Which made me think of myself as a Randolph Scott movie character, and had people being very nice to me. I see old pictures of me at that time now and realize how tiny I was for eight. I might have passed for five, with my left arm almost useless. Yet something in me must have been determined—for I was climbing cliffs, jumping ice floes and freight trains, getting into fights with boys my age. As a matter of fact, I never thought of myself in any way except willing to give most things a shot. In the year 1900, when my paternal grandmother was about seven years of age, there would be so many salmon moving up the main Miramichi in June that people wouldn’t be able to sleep at night because of the splashing these great fish made moving upriver. People who lived upriver, ancestors of people I know, would fish by night with lanterns in their hands. All that is changed now, but I have sat out and watched salmon break water all those clear white nights of July and August near my cottage and at different camps of friends along the river—especially if there was a holding pool near a brook.
