by Mitch Lee
The air that Saturday morning in October 1974 was as crisp and clean as air could be. The sky above my Limekiln Lake home was pale blue and cloudless.
The air was still.
I was sitting on the flagstone porch warming myself listening for a hint of goose honks in the distance.
This day was far too chilly for hanging outdoors without my Inlet Husky’s sweatshirt.
Even though I layered it with a blue windbreaker it was still not quite enough to ward off the cold.
My dog Mutt gnawed on an old ham bone on the lawn while keeping one eye trained on me in case I decided to go on an adventure.
Most of the leaves had fallen…only those on the Beech trees were still clinging to their rumpled brown palette.
I really wanted to scuff along in the leaves and listen to them rustle underfoot as I roamed my forest floor.
But the heavy morning dew still clung to them and these woods were not yet dry enough for October scuffing.
I pulled out a small pocket knife and whittled away at a bit of firewood for almost an hour before Mutt finally whined enough to motivate me to go scuffing.
We started out behind the house and worked our way uphill weaving around hundreds of Maple, Birch and Beech.
We left behind a furrow of darkness like that of a plowed field.
Several times my sneaks bumped into a rock or root.
Scuffing usually resulted in at least one jammed big toe and the uttering of a new curse word.
But it was the smell of fall that erupted from the floor of my woods that made each and every foot shimmy fill my soul with happiness.
Our trail took us across streams, fern beds, and around large boulders.
Once in a while I had to hop a large log or scramble through some blown down treetops to continue on the trail.
The crunching of the newly fallen dry leaves could be heard for miles.
When we had our fill of scuffing we wandered back to the house.
I emptied out my shoes and pulled off my dirt-black socks to check and see how dirty my feet had become.
I slapped the socks against the porch and laughed at the amount of dirt and leaves I had brought back home with me on that October day.
—
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com