Samuel “Ol Spot” Mortimer

I stayed a week at Oakwood Lakes State Park and came across the historical marker, in front of an old log cabin of great craftsmanship, which told about a New York shoemaker, “Ol’ Spot”, who came out here in 1869, to build the cabin, settle in to trap and trade and carry on with some unnamed Lakota woman. He quit the place for Yankton, in Dakota Territory, after a few years, but returned and purchased the land. This time he had a white widow with her children. In 1878, he sold the 1000 acres he had claimed.

I thought about this other lost New Yorker finding the slough like I had.  And in common, my dad was a cobbler, an old world skill.  I pictured Samuel making his own shoes from select leather. I know the wonderful smell perfectly. He probably had a few tools, well kept, well oiled, well-sharpened.

But what amazed me was the plaque that read “He left his native woman for a wife and then they left for parts unknown out west.” Might my assumption be the native wife got tired of the cross-cultural stress.  Maybe she dumped him for someone with better farsight, unlike most shoemakers I knew, who bent over close work and sacrificed their distance vision. Not to mention, what kind of planning could he have done before coming out here.  I realize the plaque’s historian thought New York meant the City not the State. Tales around Blue Mountain Lake would have turned most city boys to mush, let alone Lake Champlain’s historic adventures.  It’s Adirondacks breeds the hunting man, Catskills, Berkshires, not the island of Manhattan. My ancestors came down as French Canucks, who spent time out as far as Missouri, with women named Manon Lescault and Evangeline. Around Lake George he might have met a few with tales of western lands of endless grass. Those voyageurs would have told him of a place, a holy spot, with oaks as old as time, a haven for deer and trappers, an adventure waiting to be savored. The description and directions would have challenged navigators with lesser skills.

 The historian then assumes that Mortimer went on out west for some new lands to claim. But first, I imagine he went back to see the lake, the home and family he left behind. I see him sitting down in some smooth Adirondack chair and telling about his journeys in the west. The man was in his forties, possibly, not old by any measure, now or then. At Saratoga he might have stayed in a cabin on Snake Hill, accessed only by boat, and reminisced about those wild days with his father. I bet he loved autumn along the lakes in Dakota or Saratoga Springs.

I know the joy, the sense of jubilee, to find some oaks on endless prairie lands. I came out here from New York, roundabout. I couldn’t stand the endless unmarked scenes. I found the Oak Lake Park while wandering with camera and tablet and regrets. These oaks gave me a chance to breathe again. The ground was littered with a thousand shells of acorns, eaten by the deer and squirrels. The smell of musty leaves and broken nuts was almost what I needed to survive. The joy of oaks is lost on grass fed cows and farmers who have no use for the shade. But Mortimer and I could celebrate the rich green leaves that speak in watered words. I think that Mortie left because he knew it just was not enough to smell the air. He needed to go back and tell them all about the grand and glorious lands out west.  And while he sat with leather, lathe and shoes he might have told his father that the stars remained as constant in the foreign worlds beyond as over Saratoga Lake in June.

My father and I fished that lake a lot in summers while the meteors shot down and rain as warm as wood brought up the fish to my shoemaker father and his girl. We have so much in common, Mort and me.