Later, Mathews concentrated again on his writing. His work "Talking to the Moon" (1945) is a retrospective account of the ten years he spent in the "blackjacks" of his homeland, observing nature and reflecting on the influence of the environment on Osage culture. He wrote much of this in the stone cabin that he built in the Osage Hills in 1929. This area is now preserved as part of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. The book is a combination of autobiography, philosophical treatise, and observations by an amateur naturalist. Some critics compared it to Henry David Thoreau's "Walden." Lee Schweninger noted that Mathews used irony to create distance between the narrator and himself as the subject of autobiographical reflection. He also wrote about himself as a settler, and critiqued European-American culture, while committing actions similar to those of other settlers who disrupted the natural balance.