Michigan Forest Life - August 20, 2026

Good day, friends,

Have you ever re-read a book from your childhood? I mean a book you read when you were

ten or eleven years old. This week I re-read a book that I read one other time - more than half a century ago. A children's book - MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, by Jean Craighead George (Photo 1). I wanted to know why I liked this book so much as a child, and why I still remember it after so long. 

I read it in the Treehouse at Winterfield Pines Nature Sanctuary, a place without electricity, with woodstove heat, with handpump water and oil lamp lighting. Perhaps that made a difference. Even as an adult, I was charmed by this story about Sam, a twelve-year-old NYC boy, who tells his parents he is going to leave home, run away to live on the long-abandoned farm of his great grandfather in the Catskill Mountains. 

Sam's parents encourage him to go, expecting he will be back in a few hours. But Sam finds the property and the ancient crumbling foundations. The land is wild when Sam arrives - when his adventure of independence begins. 

Sam makes a well-hidden home in a hollow tree and lives off the land. 

I wondered, while reading, if Sam's story planted a seed in my soul that eventually grew into my own retirement treehouse lifestyle, immersed in the wonder of nature, apart from modern convenience - a lifestyle needing hands-on participation to live.

Sam captures a baby falcon and trains it to hunt. The falcon, Frightful, is Sam's companion throughout the story. Sam forages for food, traps game with homemade snares, fishes with hand-whittled hooks, cooks on fires started with flint and steel.

Sam makes his own clothes from animal skins he tans. He keeps a journal on birch bark and a calendar by notching a stick. Sam becomes another forest inhabitant (forest creature) with a raccoon, weasel, and other animals surrounding him in a friendly coexistence. 

Sam occasionally steps back into the civilized world to visit the library in a nearby village. A few visitors from civilization accidentally stumble upon Sam's extraordinary world - a teacher, an elderly woman picking strawberries, a boy reporter. His father eventually finds him and is quickly drawn into Sam's enticing lifestyle.

Sam survives seasonal changes that affect his food supply. He survives ice storms where the forest world around him seems to break apart. He lives unseen through the deer hunting season when hunters occupy his mountain side. He takes deer that hunters kill but cannot find.

MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN is a story of survival, of self-sufficiency, of nature. I understand

why it has stuck with me for most of my life.

At the east entry gates to Winterfield Pines Nature Sanctuary stands a cairn (Photo 2). It welcomes visitors from a civilized world into a wilderness. While mowing the trails yesterday, I noticed that someone tenderly placed a small pebble on the top cairn stone. It made me smile. 

I wish you a book from your childhood. Read it again. It may surprise you.

Until next time,

Dan