Get your Signed copy today! Amazon Jodi Auborn Books Category:  Memoir Publisher: Create Space ISBN-10:  1723097519 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 176 Copyright: September 7, 2018 ISBN-13: 9781723097515 "...This is my story of growing up in upstate New York as a child of the 1980’s and teenager of the ‘90’s. It’s a story of pets, vacations, and unexpected adventures. It’s a story of the roundabout ways that life can lead you home. However, it’s mainly a story of Place. Whether they were hometowns or vacation spots, the places that shaped my life became the repositories of my most cherished memories..." "My Ten-Acre Wilderness" is a completely revised and updated 2nd Edition of "The Forests I Called Home," which is now out of print. Illustrated with photographs. Growing up, the author knew that she was an unusual child, a misfit who dreamed of having a horse of her own and a life in the wilderness. When she was ten years old, her parents built a log cabin in the Adirondack forest. As she explored the surrounding trails and dirt roads with her new horse, Sally, she came to consider those woods her own private wilderness where she was free to be herself. Those years didn't last, but they changed her life and sparked a search for a new place to call home. As her travels took her from Cape Cod to a remote island in Maine, she learned that life's ordinary days can become our most cherished memories. This is a story of growing up feeling different from the rest, and of solitary journeys that strengthened the author's faith in God and sense of self. It's a celebration of the special places that make us who we are, and the roundabout ways that life can lead us home. Excerpt Excerpt 1: Chapter 3: MY TEN-ACRE WILDERNESS “Are we there yet? How much farther?” I kept asking as I sat between Mom and Dad in the old yellow pickup truck. The ride from Wilton had seemed endless, as the truck strained up and over the winding mountain road to the town of Corinth, just inside the invisible blue line that separated the Adirondack Park from the outside world. “It’s not far now,” Dad grumbled, an ever-present cigarette between his fingers as he drove with one hand. He had been a long-distance truck driver before I was born, and those years had given him an easy confidence when driving. “Just a hop, skip, and a jump away!” Mom said, beaming, as we followed the riverside road heading out of Corinth, continuing our journey north. I frowned as I peered out the windshield at the passing forests and small wooden summer homes that she called “camps.” Just how far is a hop, skip, and jump? I wondered, as we passed through the town of Lake Luzerne and crossed a high bridge over a waterfall far below. “That’s called Rockwell Falls,” Dad said. “This part of the Hudson River separates Saratoga and Warren County, and Lake Luzerne from Hadley.” “And Hadley’s where we’ll live?” I asked. “If this all works out.” We passed a general store, and then followed a sunny country road that ran alongside some train tracks as the radio played the top country songs of that week in 1986. ************************* Dad said the land was only about 20 miles from home, just a half-hour’s drive, but we seemed to be at the very end of the earth as we followed a steep road up a wooded mountain. At last, the wilderness that I dreamed about! The small towns we had passed through seemed a world away when we finally stopped by the side of the road. Nothing surrounded us except the narrow road that continued through miles of woods, and an overgrown trail that headed uphill into the forest. For some reason, Mom wasn't smiling so much now. “I thought the property would be more level,” she said. “How can we build anything on the side of a mountain?” The property looked perfect, to me. I knew there were toads in those woods, just waiting for me to catch them! I could tame a raccoon or a squirrel, and keep it as a pet! But best of all, Dad promised me that once the house was built, he’d buy me my very…own…horse! “Just come and take a look at it,” Dad told her as he pulled onto the trail that he called a logging road. The soft spring leaves brushed against the sides of the truck as we drove into the dark, mysterious woods to our new life. ************************************ I was in fourth grade when Dad bought those ten acres in Hadley, NY. I felt so proud as I wrote a class composition about our land, about how my hands ended up smelling like forest dirt and the toads I'd caught, and about the time when I heard a mountain lion crashing through the trees! Dad told me it was really just a chipmunk running through the leaves, but of course, I knew better. Over the winter, thick booklets began to arrive in the mail back home, and I liked to sit on the floor and look at them as Mom and Dad discussed each one. They came from different log home companies and were filled with black-and-white drawings of houses and their floor plans. My favorite was called “The Bennington:” a big farmhouse with a sort of rounded roof like a barn, and a covered front porch with hanging baskets of flowers. “No, that’s too big,” Dad said. “And I don’t like the gambrel roof.” I was disappointed, but continued to study the books, fascinated. I wondered if I could get a job drawing floor plans someday. Once, someone told Dad about a log home company that was way up north, near Canada. He and Mom seemed excited to tour their “display models” and look at all their different floor plans. We drove for hours one cold day, but instead of finding display models, we arrived at a rambling log building that looked more like a plain garage than a cabin. It was like a big open warehouse, with displays of windows and roofing and different shapes of building logs. Huge color photos throughout the vast building showed off massive log mansions on manicured lawns—so unlike our weedy lawn back home—or modernistic chalets with glass that covered an entire wall of the house. An eager salesman led us over to some big, thick catalogs that displayed his company's wares, and he pointed out the all the features of the fancy log homes. I could tell that my parents were disappointed. “This isn’t exactly what we have in mind,” Mom said politely to the salesman, who looked baffled by their disinterest. “We’re looking for something small, and rustic,” said Dad. All the way home, he grumbled that he had driven us all the way up to the Canadian border for nothing. That spring, they finally found the perfect house at the New England Log Homes company in Lake George. Mom and Dad looked impressed as we toured the model house. There were colorful flowers on the front porch, and old fashioned multi-paned windows. The log walls had been what they called “skip-peeled,” with some of the bark still attached. It looked like an old-time cabin with a covered porch, and upstairs bedrooms with sloping ceilings. I waited in the car as Mom and Dad signed some papers and bought a new log cabin kit. When fourth grade finally let out for the summer, I lived for the weekends when we left the suburbs. The yellow truck carried our picnic lunches and a cooler of drinks, my nets and buckets and plastic dinosaurs, Dad’s tools and lumber and Mom’s romance novels, and whatever else my parents had brought to keep themselves occupied. I felt just like my heroes, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. They were two long-dead men whom I knew nothing about, except that they wore animal skins and furry hats and lived in the wilderness. I wore jeans and a puffy gray vest instead of a buckskin suit, but on my head I wore my prized possession: a fake-fur coonskin cap with a real raccoon tail that hung down the back. I had found it for sale in the souvenir shop the time we went to Magic Forest amusement park in Old Forge, and I begged Mom to buy it for me. I think she regretted that. I wore it when I caught frogs in the swamp. I wore it when I played on the jungle gym. I even wore it to bed. If Mom hadn’t stopped me, I would’ve worn it to school. For some reason, she didn’t want me to wear it in public, and always suggested that I leave it at home “so it wouldn’t get lost.” Those woods became mine during that summer of 1987. As Mom and Dad laid out stakes where the house would be built, I explored the woods in my muddy workboots and mountain-man clothes. Davy and Daniel would’ve been proud of me. I discovered a brook that contained some strange salamander-like creatures that I’d never seen before. In a small clearing closer to the house, I lay on the stream’s grassy bank and studied the water bugs skating on the surface. There, I built a wobbly footbridge out of some scrap lumber that I filched from Dad’s pile. In the slippery black muck beside the stream, I often found the long-fingered tracks of raccoons, so clear that I could see the marks of their claws. Further downstream, closer to where it ran under the road, I discovered the huge root of a fallen tree sticking straight up in the air. Clods of dried mud still dangled from the root, which loomed high above me, and I pretended that it was my cabin by a river. Further up the logging road, I found an old outhouse on the border of our land. It had no door, but was still strong, built of weathered gray boards and a green fiberglass roof that allowed spooky emerald light to enter. Dad figured that it must’ve been there since the days when the land had been logged, but now it was nearly overtaken by the saplings and blackberry bushes that had grown up around it. That land became my own ten-acre wilderness, and I never wanted to leave. Excerpt 2: ...Another weekend, Mom had to stay at Grandma’s because she and my aunts were having a garage sale. Dad drove up to bring me back to Hadley. Rain had been predicted for the next couple of days, but Dad had promised that he’d take me horseback riding at one of the “dude ranches” in Lake Luzerne. That ride was the highlight of the summer. I thought I had landed in paradise as I ogled the flashy-colored horses tied to their hitching rail, each bearing a bulky western saddle with a colorful pad underneath. There were Paints and palominos, buckskins and blaze-faced sorrels with golden manes and tails, dapple grays and dignified bays, and spotted Appaloosas of every pattern. The patient trail horses all seemed like fairy tale creatures to my ten-year-old eyes, each one more magical than the last. Despite the day's damp, gray chill, I proudly wore my T-shirt that announced “I’d Rather Be In the Saddle” as the ranch hands paired Dad and me up with our horses. I was given a massive brown Appaloosa whose speckled back towered over my head. Then they assigned my six-foot-four-inch father a 14-hand pony. Dad’s feet hung below the pony’s stomach. He looked embarrassed. As we joined the other trail riders on our hour’s journey through the woods, I realized that the cowboys had chosen our horses wisely. Their mismatched sizes didn’t matter. My giant steed plodded down the trail as I watched Dad struggle to control his fractious pony, which jigged along and danced out of the line. He had told them that he'd ridden when he was younger, so I guess they mistakenly figured that he had more experience than he really did. As the trail opened out onto a dirt road, a passing car backfired and sent Dad’s pony skittering into the road, snorting and spinning on its hind legs. My Appaloosa tossed his head and shied, but he calmed down after I tightened my reins the way I had been taught in riding lessons. We all made it back to the stable uninjured, and Dad told me that he was proud of the way that I handled my horse. He asked the ranch hands if they had any for sale—I hoped that he would buy me the gentle Appaloosa—but then a man showed us a horse that was even prettier. It was the only one for sale: a small buckskin pinto with pale blue eyes, already saddled just like the horse of my dreams! We returned to Ticonderoga horseless. Dad told me he was sorry that he couldn’t afford the little pinto, but even though I was disappointed, I didn’t really mind. I knew that Dad wasn't fond of horses. He also suffered from back and hip problems, and walked with a permanent limp after breaking his pelvis in an accident several years before. Nonetheless, I knew that he had put aside his own distaste and physical pain to spend that time with me and share something I loved. I was so happy that we went on that ride together. As we drove through the rain that now splattered the windshield, I thought about what fun I had that day and realized that he really was serious about finding me a horse of my own. Back at Grandma’s, I sprawled on the living room floor with my magic markers and drew the buckskin pinto, so I’d never forget. Excerpt 3: My daydreaming ended when Dad bought me my first horse the winter of 1990. I was twelve then, and the horse an uncertain age; some people guessed 17, while others figured she was more like 25. She was still a beauty, though: a retired Standardbred pacer whose racing name had been “Sally de Baron.” I had always kept a running list of names for my future horse, like the way an expectant mother would pore over books of baby names. I had finally settled on “Wildsun,” the most exciting name I'd ever heard! But Wildsun didn't fit my quiet new horse, so Sally's plain but suitable name remained unchanged. Although we only made just a few painfully short weekend visits to the farm where she stayed, Dad spent the winter enlarging the goats' pen into a proper corral. Sally finally came home on a rainy Easter weekend three months later. However, those winter visits were not the first time that we’d met. I first saw Sally one August day the year before. Dad took me to his co-worker’s farm to buy two pet mallard ducklings, and I spotted a shiny bay mare grazing in the field behind the big old farmhouse. I still think of that as one of the happiest days of my life, when the horse’s owner asked if I’d like to ride…of course, yes…and she rummaged around the dilapidated barn for a saddle and bridle. She couldn’t find the tack and I had never ridden bareback, but I didn’t care. The horse, which hadn’t been ridden in a while, took off trotting across the field as I clung to her tangled mane, telling her to “whoa.” I bounced around on her bony back, struggling not to fall off in front of Dad and his co-worker. Soon the horse settled down and walked calmly under the hot sun. I relaxed and loosened my grip on her mane. “She’s a natural,” I overheard Dad say. He sounded proud. “And Sally seems to like her,” said the lady. “I got her off the track a while ago, but my kids aren’t interested in her anymore. I’d like to find her a good home…” They continued to talk as they watched us circle the field, and I didn’t want the ride to end. But as I reluctantly slid off her back a few minutes later, I had a feeling that she and I would someday be together forever. On the way home I stroked my new pets, the two fuzzy ducklings that I named Squeak and Quack. They were cute, but riding Sally had been the most special part of the day, a day that I knew I’d never forget. *** From my diary: Wednesday, January 10th, 1990 …Somehow on the way home, Dad and I got to discussing horses and he told me that Sally’s owner might git (sic) red (sic) of her. Dad said he made an offer to buy her but he didn’t tell me what she said. I have a mystry (sic) to solve. Am I getting a horse or not? Sunday, January 14th, 1990 I have solved the mystery! I am getting a horse! Sally is a 17year-old Standardbred off the Saratoga Harness Track. She is bay and is 15 hands. I am getting her for 250 dollars including the horse and the saddle and bridle. Sometime next weekend I will go out to ride and groom her. She is a fun horse to ride even though she is old. Further reports will follow in later entries. Saturday, January 20th, 1990 Today I got my new glasses. Then we went to the farm. Sally’s coat was long and it was cacked (sic) with dry mud that I very easly (sic) got out. Her forelock was full of burrs and I got almost all of them out. I picked her hooves. Her tail was incredably (sic) matted with burrs and Dad got most all of them out. I rode her a lot all bareback but she had a snaffel (sic) bridle so I used that for all the other rides that I took on her… On Sally's homecoming day, I stood beside her in the new backyard corral, so eager to go to work on her with my new grooming tools that I was oblivious to the damp spring drizzle. I was so happy that my dream had come true that I didn’t notice that she looked rather…ordinary. The fine, downy fluff of her forelock puffed up over her forehead, unlike the rest of her mane, which lay straight and smooth against her neck. Her dull brown fur hung down in shaggy tufts, while burrs once again matted her long mane and tail. Her nose bore a scarred bump from an old paddock injury. But after a few hours with my shedding blade, her old winter fur fell to the ground in greasy sheets. The slick red coat that I remembered from the summer before reappeared like magic under my brush. I combed her mane and picked the burrs from her tail, and she once again resembled the sleek racehorse of her younger days. I could hardly concentrate on my schoolwork, and I spent all of my free time riding and brushing my new horse. I just couldn’t get enough. After the last day of school that June, I looked out my window at the sun-dappled woods, filled with anticipation of the coming months. That was the beginning of a wonderful summer. Dad usually stayed home during the day while Mom worked, since he had a night shift. He slept most of the day, though, so I amused myself on my own. I spent the days with Sally, riding up in a little clearing where Dad had first wanted to build the house. Trotting in circles got to be boring after a while, though. My parents had warned me not to take her into the woods, but the shady logging roads looked so much more inviting than the sun-baked rocky ring that Sally had trampled in the clearing. Trail riding was fun. Sally’s hooves soon wore a narrow path on the dead-end logging road that led past the old outhouse. It was our secret. On a humid day when the leaves hung motionless in their anticipation of the coming rain, Sally broke into a canter with me on her back. At riding lessons, I had been terrified when my horse cantered. Candy did it often, and I would drop the reins and scream, afraid she was running away with me. Although I loved the horses, I didn’t get very far in those lessons. This time was different, though. It was a new feeling, but nothing scary. Sally swung forward and back as easy as a rocking horse, and I didn’t bounce like I did at a trot. Is this what I had been so afraid of? I thought as I sat back and enjoyed the new experience. After a thrilling first canter to the end of the trail, we turned around and headed back to the clearing. I stopped short when I spotted Dad glaring at us as he watched us emerge from the woods. “What were you doing in the woods?” he barked. “Your mother and I told you to keep the horse in the clearing! I thought I saw hoofprints back there the other day.” I mumbled something and dismounted. “I came up here to tell you that you need to get back to the house. A storm is coming.” I thought I was in big trouble as I unsaddled Sally and turned her loose in the corral. As Dad had predicted, it began thundering when I went back in the house, the rain soon dripping from the drooping summer leaves and soaking the dirt backyard. I found Dad waiting for me at the table and expected a lecture, but despite his grumpy expression, he wasn't too angry. In fact, I was surprised when he told me that he couldn’t blame me for wanting to do more than ride in circles. And then he gave me his grudging permission to continue riding in the woods... Excerpt 4: I stood and watched the red taillights disappear into the night as my father left me alone in the deserted campground. The clammy salt breeze ruffled my hair as the crickets chirped in the bushes, and the nearly-full moon cast the wind-tossed shadows of the tree branches onto the bare dirt campsite. May 18th, 1997. I was nineteen years old that summer, my first time living on my own. I wondered why my usually protective mother didn't seem too upset about me living alone in a tent several hours from home. She never once protested the idea. Maybe she thought that this adventure seemed tame compared to my previous idea of working on an Alaskan fishing boat. And maybe it eased her worries that I had secured a place to stay. Either way, I knew that she had released me into God's hands. Nickerson State Park had accepted me as a “host camper” for the season, which meant that I got a free campsite in exchange for doing work around the park. I considered that a good trade, even when I learned that I was assigned to clean the shower building every day. I arrived in Cape Cod with a place to live, but no job prospects. Dad said that he expected I would call him, begging to come home, within a week. But I had a pile of resumes and 250 dollars in my suitcase, and I was determined to prove him wrong. The wind pierced through my light jacket as Dad and I arrived at the campground. He insisted on helping me put up the cabin tent, but the darkness came too early to finish setting up camp, so he helped me stow everything else under the picnic table. After asking me one more time if I wanted to go through with this, he got in the van and pulled out. I was alone, yet it wasn’t a bad feeling. It was a sense of adventure and freedom, as I realized that I had to answer only to myself. As I wrote in my journal in the light of the citronella candle, I knew that it would be the summer of my life. I was content... ...The first few days remained raw and blustery. As the rain turned the campground into a muddy mess, I shivered nonstop and piled on five layers of clothes. When the weather finally cleared, I went out exploring my new home on my only transportation, my battered pink-and-gray mountain bike. I rolled down Brewster’s pretty country roads, passing enticing antique shops and stately old sea captains’ houses. Crosby Lane, across the road from the campground entrance, became my favorite place to ride. It passed the Crosby Mansion, a majestic yellow Victorian house with ornate wrap-around verandas and rambling additions. The state had bought the run-down, abandoned house, and some volunteers had begun restoring it. One day, they even let me inside and showed me around after they found me outside sketching its fancy front porch. The mansion's acres of lawns overlooked Crosby Beach, the public beach on Cape Cod Bay where I ended up spending a lot of time. I didn't go to the beach for the sun and sand. Instead, I always went at low tide to explore the fascinating mudflats. They stretched for miles, exposing hundreds of horseshoe crabs and squirming sea creatures caught in the puddles. Soon after I arrived, a man set up camp in the site across from mine. He introduced himself as John, a weathered, muscular man with shaggy hair and a silvery gray mustache. He said he was a contractor who was building a home for a wealthy client a few miles away, and needed temporary help to clear the lot and build a road. I remarked that I needed to find a summer job, and so I ended up working for him. As I look back now, I realize that it could've been a foolish thing to do. The situation sounded like the plot of a serial killer or rapist story, but I was at the age where I thought that I was invincible. I figured that those things would never happen to me. John was telling the truth, though, and offered a safe and legitimate job. I felt so cool, so independent as we rode through Brewster in his big gray Dodge Ram. Although I didn’t have a license, sometimes he had me drive the powerful pickup in the wooded lot where we worked. Every day my arms became sore and scratched as I tossed branches and logs into John’s backhoe. The damp mornings grew into muggy afternoons, and I sweated in the dappled forest sunlight as I helped lay out plastic mesh and rake the gravel on the new private road. I couldn’t complain, though. Each morning, John made fresh eggs and bacon for breakfast, and grilled steak and hamburgers with corn on the cob for dinner. He was a great cook. One evening, John pulled into my campsite on a gleaming turquoise Harley Davidson, its spotless chrome glinting in the dusk. I had never ridden on a motorcycle before, but when he offered me a ride, I knew that I couldn’t pass up the chance. We ended up going all the way out to Provincetown, the town at the tip of Cape Cod, where we cruised down the crowded main street. Lights and live music spilled from the open doors of bars and shops, giving the town a festive, carnival-like atmosphere. Just one street away lay calm silence as the moon glowed on the boats tied at the pier, resting after the day's voyages. Later, as John and I thundered back down the Mid-Cape Highway toward home, the rotating beam of the Highland lighthouse swept through the darkness in endless circles, and Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" blasted from the Harley's radio. At that moment, all that mattered was the warm wind in my face, the stars above, and the roaring motorcycle beneath us. I knew that I would never forget that night, when I felt like I was riding through a dream...

My Ten-Acre Wilderness: A Misfit Girl's Quest For Home
By: Jodi Auborn
Publisher: CreateSpace
Publication Date: September 2017
ISBN: 978-1723097515
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott
Review Date: November 9, 2018

A coming-of-age memoir by a sensitive, talented woman, My Ten-Acre Wilderness takes us back to simpler, more natural values.

Jodi Auborn was the only child of parents who were, in their own ways, nonconformists. Early on she learned that she could not have certain small luxuries because the family values involved thrift and hard work. She learned to get along with wild animals – rabbits, a ferret, even frogs – for pets, and the outdoors as her private haven. The first time she truly recognized a sense of belonging was in the midst of a dark stormy night, at her grandparent’s house in Ticonderoga, New York where vintage Christmas ornaments gave a feeling of security while the snowstorm outside called to her adventurous inclinations. When she was ten, the family constructed and moved into a log cabin in the woods of the Adirondacks. After much wishing, she finally got a dog, and at age twelve, a horse, Sally. With Sally she explored the forest with its derelict houses, abandoned trailers, a favorite pond and farmers’ fields. Because physical and mental deficits made it hard for her to socialize well at school, her close friends were few. The outdoors became her refuge: “It was better than any playground; it was my own world.” As an adult she remained restless, living a nature-centered existence that kept her close to the north woods and waters.

Auborn’s writing talents were and are her saving grace. From an early age, perhaps in response to her marked differentness from her peers, she began keeping a journal and writing short stories symbolic of happenings in her life. Over several iterations, she wrote a novel about her alter ego, a bold girl named Kat who could freely do what Auborn was forbidden or too shy to do. She also composed poetry. Her girlhood poems and diary entries form part of the memoir, remarkable for their maturity and insight.

When Auborn grew up, her first novel about Kat was published, its title, Stormwind of the North Country, redolent of that early revelation at her grandparents’ home. That book and a sequel are designed for teen readers, while a third offering, Matthias: The Ghost of Salvation Point, written to honor her father, is targeted to middle-grade readers. Her writing is skillful and secure, putting the reader in the places she has explored. My Ten-Acre Wilderness is peppered with photographs of those places and the people and animals she loved. In an especially poignant scene she recalls her return to the abandoned cabin of her idyllic childhood; there in the ruins she struggled with bleeding fingers to extract the “time capsule” notes she and her father had composed and hidden there years before.

Quill says: Today Auborn works guiding campers, and lives quietly content in a 1930s vintage cottage near her childhood home. She has garnered a devoted readership and will doubtless gather more fans with these moving recollections.

For more information on My Ten-Acre Wilderness, please visit the author's website at: www.jodilauborn.webs.com.

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