An excerpt from the book “Adirondack Timber Cruising”
That a greater appreciation of the forest has developed has been evident since about 1919. In earlier times when lumber and pulpwood were abundant, few thought about the future supply. As forest resources became somewhat exhausted, men began to think in these terms, and to plan perpetual lumbering programs. By using selective cutting methods, better fire protection, better pest control, and a more effective program of reforestation, foresters sought to provide an inexhaustible supply of lumber—a renewable resource adequate to supply the needs of coming generations.
A well managed forest
An early Linn tractor used to help manage forest land at Whitney Park
Early cranes reduced the danger of loading logs and increased effeciency.
There was a time when wood was thought to be an inexhaustible supply
An excerpt from “Spring Trout and Strawberry Pancakes”
Harold “Nitty” McNitt, like many other Adirondack camp owners, enjoyed living off the grid in a turn-of-the-20th-century Adirondack cottage complete with a canoe, a rowboat and a boat with a small outboard engine. He drew water from a spring, bucket by bucket, and used a bucksaw and sawhorse to work up wood for fuel. It was an idyllic mountain-spun life. Inspired by those pioneer years, his ancestors, and the elderly Atwell natives, he’d spent a lifetime learning about old-timey ways, backwoods cooking, common wisdom and tall tales.
An excerpt from “Spring Trout and Strawberry Pancakes”
NITTY’S RED CAMP, Nat Foster Lodge and Camp Cozy were three of many sites tucked back in the foothills of the Adirondacks, in Atwell at the headwaters of the Black River. A range of treed-over low mountains separates Atwell from the Fulton Chain. “My husband and I never considered we needed a classier cabin than Cozy for our honeymoon retreat,” said Emily Mitchell Wires when thinking about her family’s Adirondack camp. “Camp Cozy’s atmosphere provided experiences which contributed to my physical growth and character development. It lingers long in my memory.” When Emily Wires wrote these words in 1966, she set a scene familiar and near to the heart of everyone who grew up or vacationed in the Adirondacks. Emily described Camp Cozy as having “a level of comfort above the bare necessities of existence.”
Emily and husband at Camp Cozy on North Lake in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains.
“Back at camp…” The very words bring to mind a mood, a feeling, an image of a place to relax and enjoy a cool breeze on a warm night, a place from which to explore, for reading, rocking, cooking and storytelling. Emily was not the first to find restoration of health and growth of character in a rugged, outdoor existence, but she was one of few who have had the creative ability and descriptive power to make such an experience valuable and stimulating to her grandson, Roy E. Wires. Emily’s legacy is not restricted to a camp diary, recipe book and a box of memorabilia. She told her grandson she was grateful to her grandparents, for her parents’ stories and to the old-timers who were responsible for turning her outdoor life into a storybook populated by the locals who lived robustly in the Black River country.
“Back at camp…” The very words bring to mind a mood, a feeling, an image of a place to relax and enjoy a cool breeze on a warm night, a place from which to explore, for reading, rocking, cooking and storytelling.
Emily was often in the company of her sisters, and the girls became knowledgeable about resident animals and birds, learned to identify trees by their bark patterns, fished and enjoyed helping prepare camp meals. She rated herself as good at fishing and cooking, but a poor markswoman. No matter how good your screens were or how hard you tried, it was impossible to keep all the flies out of the camp, particularly in the fall, when the weather began to grow cold and the old kitchen smelled so nicely of canning, pickling, and cooking. “We used an old method learned from our grandparents to fight flies,” said Emily. “We’d take the stiff paper of a flour sack, cut it into strips, tie the strips to a stick or part of a broom handle. Then with several of these weapons, we would open the door and, starting from the back part of the room, flail the air vigorously until we had chased the flies out.” Then too there were the old-fashioned sticky sheets of fly paper that were hung from the ceiling. They caught their share of flies, and an unsuspecting girl’s hair too.
Emily said she always brought jars of pickles and sauce to camp. Her pickles and sauce recipes are labeled “from Ma Wires.”
A pie eating contest at Camp Cozy on North Lake in Atwell, NY.
CAMP COZY CORN FRITTERS: A fast, easy and filling camp meal.
1 cup cream corn;
1 egg, beaten;
2 rounded tablespoons flour;
2 rounded tablespoons baking powder;
Pinch of salt.
Directions: To egg add corn. Next, add sifted dry ingredients. Fry like pancakes and serve with maple syrup.
An excerpt from “Spring Trout and Strawberry Pancakes”
“GOOD HEAVENS, your Troutship,” exclaimed a blinking Earl Fuller, a medical doctor from Utica, as the Rev. Byron-Curtiss drew in on the cotton line and netted a beautiful two-pound brook trout wagging a well-crisped fin. “You caught a beauty on that old peeled alder sapling pole this time.” Earl managed to get up to Nat Foster Lodge at least once every fly-fishing season. He considered fly-fishing for brook trout to be “first-rate sport.”
Remote fishing pond near Nat Foster Lodge on North Lake
He was thankful there were so many good trout streams between the southwestern Adirondacks and the Mohawk Valley. The Reverend and Earl shared a love for warm sun and tiny wild strawberries added to their pancakes, and a tolerance for the ferocious little black flies that caused them to swat and scratch their itching skin, bitten right through their shirts. Fishing near Nat Foster Lodge, the duo used to cut over the hill and take an old woods road up over the mountain, striking Grindstone Creek where it began coursing down a long wooded, rocky slope—all rips, falls, and deep pools, one after the other. The water was so turbulent that you could just as well fish downstream as up, as far as the trout were concerned, and it was a heap easier. Besides, when they quit fishing they had only a short walk to a trail that led back to the camp. One day, as the men were going down the trail from the brook, after several hours of fishing, they met Raymond F. Dunham and Harvey (“Rascal”), his brother, both of Utica, who had also been fishing up in North …
William J. O’Hern’s latest book is “Adirondack Timber Cruising”.
The inspiration for the new book by prolific Adirondack author William J. “Jay” O’Hern has partial roots in his days working at a sawmill in Red Creek in the mid-1960s when he was a teenager and a bit later when he took a job at a paper mill in Oswego.
He’s been around wood, the people who work it and its byproducts for generations. In his 20s, he began backpacking through the Adirondack wilderness and he’s an “Adirondack 46er.”
“You could say I grew up loving trees,” Mr. O’Hern said in a phone interview from his home in Cleveland, Oswego County.
A photo from the book, “Adirondack Timber Cruising.” The caption for it in the book reads, “By 1850 logging companies were actively harvesting America’s forests from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard. Twenty years later, logging companies that cut hardwood trees loaded them onto flat cars and transported them to sawmills by train.” William J. O’Hern
Loggers on an Adirondack river. From the book “Adirondack Timber Cruising” by William J. O’Hern
He’s written nearly 20 books that focus on the Adirondacks, ranging from hermit John Rondeau — 1997’s “Life with Noah: Stories and Adventures of Richard Smith with Noah John Rondeau,” to 2018’s “Life in a North Woods Lumber Camp.”
He recently released, “Adirondack Timber Cruising: Logging Tales and Lumbering Days Memories Including Mart Allen’s Recollections.”
Two things about the title: Mart Allen, 92, of Thendora, is a retired forest ranger and former hunting guide and camp manager. He wrote a long-running weekly column for the Adirondack Express newspaper in Old Forge.
Mr. O’Hern dedicated “Adirondack Timber Cruising” to Mr. Allen, “who helped build the character of this Adirondack community,” he wrote.
As for the book’s title, a “timber cruiser” is someone who studies a forest’s inventory, assessing and analyzing, for its potential use.
A photo from the book, “Adirondack Timber Cruising.” The caption for it in the book reads, “By 1850 logging companies were actively harvesting America’s forests from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard. Twenty years later, logging companies that cut hardwood trees loaded them onto flat cars and transported them to sawmills by train.” William J. O’Hern
Mr. O’Hern stresses that it’s not enough to use forest resources wisely, with the idea that forestry is an end to itself, but that the end is greater human happiness through wise forest management.
As with his previous books, Mr. O’Hern focuses on personalities in “Adirondack Timber Cruising.” One part of the book is devoted to several of Mr. Allen’s columns that appeared in the Adirondack Express, with subjects ranging from “Men and Horses Teamed Up to Cut Adirondack Timber” to “Timber Thieves Beware: Your Booty Likely to Qualify as Grand Larceny.”
Mr. O’Hern tagged others to write other passages for the book, such as chapter 46, titled, “Ken LaFrance Recalls Life in a Lumber Camp Before Chain Saws” and “Reflections of a Lumberjack-Forester,” chapter 36, by Daniel M. Christmas, a former timber cruiser and woodlands caretaker and now president of Christmas & Associates Inc., Camden. His photo is also on the cover of “Adirondack Timber Cruising.”
Other chapters explain how selective cutting methods, improved fire protection, more effective insect control and a better program for reforestation seek to provide an infinite supply of lumber, while preserving forest lands for recreation and other human needs.
According to the National Park Service, lumbering in New York state in the 19th century flourished due to the vast forests of the Adirondacks, which were more accessible for harvest due to the network of rivers that were used for floating logs downstream to mills.
The Park Service notes the first documented sawmill in the Adirondack region was at Queensbury in Warren County, built in 1764.
“Environmental and land use regulations including the ‘Forever Wild’ clause limited logging activity over the years,” the NPS says in its report “Adirondacks: Lumber Industry and Forest Conservation.”
“There’s very little logging going on in New York state compared to what it used to be,” Mr. O’Hern said. “Your major logging is being done out West.”
But the type of work the loggers performed lives on in recollections recorded by Mr. O’Hern in his latest book and others. He also has a library of historic photographs, with hundreds of them in “Adirondack Timber Cruising.”
“I developed an appreciation for loggers, sawmill workers and the people who are involved in logging,” Mr. O’Hern said. “It’s honest work. It’s a job that requires a lot of hard labor. All loggers that I know of have an appreciation for the woods. I don’t think a lot of people appreciate the dedication these people put into their profession.”
