It was the summer of 1976 and my friend Eddie and I had gone through great trouble to create a ring of observatory trees deep in the woods surrounding Limekiln Lake.
We had collected about every old board we could find for the project and strapped them into a shoulder harness with two ropes.
Along with a bucket of rusty nails, we carried the materials to spots where we wanted to build our tree ladders.
We ended up building about 10 of these perches—some with makeshift towers that were more than 40 feet off of the ground.
On most all of them there was only enough room for one of us to shimmy up and be a look out.
There was one, however, that we used an old five-foot-long, two-by-six board to make the last step.
The sturdy board crossed the crotch of an old Beech tree some thirty feet off the ground.
It stayed fast to the tree with about 50 bent-over, rusty nails.
The perch accommodated both of us and gave us a great view of the lake for many miles.
It was on that spot that Eddie and I discussed all the problems of our world.
It was also where Eddie showed me a cigar he had pinched from his father.
“Ever try one of these?” he asked. Before I had a chance to answer, Eddie had struck a match and lit the end of the cigar.
The smell was awful, like burning plastic.
When he handed it to me, the smoke erupting from the end made my eyes water.
I held it out in front of my mouth and just for a second breathed the smoke in and out.
Suddenly my face felt really warm and my palms started to sweat.
I could feel my stomach turn.
The torrential vomiting raining down to the ground was quite the sight to see and made Eddie giggle with joy.
The laughing continued until he notice that a good portion of my breakfast was now covering our escape ladder.
“No way!” he shouted, then laughed even harder.
I sat there a while and waited for my head to stop spinning before I carefully made my way down to the ground.
Eddie decided that we should name each perch and came up with an appropriate nickname for this one.
“I think we should call this observatory, Barf’s Bluff,” he shouted over his shoulder at me as we walked down the trail.
We went on making many more of these tree platforms, but from that point on I stuck to a strict policy of no barfing on any more of our ladders.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com