It was the mid-1960s and the Scholastic Book Club had just offered the Jean Craighead George book “My Side of the Mountain.”
The book is about a boy who makes his home for a year in a gigantic hollow tree in the Catskill Mountains. His quest for food, fire and resources form the plot of the book.
But it was that home in some huge trunk of a tree that intrigued me at the time.
I had a tree like that.
At the base of a bump in the Appalachians that locally we call Head Mountain, in a spot I often roamed, the massive old oak stump stood out among the regenerating forest of hemlock and mixed hardwood. Its neighbors were by comparison small new growth with relatively thinner trunks. In my view it was the king of the forest.
In reality the “monster” oak stump was no more than 5 feet in diameter. It was a good 15-20 feet tall, but it was no home of a tree. Maybe, just maybe, if it was entirely hollowed out, I could stretch out full length to lie down and sleep in there. Maybe.
Nevertheless, I dreamed of moving into that ancient trunk and carving out my side of the mountain, of living in there with a hawk companion, of having a small fireplace in there for cooking and warmth.
I never acted on those thoughts. Maybe I knew deep down that the tree just wasn’t up to my hopes for it.
Gradually chunks of the giant tree fell here and there among the crow’s feet that covered the forest floor in that part of the forest. As the years passed, the king lost much of its royal demeanor.
I grew and moved to new forests with relocation for college, first professional job and so on. Head mountain changed hands and became an area of no trespassing. The tree and I lost touch.
Today, decades later, my tree is probably a line of decomposed matter stretched out across the forest floor, if that. There may be no trace of the once-giant left today.
But once, for a few years, that ancient tree was my side of the mountain.
2019 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jean Craighead George. You can learn more about her, her famous brothers and their childhood home at the website of Craighead House.
