Raised in the Woods

When I was a child, my father used to bring the family to New Brunswick to play in the woods. It was as much for his therapy as for ours, I'm sure. Dad was a soldier and has long loved the 200 acres upon which his grandparents homesteaded and raised the next generation. Long abandoned, "the farm" still welcomed us when his leave allowed. Seldom were we close enough to get there, but when time permitted, between posts, he'd bring us - to wander the fields and the woods, to fish and build lean-tos and once even a small log cabin (I don't think we ever got a roof on it).

The property was predominantly forested; only about forty acres were still clear, and they served, intermittently, as cropland and pasture for a local farmer. A smallish fast-flowing river bisected the lower hundred acres at the bottom of a deep valley it had carved over eons. It wasn't deep enough for any kind of boat in most places, but the trout loved it, and so did we. In one corner of the upper hundred acres an even smaller brook cut through the property, on its way to feed the river a mile or so to the southeast. Dad called the land "Fiddler's Green", after the fabled final resting place of his Korean War comrades, U.S. Army "Tankers" defending the Chorwon Valley against the Chinese.

When Dad finally returned from his last combat tour (Vietnam 1969) he chose retirement, and Fiddlers Green was the place to do it. My brother and I were 14 and 16 years old, respectively, and provided a good supply of free labor for the enterprise. I say "enterprise" because retirement had nothing to do with idleness, at least not yet! We left Mum and Sis back in civilization (small town in Maine) for the time it took us to build a house in New Brunswick. It took all summer and part of the autumn to make it weathertight and habitable.

During construction, we three lived in my great-grandfathers original house, long vacant (except when we visited) and, although electrified, it had no running water. The old barn was long gone, replaced by a large wild raspberry patch, thriving in acidic soil created by so much decayed manure! Of course there was no smell, just black fertile soil. We kept a couple of barn cats around to control the rodents and hauled our water from a spring near the river.

A professional contractor poured the foundation and we headed for the woods. With chain saws and a draft horse, we cut and snigged from our own forests all the trees we needed to build. They came back from the mill as boards, two-by-fours, two-by-sixes, two-by-eights, eight-by-eights and even clapboards from cedar trees that grew down by the river. It was a baptism by fire for a teenager destined to spend most of his life in the woods. The work was hard but the satisfaction was enormous, and it shaped me both physically and spiritually.

Even after we had begun construction with our milled lumber, we returned often to cut more logs for lumber, firewood (for the old woodstove in the homestead) and pulpwood to sell. I can't tell you how many thousands of board feet we cut, but it was monumental for "an old man and two teenagers" (Dad's words). We built a sprawling ranch-style home over a full basement plus stables for (ultimately) thirteen saddle horses. Oh, yes, we also had to exercise the two mares we started with while we built, and before long, we had acquired an Arabian stallion and another mare and the herd grew quickly. But that came later.

By Fall, we were weathertight and Mum came over. Sis got married and never joined us there. We boys started school and managed to settle in. Because our land was nine miles from town, we continued to spend most of our time in the woods and on the land. We built fences to contain the horses and we rode. We grew oats and hay and we rode. We repaired fences and enlarged the stables and we rode. We cut pulpwood and firewood to sell and we rode.

It was hard and it was magical, and I wouldn't trade it for anybody else's teen experience!