Mirror Mirror on the wall.. which of the Wilds is Wildest of them all???

I used to love being a correspondent for the Bradford Era, the Cameron County Echo, and the Cameron County Endeavor.

I would drive down to Emporium from Roulette, in the winter, on Route 155, and in the summer, over Reed Run Hill.

I grew up in Roulette, I knew what it meant to live in Wild Country, but I always spend so much time in Sizerville State Park (which crosses all three counties).

And when I started driving down almost everyday to cover the news, it stirred from within me something deep. Something long forgotten.

I'd find myself taking the "long way home." I'd drive out to Sterling Run, and look at the spring fountain built be the CCC on the way, or look at the old coke ovens at the Little Museum. And I dreamed of the pioneer life, and the heart of the woodsmen, and the lumberjack would awaken.

Deep in the heart of every man, there is a warrior. There is a tough guy, there is a wild man.

Cameron County draws it out of you. It's raw. Sure, there's industry, but even industry at it's heart is wild: making something from nothing-- that's wild.

The people, the woods, the streams, the roads-- it's all wild.

The Canoe Classic, when people dress up like Natives and jump in a canoe and pit themselves against the rapids-- The history of Gardeau, and Parker's Tomb-- The spirit of Tom Mix-- it's all wild. It's the wildest.

I remember meeting Kurt Steiner. He holds the Guiness World Record for stone skipping-- that boyhood sport that pits man against nature--

I met him in Kane, where he was staying with his mother for a little while. Kurt lives in Cameron County though. The bearded burly guy, with a mind like a college professor, educated in literature, engineering, computer science, lives for most of the year in a cottage in the woods of Cameron County, without electricity or phone. They go shopping every now and then, and put their food in a cooler. They eat the cold stuff first, and then gradually live off the rest, and off the land. When they built the place, he converted his car to a generator to run enough electricty to run a saw. Every now and then, he'll make a trip up to Lake Erie to walk on the beach and gather polished slate stones to practice stone skipping. He's sick of the corporate smoggy electronic life, and he went to Cameron County to be a Wild Man.

There's some of Kurt Steiner in all of us. And there's more of Kurt Steiner's heart in Cameron County than anywhere else in the world.

When Governor Ed Rendell hired a team of white collared marketers to develop a money-making strategy to appease a dying economy in the tree filled northlands, who would have ever guessed that they would come up with a name so perfect-- so pristine-- so true.

And in the heart of the Wilds is Cameron County-- the Wildest of them all.