Have you ever contemplated running away from home? I remember that as a child, my brother Ed and I thought we might go live in the wilderness. After all, everything we needed was there.

Thankfully our parents were notified of our plan and we stayed home in our nice comfortable beds. We were much more fortunate than the two young fellows in the following story.

This was taken from the East Kooteany Miner, a newspaper printed in Golden in 1897-1898...

“Boy Adventurers Run Away from Home Bound for the Far West and the Distant East. Return Sadder and Wiser.”

Ernest Corson and Walter Dunne are not bad boys, although they did run away from their homes in Donald, the 11th of October, to explore the wide world beyond the Columbia Valley.

They had reached that age - 14 - when boys’ dream of what manhood will bring are mist imaginative, and these had been stimulated by their contact and converse with a prospector and miner.

Two horses (cayuses) had to go to Umphrey’s ranch in the Columbia Valley to winter, and the boys thought they would undertake the task of taking them without the leave or consent of their owners.

The horses would be a convenient means of locomotion to take them so far out in the world.

Mounting the cayuese, they started out on their expedition and reached Golden by nightfall, where they encamped until after midnight and then pushed on up the valley, with the moon’s rays to guide them.

They reached Umphrey’s ranch, which is twenty-five miles from Golden, there meeting Walter Dainard, who was on his way to his ranch, which is some distance above Spillimacheen.

They thought they would explore the Columbia Valley a little further south and they pushed on with Dainard to his ranch.

Here better council prevailed, as they were induced to retrace their footsteps north in the direction for home, and they next turned up at Carbonate, hungry and tired.

Charlie Cartwright supplied them with food and shelter. By the time the novelty of adventure had commenced to wear off, and Dunne thought he would postpone his expedition to the distant east to visit Maple Creek, near Medicine Hat. Corson thought there was no immediate hurry in going west, as no more expeditions would be starting for the Yukon until spring.

Sleeping out in the open - or under the bush, with no bed but the hard, cold ground and no canopy but the stars spangled firmament above, and little or no nourishment for two days and nights beyond that derived from the creek and brook - soon cooled their arbour for wandering, and they commenced to realize that, after all, there was no place like home.

In the penitent condition they were fortunate in meeting Mr. Keyser and Mr. Joliffe, of Golden, at Carbonate, who were returning from the McMurdo district, where they had been visiting and completing the work that is being done on certain mining properties there.

They accepted Mr. Keyer’s kindness and advice and agreed to go home, and return to Golden on Tuesday night.

They spent the night partly in a shack and partly in the warehouse and offices of the Upper Columbia Navigation Co., preventing them from going to Mr. Keyser’s hotel, where he had desired them to come.

As soon as it was ascertained they were in Golden, telegrams were at once sent to their parents informing them where they were, and the boys returned to their homes on Wednesday not much the worse of their adventure, not sadder, but wiser boys, with their first lessons learned in the great school of experience.