Willem's Yankee Notebook - June 3, 2007 - Little Lyford

AN OLD MAINE TRADITION MAY BE REVIVED

PISCATAQUIS COUNTY, MAINE ¬ A light north wind ruffled the sunny surface of Little Lyford Pond all afternoon yesterday. We paddled to the windward side of the pond to get into calmer water, but the trout weren't interested in what we had to offer. Two pairs of loons cruised and dove warily around us, proof that there really were fish down there. Then around supper time the wind died down, and we could feel the cold air settling in over the swamp. It was going to be a frosty night. I looked dubiously at the amount of kindling in the wood box, and at the great leap between kindling and chunks of hard maple. Anxiously I donned long johns, socks, and a tuque to wear inside my sleeping bag. Would the maple ignite before the kindling died?

It did. The ticking sheet steel stove slowly drove the chill from the log walls. The gas lamp hissed softly above the bed, and about nine-thirty I barely roused myself to turn it off. The sounds of the Maine woods at night surrounded the cabin ¬ distant loons, a barred owl, and singing toads.

Maine sporting camps have been around almost forever, it seems. Some of them began as the private retreats of wealthy industrialists or logging company owners; others evolved from old logging camps as the boom passed and the logs went downriver. The advent of the railroad made northern Maine accessible to "sports" from down-country. They came north, some staying for weeks, to rusticate in their rough togs, hunt, and have their pictures taken with huge strings of trout and salmon, which were disappearing even as the pictures were taken.

Highways replaced the railroad, and the middle classes began to arrive ¬ usually for only a weekend or a few days' vacation It still wasn't easy; two days of each trip, sometimes, were occupied in driving on successively more primitive roads to the idyllic Shangri-las at the end. One of my favorite characters was far from middle-class. The heir to the capitalist who'd once owned the camp we stayed at, he arrived each year in a Citrroën-Maserati that flew over those rough roads.

The camps were American plan: Order anything you want for breakfast; eat in camp at noon or take a bag lunch on your day's adventure; sit down in a dining room full of happy, sunburned fishermen for supper. The cabin boy made the rounds during the day, laying fresh fires in the stoves and leaving a match on top, and replenishing the wood supply. Cheese, crackers, and Scotch before supper never tasted better than in an Adirondack chair on the cabin porch, chatting about the day and watching moose feed around the pond. At some camps, mysterious elves turned down the sheets during supper and sometimes left mints on the pillows. It was far too good to last forever.

Thirty years ago Mother and I used to journey to Kidney Pond Camps, located in Baxter Park. Each evening we signed up for the ponds we wanted to fish the next day; only a limited number of guests could go to each. We hiked to the ponds, where there were canoes and paddles ready for us. It was lovely, and not expensive. But eventually that freeholding within the park was taken over by the state, and it's now run as housekeeping cabins. Thus it's lost its appeal for Mother, who can do housekeeping in a cabin right here at home ¬ and good fishing nearby, too.

I've never been to Little Lyford Pond Camps before this. I'm here as the guest of the Appalachian Mountain Club, which has recently acquired this and three other old sporting camps along the route of the Appalachian Trail on its way to Mount Katahdin. Their goal is to preserve some of the forest and the old camps and attract guests year-round ¬ hikers, snowshoers, cross-country skiers, anglers. I hope they make a go of it. We're a long way from Boston or the White Mountain huts, and I think of Appies as mostly yodelers, if you know what I mean.

Little Lyford was built in 1873 as a logging camp near the Pleasant River, a tributary of the Piscataquis and eventually the Penobscot. A log dining room dominated the center of camp, surrounded by small log cabins for the men. What a place it must have been on Sundays, when the loggers relaxed, mended and washed clothes, and told stories! And today it's worth being here if only to look at the Pleasant River as it plunges through Gulf Hagas, and wonder what kind of men it must have taken to drive long logs down that maelstrom. "Desperate" is the word that springs most readily to mind, along with "soaking wet in ice water from dawn to dusk."

Most old sporting camps, like country stores, require such long hours just to run them, and return such modest profits, it's hard to keep up with the maintenance. Little Lyford is no exception, so the infusion of AMC capital has to be a good thing for the place. The old log dining hall, for example, had developed a decided lean toward the south, what the French Canadians call a [ital] cabane aux croche [ital]. "crooked cabin." So the resident carpenter (who I would judge could be occupied here for life) has run a cable to a huge yellow birch and every day, as he works inside the building, takes in an inch or two ¬ rather like a heavy-duty orthodontist straightening teeth.

Meanwhile, the typical AMC technology prevails in other parts of the camp: a solar-powered wash house with hot showers, electric lights, and composting toilets, and a new dining room and kitchen. Snowshoe rabbits graze unafraid on the lawns. Red squirrels perch at your elbow, hoping to share your cheese and crackers before supper. And down in the pond, the fish finally woke up today. Nothing huge, but all of them natives, whose distant ancestors once found themselves cut off from the ocean when the ice sheets retreated. We won't be exhibiting any long strings of fish. First of all, it's illegal. But also. putting them back is the only hope, however vain, that we and the AMC can have of reclaiming the glory of the ancient forests of northern Maine.