Leaving Camp: The Wilderness Cure

By Judy Jones

Paperback. 242pp.

These books (and two others by Judy Jones) are available on Amazon.com. However all proceeds from her books purchased here (minus shipping) will be donated to Colony Caregivers, a local cat-rescue organization, in her memory.

Author's Note:

Is it better to withdraw from your beloved or should you reinforce your devotion and attempt to outrun the hatchet? That’s what Judy Jones wondered as regards her own love, a simple camp in a bygone town in New York State’s Adirondack mountains - a seasonal dwelling (some say). Hers was a spiritual union. Over many years a pattern had developed: six months of vigorous participation followed by six of sorrowful pining. Could a smitten flatlander call it quits? Might Moose River Settlement fall of its own weight? A solution was imperative. She needed to launch a plan and then write the whole thing down. It would be an intensive treatment, it would be a wilderness cure. While, as with her other books, the action is centered right there in Moose River, the author, curious about the county which harbored that village, ventures down yet another spur. The connection led her to Mammoth Cave of all things, and she revisited slavery and the Revolution and the War of 1812, and the Black River Canal and the Erie. She bumped up against the elite and erudite. She met up with Bog Man, Audubon, Robert Louis Stephenson, and the abolitionist, John Brown, but also made friends with citizens of the North Country, including her neighbor, Henry, who lived alone and off the grid and was just as much in love with Moose River as she was. This book, like the others, is part history, part memoir and scrapbook, combined with intimate observations of the flora and fauna of the Adirondacks and, in this case, a documentation of her attempts to find the cure.