Like many boys born in the 60s, my heroes were often frontiersmen. I grew up watching the Daniel Boone television series, with Fess Parker. (I can hear the theme song in my head as I type.) I watched the Disney production of Davy Crockett, and had a comic book of the same. I never missed a chance to watch John Wayne die on the walls of the Alamo (also as Davy Crockett). I could go on and on about my favorite movies, like Jeremiah Johnson or Little Big Man.
Later I learned to love the writings of Allan Eckert, a historical novelist who wrote about the Westward expansion, with much of his book The Frontiersman homage to Simon Kenton, a fierce hunter, scout, explorer, settler and fighter of the Appalachians, particularly the area where my family came from. Any man who could, reputedly, load a Kentucky Rifle on the run was a man I admired. As a child I was ever looking for trails in the woods, wondering which were game trails and which were the remains of old trails left by explorers or Shawnee raiding parties. The echoes of the frontier were always there for me.
While I later learned more about that time in history, and learned that the television shows and movies got a lot of things wrong, I remained fascinated. And I remain so. To this day I walk through the wood scanning the ground for arrowheads, looking for pottery shards or signs of anything from times gone by.
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