I did about 74 when I was around 14 or 15

It was a great week living in a lean-to, eating possums and coons

Then momma and the sheriff dept come drug me outta the wood

Great memories for old codger

You're just barely past the social security minimum retirement age.

Old codger?

Yep, when I was 10 but it only lasted a day. Me and my brothers built a lean to on the crick bank outta old aluminum siding someone dumped and tree limbs. I took my brothers backpack, my Huffy bicycle named ole Dollar and one of Mama's cast iron skillets to fry fish over a fire.

Bout dark Mama told my brothers to find me and they did. They drug me back home and I got a whippin. In retrospect I think Mama was more upset that I took her skillet lol. It only lasted a day but I sure felt free and had a full belly from the fish I caught. It's a shame most kids today will never experience the freedom of adventures like that.

Buzzard, I do not know you but I think, FWIW, you should take that advice and write a book, I'd buy it!

That was 5 years ago

I was in high school end of the 70's, fur boom rolling along. Everybody trapping. Bunch of guys were going to head to the rockies after graduation, and live like the movie Jeremiah Johnson.

No! If I would have ran away. My parents would have moved!!

I never ran away but I would get all the chairs in the house and line them up like pack animals. Then I would take the pillowcases and stuff them with clothing and tie them across the chairs. I was heading to beaver country.

As a kid I always wanted to raft down the Penobscot river like Huck Finn did the Mississippi river.

Only problem with the Huck Finn story was that they were drifting UPSTREAM to get runaway slave Jim his freedom.

I was kind of like Pat McManus..."seen any beaver within a half-day ride of the fort?"

I'm 70 and still playing at being Daniel Boone.

Had a large woodlot in the middle of the Section behind our house. If I wasn’t fishing down at the creek when I wasn’t working or doing chores, I was building shacks/hidey-holes in the woodlot out of dead logs & old burnt-out pine stumps. I learned to toast sandwiches there and still to this day enjoy a toasted sandwich and a can of baked beans warmed-up in alongside a fire while in the woods!! Never thought of myself as a Daniel Boone or a run-away, just always felt the “draw” of being alone in the woods and still have that feeling today.

LOL Never left home, but everyday would cook frog legs or fish on a stick when hungry, gone from the house from first light, till supper time, when dad came home.
Cooked a red horse on the river one time in Michigan, wrapped in green willow branches cooked over an open fire.
LOL Dad had to try some, said all it needed was a little salt!
Think I was around 12 at the time.

I'm thinking about maybe next year, I'm 75.

I was more of a El Chopo type…

Took some chickens out of our barn and cooked them in the woods over a fire, living off the land.

I took a box of captain crunch for sustenance.


Set up camp in an old caboose out in the weeds on the edge of town.


Was captured and returned to civilization whilst loitering at the fireworks stand.


I was free for a good 6 or 7 hours.

Still do every winter. Go camping and trapping.
But I still want to do it with just what I can carry on my back.
Just don't know if my body can take it.

I spent every spare moment in the woods as a kid, but never ran away from home to do it.
When I was a little older I took a three day bicycle trip and just slept wherever I could find a spot off the road.

I wanted to be Sam Gribley from My Side of the Mountain, love that book still read it now and then

Grandpa's younger brother decided to play Huck Finn. Great grandpa got a call to pick his boy up from New Orleans. I never got to hear the details and everyone that knows is gone now. I was young and I dont think they wanted to give me any great ideas.