Searching for My Side of the Mountain
Childhood dreams, lost and found
I have been asked numerous times about books that had a great influence on me. It is a question I see often, and it is always interesting to see what books people choose. The Bible is a perennial favorite for many, as are the sacred books of other religions. Some people choose biographies of people they admire. Others mention their favorite philosophical works.
I’ve read a lot of books in my life. Some were informative. Others were entertaining. Very few, however, I would say were life-changing or that they had a great influence on me. Among these books that had a great impact was a book I read as a young boy. It was titled “My Side of the Mountain.”
“My Side of the Mountain” was written by Jean Craighead George and published in 1959. It tells the story of a 12-year-old boy named Sam Gribley who is tired of living in his family’s cramped New York apartment and decides to move to his grandfather’s abandoned farm in the Catskill Mountains to live off the land. Written as a journal, this first-person narrative chronicles the challenges and triumphs of Sam as he carves out a simple life on the abandoned homestead.
The book ignores some of the realities of life, but in order for the plot to move forward, the author really had no choice. For instance, what…
