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It was in July, 1928, when the Roehrig family “backed in” to North
Woods; yes, literally backed in! We, there were six of us, had had a
five-hour hesitant and uncertain drive from our drive from our home
outside Boston in a black (they were all black) Model-T Touring Car. Two
or three tires had to be changed en route. And there were two hills on the
trip which were too steep for the Model-T to conquer, laden as it was with
two parents, four boys ranging in age from five to thirteen years, and all
their paraphernalia for the summer. One was the hill on the state highway
near the Bennett farm between Mirror Lake and the camp entrance. The
second was the hill leading from the highway up to the farmhouse.
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My father learned early-on that the “flivver,” as the old Ford was
affectionately known, had more power in reverse gear than in low, and,
when the engine stalled out on a grade in forward gear, he would coast
back down to the bottom, turn around, and back up to the top. Those were
exciting days for automobile travel and, like the early days of North
Woods, it is fun to recall them.
When we arrived for the first time as a family at the newly purchased camp
property in that summer of 1928, there were only three structures standing
on the then one hundred ten acres. These were the farmhouse, the ice house
behind it and the sap house which stood in a grove of maples about half
way up the path from the place where the Great Hall now stands to the
present baseball field.
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It was not until I had been a camper in the
Junior House for several years that I overcame the habit of breaking into
a bit of a jog as I passed the saphouse on trips between the ball field
and the Great Hall. I still harbored the fear that one of the “saps”
which my older brothers had led me to believe lived there, might come out
to get me! One time, I screwed up the courage to look inside the long
abandoned building and was interested to see the large brick stoves and
iron kettles which had been used to condense the sap into good New
Hampshire maple syrup.
The ice house, now surrounded by new pine saplings, used to stand in an
open field. It served to store ice which was cut from the frozen lake each
February in one-and-a-half foot cubes and carried on horse-drawn pungs or
sleds up to the storage house. There it was neatly layered and each cube
separated from all its neighbors by six inches of sawdust brought in from
a local mill. This technique insulated the ice and kept it from melting as
the summer months came on. During the early camp years, ice from the ice
house was the sole source of refrigeration for all the foods served in the
Great Hall. The camp truck would bring down four or five blocks to fill
the kitchen ice boxes each morning.
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This first summer my brothers and I spent
exploring the property and watching the builders begin their work
transforming it into a camp for boys. We saw the road developed from the
farmhouse down into the camp. Next came the larger trucks which brought in
timbers shipped from Oregon – the rafters of the Great Hall were too
large to be hewn from Eastern trees!
As this magnificent
central building took shape, I can remember how its size impressed me. In
my experience as a six-year-old, there had never been anything so large
and open. With its huge columns and banisters made from skinned pines
taken right from the property, the Great Hall seemed a part of the woods
just as the woods were a part of it, unlike most man-made contributions to
our environment today. And fifty years later it stands in harmony with its
surroundings, rather than a blemish upon them, and still serves North
Woodsers well.
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Camp opened a year after our first summer
there. The Great Hall, the Junior House with a single “Lakeside” wing,
and three cabins along the Great Trail were the only structural assets of
the camp. The camping party was thirty-three boys, over ten percent of
which were Roehrigs! Many a present day father can appreciate the
motivation that must in part, at least, have driven Gil Roehrig to seek
permission from the Boston “Y” to find and develop this great piece of
land into North Woods Camp for Boys.
Much has been said here
of the physical elements of the camp, and they ARE outstanding. What more
perfect half-mile of waterfront could be found for a camp? And the
buildings are fine. But these would be nothing without an enlightened
leadership provided over the years by men like Nathan Todaro. Similarly,
such leadership could accomplish little without a well-rounded staff with
some continuity as well as unusual resources provided by men like Shirley
Goodwin. North Woods has been blessed in these respects, too. There was
another ingredient for a successful camp which my father felt strongly
about. He believed that the diversity both in background and interests of
the campers themselves had much to do with the value of the camping
experience. This value has been a high point at North Woods for fifty
years.
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With apologies to William Wordsworth, I find
intimations of immortality for North Woods in the recollections of my
early childhood here. I can only wish for my son, Chip, who started camp
this year, fifty future years associated with North Woods as happy and
rewarding as the fifty years just past have been for me.
Burns
Roehrig, MD, 1978 |
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