When the author John Crocker was a pre-med student in college, he applied and was selected for a six-month research trip to the Gombe Forest in Tanzania to study chimps in the wild with Jane Goodall and her team. In this book, John shares his amazing time in Gombe, the friends he made - both human and animal - and how his observations of chimp behaviour helped lead him as a doctor, and as a parent.

I thought this was a wonderfully written book that held a lot of love and gratitude from the author about his experiences and the wonderful times he had. John shares a lot of respect and love for all of his former team, and field guides as well as a lot of admiration for Jane Goodall who became a friend of his, as well as an inspiration. I really admired how John spoke of how pivotal Gombe was to many things in his adult years from his career as a doctor and how he approached certain diagnoses or predicaments, as well as how he allowed his observation of chimp matriarch Fifi and her parenting of her son Freud show him the type of patenting style he would adopt for his future family.

I think there were times the book could be slightly repetitive but I honestly didn't mind this as I was just loving being in Gombe via John's experiences and recollections, as well as the wonderful homecoming trip he made many years later with his own son.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150353855

This highly enjoyable and thoughful memoir focuses on an American doctor who, while a student, spent nine months with Jane Goodall and her team studying chimpanzees in Tanzania. He made good friends among the local support people and visited the village home of one young man, five hours' walk away. The chimps of course are the stars of any such naturalist memoir, but Jane Goodall is clearly a person of great character and gentleness, who made a decided impression on the young students, as did her family.
When Goodall observed chimps making and using tools, this literally changed the dictionary definition of humans. I did know that, but it never hurts to be reminded.

While working as a family doctor, the author often put his observations to good use, mentally likening a highly active boy to a young male chimp who needed room to run, climb and throw things, rather than dismissing him with an instant diagnosis of ADHD. He would not say so, in case the parents did not appreciate the comparison.

Later in life the author was able to make a return trip to the nature study centre, with his own grown son. The book contains his mature reflections and philosophies - the times when he neded a break from long hours and stressful work, but could only imagine himself in a forest - as well as remarks on polio and bilharzia and the work done by the Goodall Institute to keep Lake Tanganyika free of pollution, sewage and consequent disease. He noted that Mount Kilimanjaro was almost denuded of snow over thirty years of climate change.

Anyone who would like to read such a memoir can do very well to pick up this one and read about the earnest observer following Fifi and the other large, strong, wild chimps about the forest. As the author was able to draw on his letters home, the notes are crystal clear and the environment so well observed that I felt as though I was hearing the soundtrack.

Foreword by Jane Goodall.
I downloaded an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.