The trapper’s shack, in the beginning, was just that. I first beheld it in the spring of 1968. Friends Ron Hastie, Dana Young and I used it that year as our base camp for a week during the construction of Ron’s camp.
The leaning shack was about 12 by 14 feet. It was weathered, old boards covered with tar paper. The paper had been partially torn off, apparently by a bear as indicated by the claw marks.
Crude double bunks made from peeled spruce logs were at the far end. Before we moved in, the place had to be sanitized of mice droppings and nests, and the straw mattresses aired out.
My late wife’s father, Ken Davis of Milo, was given the shack by its owner to settle an old debt. Ken used it as a hunting camp in the early 1950s.
The shack held a fascination for me, not only for the family connections, but also for its character, remote location and proximity to the shore of Seboeis Lake. There was really no legal “deed” for this abandoned structure.
My research showed that the land was owned by the state and managed by what is now the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. Wanting to fix up the shack, I first needed to secure rights to the land on which it sat.
At first public lands refused to negotiate a lease arrangement, indicating that state policy on shoreland was to remove these old buildings in the name of “wildness” and some kind of “purity.”
I persisted, as I have been known to do. After two refusals, I went to the top gun at public lands. I pleaded, arguing that the camp had been handed down by family, that it had immense sentimental value. The state finally relented and negotiated a lease to the land on which the shack sat.
Diane and I were both smitten with the romance of it all — our own remote getaway and a cozy little cabin right on the shoreline. We went to work improving the shack with paint, roofing and cedar shingle siding.
Between the 1970s and 1980s, I built a new outhouse and a small outbuilding for tools and outdoor gear. We added a fireplace and an outside picnic table. During this same period, we added a new gas refrigerator and propane range, as well as two small wood stoves.
Every move we made to improve the shack was doubly complicated by the fact that our only access was by a walking path or boat. We did a lot of hard portaging back and forth of materials and appliances.
Sometime later sons Scotty and Josh and I added a wonderful screened-in porch to the front.
With Josh’s and Scotty’s help, and a piece of rented heavy equipment, we transformed the old walking path into a good ATV road. And we christened it “Joshua Road.”
Other memories surface when I visit the shack. During the bear hunting period in our lives, Diane and I found many hours of inner peace and solitude there, enjoying afternoon vigils over bear baits and wonderful meals that always included homemade blackberry pie.
A couple of times during my middle years, when the weather was right in late September, I flew solo to the lake in a rented Cessna floatplane for a quick overnight at the shack. I cooked lamb chops over the hot coals of an outside fire and watched the red sun do its thing over Ebeemee Mountain.
Yes, the trapper’s shack is our “Palace in the Popple,” and like so many other remote Maine getaways, it is the centerpiece of wonderful outdoor memories and should continue to be so for so many others in our family for years to come.
V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide and host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network. He has authored three books.Online purchase information is available at www.sportingjournal.com.
