Re: history and speculations

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: Myrrh wrote:
: When I was little and growing up in New York State, one of my favorite things to do was to imagine the countryside as it would have looked before European entrance and expansion. In my very romantic little heart, imagining that I was seeing the actual rolling, forest-covered hills of the 16- or 1700s before me gave me quite a thrill. So, to see them unfold before me in the film (played by the NC mountains) was a very powerful experience. Then that opening chase through the forest cemented it for me (pun intended!).

: I think many of us are very emotionally attached to the vanished forests and wildlands of early America.

: and

: I was born in Buffalo, but spent my childhood in Carthage, NY. . .

: And Chris wrote:
: I spent much of my childhood in the Catskills near Margaretville. My family has been there since the 1700s

: .Dear Myrrh and Chris,
:  It's hard to get the early American history out of our systems when we grew up in an area so imbued with it.  I grew up on a farm just south of Schenectady, and since in those days a child could roam the fields and forests freely and without fear, I truly did lead somewhat of a Natty Bumppo existence in my imagination.  The strange thing is that, long before I could read (and we didn't have a television yet), I had a sense of the countryside that reflected the 1700s far more than the 1900s.  I knew that I walked where the Indians had walked, and my forests and fields were full of them.  I built lean-tos of limbs and bark, built a log raft to float on one of the ponds (and it didn’t sink, either!), and spent thousands of happy imaginative hours fighting Indians, tracking deer and buffalo, (only learning many years later, much to my disappointment that buffalo were not rife in Upstate New York), thinking about how to construct teepees out of skins, and wielding a "long-rifle" fashioned from the limb of a tree.  So I don’t know whether what I am missing is the "unspoiled" pioneer days or simply the free, safe, relatively simple environment of my Upstate New York early childhood.  There are still many areas of the Catskills, the Adirondacks and Green Mountains fairly unspoiled, and I often think I would like to go back to the area.  But like Buffie of the Courier Classifieds, I am afraid I would need a log cabin with a washer/dryer hookup.

: She-Who-Tracks-La-Longue-Carabine-But-Stays-Upwind


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