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This episode is brought to you by Thunderbolts and Granite. Tonight, we'll read another excerpt from Woodcraft, published by George Washington Sears under the pen name Nessmuck. Sears was a writer and adventurer who penned essays on hunting, fishing, and camping for popular journals and magazines. This chapter is called a 10-day trip in the wilderness, going it alone. At 40 years old, Sears served in the Civil War. Five years later, he traveled up the Amazon River in Brazil. At the age of fifty-nine, a little more than five feet tall weighing less than 105 pounds and weak with tuberculosis, Sears decided to see if the Adurondak lakes and forests could improve his health, only then is when his experiences and plentiful writings as an old Adirondack woodsman began.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. About the only inducements I can think of for making a ten days journey through wilderness, Volitarian alone, were alike for adventure, intense love of nature in her wildest dress, and a strange funness for being in deep forests by myself. The choice of root was determined by the fact that two old friends and schoolmates had chosen to cast their lots in Michigan. One near Saginaw Bay, the other among the pines of the Muske Inn, and both were a little homesick, and both wrote frequent letters, in which knowing my weak point, they exhausted their adjectives and adverbs describing the abundance of games and the marvelous fishing. Now, the Muskegon friend, Davis, was pretty well out of reach. But Pete Williams, only a few miles out of Saginaw, was easily accessible. And so it happened on a bright October morning, when there came a frost that cut from Maine to Missouri, that a sudden fancy took me. took took about one minute to decide, and an hour to pack such duffel as I needed for a few weeks in the woods. Remembering Pete's two brown-eyed kids, and knowing that they were homesick, I made place for a few apples and peaches with a ripe melon. For P. Inali had been chums and Rochester, and I had bonked in his attic on Galusia Street for two years. Also his babies thought as much of me as of their father. The trip to Saginaw was easy and pleasant. A red bird packet to Buffalo. The old propeller globe to lower Saginaw. An awry of half a day on a buck-bord brought me to Pete Williams's clearing. Were they glad to see me? Well, I think so. Pete and his wife cried like children, while the two little homesick kids laid their silken heads on my knees and sobbed for very joy. When I brought out the apples and peaches, assuring them that these came from the little garden of their old home, liar that I was, their delight was boundless. And the fact that their favorite tree was a sour bow while these were sweet did not shake their faith in a least. At Pete Williams, I stayed ten days or more with the family and the fishing and hunting were all that he had said, all that could be asked. The woods swarmed with

pigeons and squirrels, grouse, quail, ducks, and wild turkeys were too plentiful.

I soon grew restless, though, and began to think often about the lumber camp.