Mark Twain piloting a Mississippi River boat while "wearing a toothpick."

Few things can, for me, favorably compare with the scents and feel of autumn in the air.

Back in my canoe guide days I wondered on what August day I’d see the first splash of gold leaves on a portage. There’d always be one birch out ahead of the others.

Interesting to consider such variation in trees we otherwise see as passive, almost inert.

New to the North Woods as a boy, I felt near drunk on the scents of raspberry, thimbleberry, fern, aster and others lightly frost nipped a few nights earlier and now giving off aromas like those said to have lured Odysseus’ crew. (Should have paid more attention to Western history, some of us.)

With the sun lowering and the temp on the edge of falling-falling, a boy afoot, supposedly hunting, with his over and under (still have it) carried at ease, how could a young person not feel called to and more alive than sitting indoors?

A few 22LR in one wool jacket pocket and a couple of 410 in another, I was on my own in the wild world.

Did a city lad know what he was doing? No. But doesn’t learning of consequence often begin at zero?

Where on earth would a person start if not way the hell down on the know-it scale?

The over-under, a must-have in my 12-year-old mind, was one of those one kid tells another until the dumb one (me) stands with $15 in hand, two fives, some crumpled ones and change. Dad had to go along to make it official.

Looking at the dilapidated wreck I was set on, he could have said what he knew and was thinking. But he didn’t. Why? Was it because he saw my most earnest love of something or that he knew I was buying an experience to clean and mend and hopefully know better next time.

Starting at the bottom means a start from below.

Now that that wreck and walk many miles on uncounted days and afternoons following school and the result is something more than a hungry kid with a runny red nose possibly bringing home a single bird, maybe. Eager and wise as a young Dan’l Boone I might be, a damn-fool bird was smarter.

Cluck-cluck or drum to lure me, then explode in an underwear-threatening burst among alder branches thick enough to defeat every b-b. Missed.

On-the-ground runners were worse yet. Crazily close as you’d get to pull off the valued head shot, dang bird would know, duck its feather head and run in such a way that three quick steps made it disappear. Was right there! Where the hell is it?

A good boy wasn’t supposed to swear. But sometimes I wasn’t good. Sometimes I just wanted to kill a gol’ damn bird and bring it home in pubescent triumph. I killed this! Let’s eat! You’re going to cook it, mom, right?

Starting then and over the years I often wondered who’d mistreated that poor over-under and why. What was the cause of hammering chips on the breech end? How on earth could a forearm get so beat up? (Eventually had to find a replacement.)

Why neglect it? Was it so one day a dumb as pipe boy would experience little lessons in treating steel and preventing rust?

Dad’s boss, a man called E.J., was expert in guns with the best of them. His view was “You’ve done as much to that gun as can be done.”

Not a prize collector piece. Not a total loss. What better and more realistic less on could I have. I was 13, good age to begin learning of the real.

I had, in my mind, severely overprotective (or overseeing) parents. Gads! Did they have to inquire into everything?

It felt their focus was always on me. Our bathroom a perfect emblem of the situation. Everywhere one looked, eyes. On little mermaid figurines above the tank, on the shower curtain filled with goggle-eyed fish, and on the wallpaper and wall art. Everywhere had something with eyes.

The presence was felt. Enough to make any boy nervous. All those eyes, unnerving, especially in a house where, as I’m known to say, I got dressed up to take a bath. Same house where butter was so used and revered, I say mother put it on an aspirin. Just a dab, but butter it was.

Specific details (shower curtain fish or aspirin on a plate) of growing up are the recollection of growth. I didn’t decorate the bath, choose the curtain or trot out the plate. Those details came with my life as yours, whatever they may be, are the signs and signals of your years.

If you didn’t hear the clunk of a dipper in a water bucket you heard something else. If you never watched the shore ice act on the standing reeds in shallow water then you saw some other thing that held meaning for where you were.

It’s somewhat quirky possibly meaningless in present time to keep a few lamps ready in case of power failure. The habits of one life don’t necessarily translate fully into another, but even at odds we can have a sense of the other’s story.

About to go off on a Mark Twain Mississippi adventure, I know my past is well removed from him. Despite solid canoe experience, I’d never in the world consider putting a paddle in today’s mighty river where the current, constrained by constructed banks and levees rips at a pace far beyond the power of a paddle to match.

We might look, as example, at Hannibal and think it the same. Maybe in parts, but the river, the thing that gave purpose to the place, the river has changed more than words can tell.

What does “progress” say as a description? Does progress tell of habitat or of an ordinary barge today more mighty than the grandest riverboat afloat when Sam Clemens stood barefoot on a contrived raft and was not swept away by the current called progress.