As a pre-teen growing up in the Adirondacks in the late ‘70s, I was able to make a lot of choices.
I did not have a rigid daily schedule, so on most days I had the freedom to explore. During that time I ran across a couple of books by Edward Packard. As a reader I was drawn in as a character in his adventure stories.
I thought these books were great. They allowed you to get to certain chapters and make a decision as to where the plot would go.
I could be a spy, private investigator, mountain climber, race car driver, or doctor. As the book progressed I would jump to a page forward or backward, based on the decisions I made. And each book had forty or fifty different reading.
I guess these books hit home for me because each day I went out exploring my woods around Limekiln Lake. I was always finding a new way to get from here to there or letting serendipity guide my next decision.
If I saw a small creek I had seen 20 times before, I might stop and look for cool pebbles…or hop the rocks or pick crayfish.
I thought Mr. Packard’s books allowed me to do the same without leaving the warmth of my bedroom at night. It was easy to imagine myself as one of the characters exploring far-off places.
As a reader, you might end with a good, bad or weird ending depending on the choices you made. It was a tricky thing to get the outcome you thought you might be shooting for.
Later, I found that these books were a good indicator of real life.
I often look back on my explorations of the deep woods and books, and consider them to be one in the same; a mystery as to what laid ahead.
After all, life is made up of choices. We are all making real world choices every waking moment.
The best choices I have made are the ones that are revealed to me very unexpectedly.
For example, as a 10-year-old bushwhacking through the woods, I found a horseshoe on the ground as I bent down to pick up my cap that was knocked off by a tree branch.
I have kept that horseshoe to this day.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com