(The following article will be published in an upcoming issue of AMC Outdoors)
August Camp Groupie Looks Back
Jill Cotter explores the roots of August Camp
I have been going to August Camp on and off for 25 years, but now that I have attended the past four camps in succession, I have become an official August Camp Groupie. An August Camp Groupie is an AMC’er who comes back year after year to enjoy the spectacular hiking, the intimate tent village life, the fun campfires, the dramatic natural surroundings, and the relaxed atmosphere that pervades the camp in spite of a frenzied schedule of hikes, canoe trips and overnights. For the past three years I have been celebrating my birthday at August Camp, and this year, when I celebrate my (gulp!) 59th birthday, I will be leading hikes, joining a long line of illustrious volunteer hike leaders who have helped make this volunteer run camp such a unique experience.
The original purpose of the Appalachian Mountain Club was to map and explore the mountains of New England. According to a wonderful history put together by August Camp historian, John Loge, the first ‘camping party’ led by Rosewell B. Lawrence, took place in 1887 to Katahdin Lake, Maine in response to the intriguing reports of two Club members George Witherlie of Maine and Professor C.E. Hamlin, a botanist from Harvard. A well heeled group of 9 men, 10 ladies and 5 guides, forged a new route up Katahdin and left a detailed description of their climb. .
From the beginning, the club members picked the areas they wished to explore and organized the camp themselves. While many of the members were tough hikers, August camp, as the Club’s Camp, was a place where members could go to enjoy the outdoors for an intensive one-two weeks in a variety of different ways.
The 1896 notes of the Moosehead Lake, Maine camp noted, that ‘the party did not consist entirely of strenuous people, for the leader reports that many of the sixteen days were occupied with canoeing, walks through the woods, and sylvan tasks of various kinds. Two days were taken up with all-day trips on the steamer chartered for the party’. The camp held on Three Mile Island, New Hampshire in 1900, also enjoyed steamer excursions, bathing, boating, and canoeing, ‘while little climbing was done’.
In 1897, the camping party to Randolph, N.H., was the first to be referred to as August Camp. ‘29 marchers settled on club land on the slope of Mt. Madison and were led by R.B. Lawrence and Mss M.A. Knowles. A 25 foot marquee was erected for dining and social uses and there were 22 tents and a cook shelter’. August campers will recognize the very same dining tent, where 60 hungry campers now sit at long wooden dining tables with benches and bang their cups on the table and shout for the chef when particularly pleased with the ‘mountain haute cuisine.
During the following years, August Camps explored many areas in the Northeast, finding some of them so pleasing that they became permanent club wide camps. Cold River, Echo Lake and Three Mile Island have devotees in the club who return year after year to these discoveries made by our own club members back at the turn of the century.
Campfire has been an essential part of the August Camp experience from the first, often reflecting the social realities of the day. In the 1930 Wild River, Maine camp, the campers sang ‘Negro spirituals…the whole gamut of tramp songs and low ditties of the read-‘em-and-weep breed such as the Jesse James ballads’. While we 21st century August Campers still use the dog eared August Camp songbook that features Good Night Irene, She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain, Seven Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory, we did spend one very cold evening in the Sawtooths singing 50’s oldies but goodies, and hope to do more of same this summer. Campfire is also the time when the extroverts have the opportunity to regale their captive audience with funny tales of daring-do and animal and flower sightings ‘Local history, hunting lore, ghost stories, announcements of past and future trips- all seemed spontaneous expressions of the camp spirit’, the 1930’s group reported.
An amusing entry in 1951 tells how AMC’er Frank Lewis ‘made in his laboratory at MIT several large metal trays with long handles which when loaded with dishes or silver could be dunked in scalding water, thus bringing sanitation for the first time to August Camp’. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I could swear that we’re stilling using Frank’s original metal trays!
Don’t miss this priceless opportunity to become part of the traditions and customs of August Camp, where new comers quickly become part of the family.
Jill Cotter
NY/NJ Chapter
AMC