I ran away from my home in Topeka in the month of May, when I was just a boy. I left with only a penknife, a ball of cord, a hatchet, $40 I had saved selling magazine subscriptions, and a flint and steel set that I had purchased at a Chinese merchant's store in the Potwin area of Topeka.
I got a ride with a man driving a truck South of Overbrook in search of my family's farm in Osage County. I spent a lonely first night in my small hemlock lean-to (a small tent-like structure that consists of a hemlock bow and a stump). I caught five catfish, but I failed to start a fire to cook them.
In the morning, I climbed a hill and discovered a small cottage near my cold and uncomfortable camp—it was the residence of an old man named Bill. Bill showed the me how to prepare and cook his fish and—more important—how to make proper use of the flint and steel with which I had been unable to make a fire the night before. Unfortunately, it seemed like Bill had low confidence in me.
Finding my family farm, I established a dwelling in the stump of an immense old hemlock tree. I used a hand-axe and fire to expand a natural hollow into a home with space for a bed, stores of gathered foodstuffs, and even a small fireplace.
As the summer passed, my skills and knowledge of the Osage County prairie and of survival grew. I learned to live off the land by hunting small game and deer and by gathering a wide variety of edible plants and nuts. I made clothes, bedding, and other useful things from deer hide and rabbit fur.
I lived a free life in the wilderness for more than a year with my pet, a peregrine falcon named Frightful, whom I had captured as a chick and hand-reared. My neighbors in the forest included the free-ranging musteline "Baron" Weasel, and a raccoon that I named Jessie Coon James.
Those were heady days, to be certain...
