Writer’s note: The following is an excerpt from a larger, 4,000-word essay to be published next summer in my fourth book, “Something’s Wrong With My Fly.” For many years when Bill Geagan, a well-known Maine writer, and his wife, Alice, were alive, Bill made his homemade Christmas cards and mailed them to close acquaintances and friends. As a young boy, I had a relationship with Bill, and I was lucky enough to get a few cards. Forty years later, the cards are some of my prized possessions.
When I was 10 years old, I read “My Side of the Mountain,” by Jean George. It changed my life. I always had a distinct yearning for solo sojourns into the wild, but I was a slow child and wasn’t exactly sure what I was feeling. I just figured my incessant daydreaming about adventures was simply one of the symptoms of being “hyperactive.” Reading “My Side of the Mountain” put a label on it for me; it wasn’t that I had A.D.D. (possibly). I had an “Adventurous Spirit,” which sounded so much better.
I became driven to live in the woods by myself, using rudimentary tools and my wits. When I mentioned the idea to my father, he knew immediately I would be dead in two or three weeks, and after thinking it over for what seemed like a long time, decided against it. I persisted, and knowing I religiously read Bill Geagan’s column in the Bangor Daily News each week, “The Good Trail,” Dad recommended we talk it over with him. Bill and his wife, Alice, went to our church, and he and my Dad were acquaintances.
When my father approached Bill after Mass one Sunday and told him what I hoped to do, Bill just smiled at me, and regarded me with a respectful gaze. Eventually, we agreed that it would be better if I acquired some skills first, and he recommended I attend the Penobscot County Conservation School at Branch Pond. I wanted to go, but Mom and Dad didn’t have the money to send me. After a couple of weeks, Bill called my father over after Mass and offered to sponsor me to the summer camp program. I think the arrangement made my Mom a little uncomfortable (she was raised a Baptist, and wasn’t one to accept charity).
I did go, and although I certainly didn’t win the “Camper of the Week” award, I didn’t get kicked out and sent home early, so I considered it a triumph.
As I got older, I read and re-read Geagan’s book, “Nature I Loved,” and the sequel, “The Good Trail.” But it was “Nature” that really got my juices going, and became a great influence in my life. I still read it now and again, and recently finished it before handing it over to my 17-year-old son, who Bill would have loved; at such a young age my boy is a crack shot with a rifle, a fly tier, a conservationist and an ambassador for fly fishing. I do hope my boy reads “Nature I Loved.” My son did, after all, accompany me on parts of my quest — the quest to find Bill Geagan.
There is a type of tourism, for lack of a better word, in which people visit the digs of famous writers, or visit the places described in literature. It’s not unusual for people to want to go to the places that served as the settings for their favorite stories. Sometimes the readers can then feel a deeper connection to either the story, or to the author. It only becomes problematic when you’re dealing with fiction. I guess that’s what I must have been doing when I set out to find Bill’s cabin site on Hermon Pond — trying to connect with the man himself in the place that defined him.
Perhaps Bill Geagan wasn’t as famous as the Alcotts, Hemmingways and Faulkners of the world, but he was just as important to me, and to many outdoors-loving people of my generation.
When I started investigating the man (so I could write an essay about the writer’s influence on me), the research became a story in itself. Originally, I thought it would be fun to find the location of Bill’s cabin, see if I might draw a little inspiration from the place and perhaps fish some of the spots the author described in his books. In the end, my quest for the place became a story about the man — his follies and his triumphs — and perhaps most importantly his legacies.