The
Adventures of Dan Sawyer and Mark Finn?
When I was growing up, navigating
the ranks of Stagecoach Elementary School, I hated to read. Why would I want to sit inside with a book
when there was an entire world outside to explore? There was one exception, “The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.” I didn’t read it as much as studied it, trying to seek out adventures
that I could emulate in woods outside my house.
Of course I wasn’t trying to run away from an abusive father with an
escaped slave like Huck was, but I didn’t know the difference. My best friend at the time (and still is) was
Dan, he favored Tom Sawyer to Huck Finn, there was an innocence to the
character of Tom Sawyer that resonated in Dan.
In my mind I was different, Huck was a survivor, and so was I.
If you watched us from afar, you might have
been inclined to think that we were troublemakers, or just downright crazy. You
might have been right. It might have looked
like we were hiding from the dirt bikers for no reason, but what you didn’t
know was the dirt bikers were looking for the same treasure as we were, and
would kill the competition on sight.
Maybe when we had a third friend, it looked like it was just three punks
exploring the woods instead of two, but what you didn’t know was the third was
actually an escaped slave that we were helping get back to his family. When we found remnants of what must have been
a circus and tried to track it down, we got chased from Baldhill on the Fourth
of July with gunshots (fireworks) exploding right over our heads! Whenever we met other kids in the woods we
assumed that they were con men and naturally had a seething distrust of them. The time we found the lighter and lit a
towel on fire? Well that was just
stupid, but you get the point.
The woods we use to explore have
all been torn down and replaced with housing.
I can remember sitting in those woods studying the back of my hand, hoping
that one day I could know my hand like I did those woods. Even though the woods my
childhood has been paved over, our adventures live on. Of course the memoirs of our adventures were
written over a hundred years before we born, but they are our adventures
nonetheless. The Adventures of Dan
Sawyer and Mark Finn.
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