Old Camp Seven Poem by David Welch

I was out walking on a trek
through forested Adirondack hills,
looking for a good place to camp,
to drop my pack and just chill.

It was a weekend excursion,
and I'd already done eight miles,
seeking out the kind of peace
a man only finds in the wild.

Summiting a gentle knoll,
the forest dropped by the wayside,
for a moment I couldn't register
what lay before my eyes.

There stood a sprawling logging camp,
hewn from rough, fallen trees,
and a beaten path where horses
had trod upon the scene.

I stood there in stunned silence,
how could this all exist?
How could they be profitable,
and in this modern world persist?

Maybe It was a niche thing,
some sort of nostalgic deal,
or a camp of recreationists
who wanted to make it ‘real.'

Just then one of the ‘jacks waved,
and I walked into their camp,
He smiled, saying, "You look like
a right regular deep woods tramp.

"Cookee's serving up chow soon,
why don't you come and stay,
we can always find a spare bunk,
you won't get in the way."

Now a hot meal in the deep woods
is not something to turn down,
so I went inside and feasted
On beef, beans, and bread brown.

After eating I settled on in
to the spacious, if rank, bunk room.
The men told stories of their times,
of log drives and forest gloom.

Their names were Dutch, Red, Albert,
Guillame, Flash, and Scotty,
They frowned but once, when they said
they sure missed their friend Guy.

We all played cards to pass time,
and a few smoked long pipes,
one by one we all dripped off,
and slept a quiet, peaceful night.

The next morning after flapjacks
I set back upon my path,
and waved to the fellows true
who'd recreated the past.

They were such a friendly lot
that I went back two more times,
a fine summer, I do say so,
but something itched in my mind…

That itch came to the forefront
one chilly, October morn,
I was talking with my good bud,
local historian Nick DeLorn.

Nick had a brace of posters,
pictures of old logging camps.
He was putting them up above
the town museum's wheel-chair ramp.

He loked at one and he sighed:
"Wished they still made them like that."
I said, "I know at least one remains,
if you're willing to haul a pack."

Nick didn't seem at all convinced,
I said, "Trust me when I say,
if I don't show you a logging camp,
then I'll owe you're a steak."

With a shrug he agreed to go,
the next week we set on out,
down the long, forgotten trail
under wispy, bone-white clouds.

It took a while to make the walk,
but we eventually reached the knoll,
I said, "Get ready to be amazed,
it's going to be quite a show."

But as I walked over the rise,
my heart stopped in it's pace.
No logging camp greeted my eyes,
I did not recognize the space.

The great clearing was almost gone,
filled up with old birch trees,
a small clearing remained where
the bunk-house once had been.

Instead of buildings all I could see
were rotting piles of aged logs,
several of them, scattered about,
the whole thing dropped my jaw.

Where was the camp, where was Red?
Where were the horses, the cookee?
Where were the voice of lumberjacks
recounting their latest spree?

But Nick, he did the strangest thing,
He ran right down into the ruin,
his eyes light up, he jumped about,
what in God's name was he doing?

"Do you know what this place is? "
he cried on back as he explored.
"This has to be old camp seven!
Lost for a hundred years and more!

"I though you were a mad man
when you said a lumber camp remained,
but now I see what you did mean,
like a fox you were ‘insane.' "

He babbled on, taking pictures,
taking of professors he needed to call,
I let him have his great moment,
since this made no sense at all.

To tell him what I'd really seen,
my friend would not believe.
How could he, when to me it seemed
like some bizarre, crazy dream.

When we returned I looked into
the records of years long gone,
of the Nowell Paper Company,
and the workers they brought on.

In those faded, musty pages,
I found the names of my ‘jack friends.
The youngest had died in sixty-two,
long after Camp Seven's end.

How this could be, I could not say,
and I've pondered it for a while,
to see the dead and share their food,
to carry on in grand style?

Perhaps it was a quirk of physics,
a bending of time and space,
or maybe the Man Upstairs
had chosen me to reveal the place.

I sure do miss those rough fellows,
but I will see them in good time,
in many years when my day comes
we'll deal cards on the other side.

And there will be flapjacks.