political consciousness was born.
Romper Room was strangely a metaphorical template of my life-to-be. Working as a cowboy, writing books, working on feature films, and of course, questioning the world as I did in The Legacy Letters.
Please explain the thought process that brought you to write a book that afforded you a national writing award at the young age of 12.
What I wrote at the age of 12 was an essay for Sister Cities International. The submission was on “What influences have other countries had on the culture of the United States.” With my family having moved to England for a year and my attending the local public school, I was familiar with the story of the Earl of Sandwich and how his contribution to the lunch world changed the way we ate in the U.S. I can’t remember the other English contributions in my essay but was overjoyed that it won first place. I received five hundred dollars and a trip to the Sister International conference in New York, where I was given my prize and certificate.
Little did I know how much that writing award would set the stage for my writings later in life.
While being a freelance journalist, how did you choose to select and handle assignments?
The beauty of being freelance means you get to choose what you want to write. When I was seventeen, I was fascinated with how war affected people and chose to travel to Lebanon to write about it. My curiosity about the human condition was what motivated me to write. Again, I think this was all a prelude to my writing The Legacy Letters. You choose to write your passion and that passion inspires others to read and react.
What possessed you to do a signing on top of a still-active volcano?
As you already know, I love being outdoors. I also love signing books. The overall premise of The Legacy Letters is living life to the fullest. I wanted a way to “walk the talk” of my book, be outdoors, and sign books. Thus, was born the “First-Ever Book Signings.” The first “first-ever” was a book signing I did on horseback at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Tucson, Arizona. I rode up to the front of the store and not only signed books from the back of my horse, Boots, I also did another first-ever book signing where I electronically signed my name to the online version of The Legacy Letters. (Boots was also the horse I got married on—but that’s another fun story!) We had a great crowd for the event and the video of it is a hoot.
The first-ever book signing on a volcano was on top of Mt. St. Helens. I had witnessed the explosion of Mt. St. Helens when I was a teenage kid out rock climbing. It was a phenomenal sight. And here I was, all these years later, signing copies of my book on the crater’s rim. I even did a live radio show with one of the major radio stations while still on top of the crater. (Maybe that’s another first?) You can hear the interview and see the video of the signing here.
Part of the experience is also “paying it forward” for charities. I’m a big believer in community service and for every “first-ever” book signing there is a charity for which the proceeds from the signing go to.
I’ve had so much fun doing these first-ever book signings. Here’s a partial list of some of them:
First-ever Modern-Day Whistle Stop Book Tour. (Signed books onboard Amtrak while traveling through 13 different cities on the East Coast. Started in Orlando and ended at Niagara Falls.
First-ever Book Signing on a Glacier (With Princess Cruises in Juneau, Alaska)
First-ever Book Signing while Stomping Grapes (In Seattle Washington)
First-ever Book Signing in Cuba (Post Castro!)
First-ever Drone-Delivered Book (We did it before Amazon!)
The Legacy Letters is written lyrically. In expressing your emotions, what are you striving to get across to readers?
When you write a wisdom-giving book that wisdom better be worth reading. It better be told in a way that is fresh and fascinating otherwise your wisdom-giving quickly becomes wisdom-garbage.
Only after being neck deep in the thickets of my writing The Legacy Letters did I realize what a wisdom-giving problem I created for myself and consequently had to solve. Every word, sentence, paragraph had to work their magic. I wanted the reader to crave every single line in The Legacy Letters and make them want to read it again. And every letter had to be believable, beautiful, moving, and most importantly, timeless.
When you look at any great painting, it contains time. When you figure out how to weave time throughout your work, you’ve really begun to learn about timelessness, which is for any artist one of the holy grails of creating. With the writing of The Legacy Letters, I began to deeply understand how difficult it was to create timelessness with words and how wondrous it was when I could achieve it.
Which authors are your favorites and what are you reading now?
When you ask a writer what their favorite authors or books are, you’ve really opened up a Pandora’s box. I’ve read many interviews where the author only talks about one or two books that are their favorites. I want to give your readers a smorgasbord of my favorites and not in any particular order.
Bartlett's Book of Quotations & The Rand McNally World Atlas (Quotations and Countries—you can’t lose)
The Bible. The writing of Psalms is other worldly—as it should be.
Anything by Charles Dickens. My favorites would be A Tale of Two Cities, (Madam Defarge will scare the pants off you), David Copperfield, and Great Expectations.
The Little Engine That Could and Goodnight Moon—I like the pictures.
Mother Goose, anything Shakespeare, and all of Louis L'Amour
Any book on any explorer from any time period
All of H. G. Wells—especially The First Man on the Moon and The Time Machine
Any Joseph Conrad novels or short stories.
Any Sherlock Holmes and all of Tarzan by the Tarzan man
Moby Dick—Even the whaling particulars are fascinating.
Anything by John Le Carré or Graham Greene
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer by Mr. Twain, and any John Steinbeck novels
The Arabian Nights (by a passel of ancient Persians)
Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung
Anything by Lincoln, Jefferson, or Hamilton
Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and Montaigne’s Essays
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (and his short stories).
The Little Prince, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Iron Mask
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The poems of Robert Frost and Yeats, and The Rubáiyát
History of the Persian Wars by Herodotus and The Iliad by Homer
Reading Now? Here’s my current bedside stack of books:
A Life on the Edge—Memoirs of Everest and Beyond by Jim Whittaker
Upheaval by Jared Diamond
The Wilderness World of John Muir—Selections from his Collected Works
Pablo Ruiz Picasso: A Biography by Patrick O'Brian
Is there anything else you'd like readers to know?
I love inspiring kids to read so I created the “I Love to Read” YouTube series. These are short 1-3 minutes videos which catches me reading from The Legacy Letters and then looking up and saying something like, “You know how much I love to read. And I also love to . . . “ride horses, ski down mountains, river raft, drive go-karts, build snowmen, play putt-putt, hike in the forests, whale watch, drive dump trucks, read in front of the Parthenon, in Scottish Castles, next to canals in Amsterdam, or while wearing lederhosen in Germany.”
Why YouTube videos? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! With kids glued to their electronics and YouTube these days, I figured out the back doorway to get their attention. If I have to create videos to get them to read books, then so be it. As long as they ultimately end up reading a real book, I’m a happy camper!
Children and teachers can use the educational primers provided with the series to ask author questions, geography or vocational questions, or just why does this guy do what he does? It’s a way getting kids to ask questions, and getting them inspired about reading, being outdoors, and all the things you can become in the world.
The series has garnered over a million views on YouTube. Please pass the word on to teachers, parents, and, of course, kids about the “I Love to Read” series. You can also check out my “CarewTube” channel, my Facebook page, or www.thelegacyletters.com to discover out all the different ways I strive to inspire not only kids but the rest of the world to live life to the fullest!
Lastly, I want to thank you, Lori, and all your readers for this interview. Your passion for connecting authors and readers is inspiring. I’ll make sure to pass the good word so that others can discover your wonderful work!
Best regards, Carew