Paul Bowles on Seneca Lake

Paul Bowles is so associated with North Africa in my mind that it was startling to learn from Without Stopping that he spent much of his childhood and youth where I did—in upstate New York.

In fact, his family had a home in the Finger Lakes, not far from Skaneateles, where I grew up. The cliffs of rough shale that he describes below are much like the cliffs along the pebbly shores of Skaneateles Lake. I remember finding the fossils of plump bivalves in the shale, and stubby horns that resembled staghorn sumac.

Seneca is a long, narrow glacial lake. High shale cliffs edge its southern end. The Boat House had three levels: the boat shed, where the slips for the boats were; the kitchen and servant’s room; and finally the living quarters at the top, full of Navajo rugs and blankets and with big Chinese lanterns hanging from the crossbeams. The west wall of each story had been left unbuilt, and the rough shale stuck out into the rooms. Two more flights of stairs had to be climbed before you came to terra firma, and then you were in the woods. It was a dark wood, but one free of undergrowth because its hemlocks had been shedding their needles for many years. A thick blanket of them padded the ground everywhere. Overnight strange things could push up through the blanket: puffballs, Dutchman’s-pipes, fungi like slabs of orange flesh, colonies of spotted toadstools, and best of all the deadly Amanita, which I was taught early to distinguish. I would seek out an Amanita and standing staring down at it in fascination and terror. There at my feet grew death itself, only waiting for the decisive contact.