by Mitch Lee
Most of you will read this article on September 11th, a day that in 2001 none of us could believe was happening.
No need for me to dwell on the emotions that the day brings up for most people in America who lived through those events.
My impressions of early September up and until this event were watching the change in the colors that surrounded my Limekiln Lake home.
In 1978 I lived in the world of Little House on the Prairie, John Travolta dancing, and The Statler Brothers at the top of the country charts—even though none of them were Statlers.
I also had the tranquility of my lake to come home from school to each and every day.
The childhood of a 12-year-old boy growing up so far removed from world politics and America’s woes made me unafraid to enter into conversations with anyone I came across in the course of my day.
On one particular day I was tromping around the woods near the Limekiln Campground boat launch hunting up good, flat skipping stones.
Along the edges of the paved parking lot were some of the best flat skipping stones to be found anywhere and within ten minutes I had filled both front pockets of my blue jeans.
As I strolled back to the water’s edge a family emptied from a station wagon dressed in clothing I had never seen before.
The women wore scarves over their heads and the man and his son were dressed in long white shirts that hung below the knee.
As they exited the car I turned not only my gaze but my path of direction to meet them and say hello.
I think they were struck funny that a 12-year-old boy was not only out alone, but willing to walk right up and introduce himself.
We chatted for almost an hour as I showed the children how to skip stones.
And even though I could not understand everything they were saying, we seemed to understand each other very well.
I listened as they counted in their native tongue just as I did in English, with each extended skip of stone on the surface of Limekiln Lake.
I can still hear wahid, Ithnaan, Thalaatha, One, Two, Three.
I found that laughs and giggles were a universal language and that a puzzled look or a smile were all that I needed to be understood.
I showed them Beaver sticks and explained our furry flat-tailed animal as much with my hand gestures as I did with words.
I took them to the out-cropping rock and showed them the fish swimming under the water and caught a good-sized bull-frog for them to pet.
But soon my time with them had expired and their mother and father tucked them back into the car to continue their journey.
—
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com