BILL BRYSON
TERRY MOSHER
I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s book “A Walk In The Woods”, which deals with hiking the Appalachian Trail, a 2200-mile trek (the actual distance has always been under dispute, and it may be a bit longer) from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin In Maine and crosses through 14 states.
Bryson is an incredible writer. He is funny (there are some amazing lines in it) tough, a wiseacre, sensitive and very informative about the environment. He especially cares about the trees (many of which have gone extinct), the animals (also many who have gone extinct) and plants (ditto for the extinction) and takes a serious shot at the National Park Service, which is underfunded and does wildly stupid things, according to Bryson.
My oldest daughter gave me the book to read because she thinks Bryson writes like I do and I would find it an interesting read. Well, it is more than interesting and is one of the better ones I have read.
But my daughter is wrong about me being like Bryson. He is so much better than I am that I’m not on the same planet. She is encouraging me, though, to write a book on my adventures, especially the hitchhiking trip I took from New York to Ferndale, WA when I was just 17 and had $6.80 to my name when I started out and finished seven days on the road with $2.60. That’s not bad, even if I do say myself, for a trip of over 3,000 miles.
I don’t know, though, if I could write extensively about that trip and make it book-worthily. Who would be interested in that without a lot of sex and violence, of which there were none?
However, it’s been an interesting journey I have been on and I have always thought my early years in New York State would make a good movie. I had an idyllic childhood in a very picturesque environment among the foothills of the Alleghenies, which is a part of the Appalachian Mountains, along the Allegheny River tucked (almost hidden) in the southwest corner of New York State.
Many years ago I titled this movie (and book) “Summer Of My Youth” and every once in a while (like now) I get the urge to actually start the book and hopefully turn it into a movie. I know if It ever happened and became a movie, it would be so far from the action-filled and violent and sex-filled movies that are made now that movie-goers probably would do as the great Yogi Berra once said, “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark (movies), nobody’s going to stop them.”
I would probably write the book as a compilation of my pre-teen years and roll it all into one summer. There would have to be name changes to protect the innocent for the childhood friends like Gary, Tommy, Eddie and Dean.
It would start with the end of school after my sixth grade because the next year we all moved to the new facility, Portville Central School, and that started a transition that led into teen years and we all know the changes that occur with that and how that often affects long-time childhood friendships.
As an example, I remember being 18 or 19 and going to school at Alfred post-high school and taking a short hike to the Steam Valley Bridge where as young kids we neighborhood guys used to hang around, throwing stones at the fish that gathered around the bridge pillars and fishing underneath the bridge for suckers and carp.
I was lying on the bridge looking down at the fish – as we always did as kids – and here comes this guy on a bike. I turned around and he circled in the middle of the bridge without saying a thing. I didn’t either.
It had been nearly 10 years since I had last saw Gary. Now that we were teenagers, the dynamics had changed and we had nothing to day to each other. I watched as he circled back off the bridge and, I assume, biked on home, just a 100-yards or so north.
That bridge was a sort of gathering place for us and on hot summer days it was refreshing to just hang out there and do nothing more than watch the fish swim around or to go over to Steam Valley and walk on the hot asphalt on the back road just to experience the stillness, the quiet and be overcome by the beauty of the foothills and the run-down dairy farms that popped up every half-mile or so.
Often I would make that walk barefooted and the asphalt would stick to my feet and sometimes I would have to get off the road onto the gravel on the edge just to ensure I would not burn myself too badly.
A few miles up the valley there was a small bridge over a creek that was full of salamanders and I could do down and pick at them, put them in my hand and feel them crawl. I never hurt them and always put them back in the water and then would sit and watch as they crawled about.
If this sounds boring, I assure you that at that age it was a fun experience and the beauty of the surroundings always gave me a sense of peace and security and tranquility.
Of course, the Allegheny River was a playfield for us. In the spring it often flooded our homes, but in the summer the river was a lazy, meandering low-flowing stream and we could walk across most sections of it without too much trouble.
It always felt good to feel the cool water slowly roll over your toes, and you hoped that you didn’t step on a mud dog because they were slimy and ugly and even though they couldn’t hurt you there was always that underlining fear that they could.
There is an island near the Steam Valley Bridge that still is there. It’s not big, but large enough to hold a cabin if you wanted to build one. Somebody, and I’m not sure who, tied one of those big, thick ropes to a big tree on the island so we kids could swing on it and if you timed it just right could drop into this little hole in the river that was about six-feet deep.
I remember one time I misjudged the hole and fearful of dropping into the river shallows, I hung on the road as it swung back to the island. The only problem is that the guys on the island missed grabbing me and I was left dangling on the rope as it swung mindlessly back and forth. I eventually had to let go and hoped for the best. I’m here today, so I guess it worked.
A dike was completed in 1951 to prevent the annual spring flooding of the Allegheny and that process enabled us to have a playground for a few years while it was being constructed. I can’t believe we did this, but we neighborhood guys all had Daisy Red Ryder BB guns and of course we played war games.
This was not too long after the end of World War II and playing these games was purely an extension of what we knew. Patriotism ran high then. Now, of course, if some kids out back where doing this the authorities would be called and their guns would likely be taken from them.
We had one simple rule: you couldn’t shoot anybody in the face. That rule was easy to make and difficult to adhere to because we were not the best shots and we were after all just kids whose experience was like an empty slate. We had yet to learn, I guess, that some things you just don’t do.
There were some face shots – of course there were – as we ran and dived for cover behind piles of dirt that was ready to be used to build the dike. I can report, though, that nobody got seriously hurt and at some point the dike was finished and our dirt piles were gone and so were our war games.
I doubt that I will ever start that book, and certainly no movie will be made of these idyllic times. Like everything else in the life cycle, things change and we eventually become what we become, and usually that is nothing like we were when we were kids without the experience to know better.
Gary died in 2008 and the others I lost contact with many, many years ago. I was back there last August and for the first time in the numerous times I have been back there things seemed different.
The bridge has been moved a quarter-mile north (the old bridge should have been replaced when I was a kid), most of the trees that lined the highway there and the village of Portville have died, and the emotional attachment that clung to me like that asphalt did to my bare feet is no longer as deep. And I guess it’s because a few generations have replaced me and the world is much different than it was in the late 1940s and early 50s.
I still think if I could picture more accurately and with more detail those days, a good movie could be made that somebody would like to see, despite what Yogi has said. We’ll see if I am up to it, although I believe my daughter would like me to write about my hitchhiking trip more than she would my childhood days.
It’s too late for me to do this, but I wished I would have tried walking the Appalachian Trail, or AT as it’s called. I love the woods, I love nature, and now that I’ve gotten old I enjoy nature even more, if that is possible. I really hate now the thought of trees being cut, our land being cleared to build more housing, causing the loss of more and more wildlife and plants.
Despite what some of us believe, every living thing has a function and most of them have a social aspect to their lives. I have watched a variety of birds in our backyard as they play with each other, seen squirrels do the same, and have come to an understanding that they have a place on this planet just as much as we do.
Back in New York, back at my brother’s house in Richburg, my nephew Matt, who also lives there, recently told me that deer come down from the hill in their backyard and visit. Three of them came around the other day, and as many as eight have been right up to their back porch before.
A year ago during a tough winter, Matt purchased some corn and would leave it out for the deer to eat. He added that if he put phone down right now and put some corn out, the deer would quickly reappear.
Another brother lives in Warsaw, NY and he told me during my visit in August that one day a few months earlier, he started out his backdoor and was about to step out when three deer roared past him. They had been at the side of the house and when he opened the door it spooked them. He said he was lucky they didn’t hit the door or he would have been injured. He has a fenced-in backyard and the three easily jumped the fence and got out of town.
So it goes. I have to go now and finish Bryson’s book. It’s been fun to wade back in time when things were so different and there was peace in the air. Now with social media blaring at us from all directions, there is no peace from all the strife, destruction and death that seems to be everywhere.
I wish we could go back in a time capsule and revisit those peaceful days. Until we can, I will from time to time do it right here until l get the urge to put it all down on paper and make that movie.
Until then, be safe.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there
Have a great day.
You are loved.
