Campfires Rekindled: A Forester Recalls Life in the Maine Woods of the Twenties

by George S. Kephart

146 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of this year's Maine Humanities - Exploring WIlderness, Exploring Maine, this has been one of the most readable. It is short, 146 pages, and both text and photos are very interesting.

[Libbie Perry]

Enjoying it very much so far! The author describes his life in the 1920's while working for timber companies in Maine. Camping, canoeing, snowshoeing in the days before these became primarily recreational activities. Cruising (selecting) which trees to cut was a sumer and fall job; cutting and hauling logs to lakes in the winter; and the annual Spring Drives - seriously dangerous - to get the logs down streams to big lakes and rivers where they were made into booms for transport to the mill; then repair of the dams, and logging camps (reached mainly by canoe) in preparation for the new season.

Very interesting to me as my dad and I canoed many of these streams in Eastern Maine in the 1970's and 80's. We found many remnants of camps, dams, and early tote roads. Kephart's father, Horace Kephart, wrote the Classic "Camping and Woodcraft" in 1923. I have a copy of this, and learned many of my skills from it when I was a Girl Scout in the early 1960's.