“We can let him have it when we come to pick up the car,” said my father. “I guess the Coca-Cola company can trust him for a couple of bottles.”

We sang some more. My father taught us the words to “The Erie Canal,” and soon the woods were echoing to:

Low bridge, everybody down!

Low bridge, for we’re going through a town,

And you’ll always know your neighbor,

You’ll always know your pal,

If you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal!

We reached the vicinity of Cat Mountain around noon. It was off to our left, in the west, since we were driving north. My father began to look for the logging trail that led off to the east. Soon he found it, and we turned off the gravel road onto a rutted dirt trail. It was easy going, though slow, and cool under the trees. We stopped once and had some cold chicken which Miss Pauline had packed for us, and my father drank beer from a bottle with a cap that was clamped down like the rubber-washered top of a Mason jar. I didn’t know where he had gotten the beer, because there was certainly none at home. I suppose he must have slipped it from the garage man at Blue Mountain Lake, which, now that I think on it, is probably the reason we stopped, as he never did use that can of oil he bought. Tim and I had some iced tea with sugar. As we ate, we speculated on what the kids in school were doing and whether they were envious of us. My father told us not to make fun of them when we returned, because, as he put it, playing hookey was against the letter, if not the spirit, of the law, and there was no point in rubbing it in. So we changed the subject and discussed the best way to train a bird dog. Tim held for letting him run wild and keep his kill, but I remembered having read somewhere that that would only make the dog resentful when he began hunting for men and had his catch taken away. My father intervened with a position that compromised between the two, and then we were on our way again and singing once more.

Last year, I rode with a neighbor from my home in Albany to Amsterdam, New York, where a manufacturer wanted to discuss some conservation litter bags for cars. She brought her two children who huddled in the back seat, chilled by the air conditioning, and played with printed games the gas station had given us. My neighbor had the radio turned up so loud that I could hardly hear the tires against the highway although we were driving almost sixty. For the entire two hours I heard only the mumbling voice of a disc jockey and the blare of the records he played. How different it is today from that October morning when my father and Timmy and I drove slowly back into the Adirondacks, hearing the song of the birds and the whisper of the wind and even the distant cry of a feeding loon.