I have always wondered why birds choose to fly back to the same place each year when they have the ability to fly anywhere on the earth. Then, I ask myself the same question.
I am here living in the place of wonder where I grew up.
It was here I had my first moments of refection, awe and mystery about the world.
It was here I learned all my instincts and found my voice in a world filled with so many voices.
I’m not sure I will ever feel at home anywhere else.
After long trips—even day trips—I still feel the anxiety slip away as I get closer to my woods and my home.
I found that this was very true for the many folks who came into my woods during each and every season as I grew up in the Adirondacks.
I first discovered this phenomenon in 1978 when a group of grizzled, seasoned hunters returned once again to the place they had been coming to hunt for three generations
I met this group quite by accident one cold day as I was headed home from school on my bike.
My pant leg had decided to fight the chain of my bike.
There I stood, half in the road and half in the ditch trying to get denim and greased metal to part, when an older fellow in a red Mackinaw jacket popped out of his little hunting camp just thirty yards away.
He said hello to me and asked if I needed any help.
I told him that my bike ate my pants but I was okay, and thanked him.
He strolled up the road and we began a conversation that was as if we had known one another for many years.
He explained that he and his buddies were getting older and didn’t go in for the gunning any more but still couldn’t wait to get to the hunting camp where they loved to spend three weeks every fall.
He said it was more like home than any place he ever lived, even though this year they seemed to be sharing it with about three dozen mice.
With a twinkle in his eye, he said, “It’s the smell of the spruce that first gets me right back here when we make the drive up.
Then it’s that squeak in the door that you gotta budge pretty hard just to get in.
I think I’ve even grown fond of the sniff of them moth balls.”
It was at that moment I knew why birds flew back to the same place each year.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com