Woodsman’s message recalled years later

You know what I’ve come to miss now that December is upon us? Walter L. Arnold’s Christmas message. In a sense, I suppose, the Arnold report was more of an accounting of life in the Maine woods, but seemingly, it always arrived with a cheery, Merry Christmas greeting.

Walter Arnold lived alone in the Maine wilderness.

He was born May 19, 1894, and died July 6, 1980.

Recently, I wanted to refresh my memory of an interview I had with Walter Arnold in his spotless cabin at Indian Pond one afternoon in February.

“Grammar school is all I ever got through. Then I went to work. I was 13 years old and had some experience operating log haulers. I got a job at a landing camp near Sebec Lake. We were on duty 24 hours a day and were fed four square meals a day. I remember those wonderful baked beans swimming in pork fat, hot biscuits, molasses, cookies, pies and lots of strong tea. The camp bunks had no springs nor mattresses. Balsam boughs acted as mattresses. Even as a boy 13 years old, after a stretch on a log hauler, sometimes 18, 19 and even 20 hours, I never had a trouble getting to sleep.”

Reflecting on his boyhood, Walter went on to say: “I can close my eyes now and hear the hiss of the steam from the old log haulers, even recall the shouts of the men in the lantern light, the rattle of cantdogs and the booming of logs in a huge cover of snow. Those boyhood experiences were a very important part of my life.”

The wood fire inside Arnold’s log cabin gave off heat and a constant tapping sound broke the silence as chickadees pecked at feed under the eaves. These and the ticking of a clock were the sounds heard that day in Township 7, Range 9. His 11-by-17 cabin, built in 1951 on the shore of Indian Pond, was to Walter’s liking, “otherwise, I’d live some place else. I’m one of those people who can do anything he wants to …”

One of Walter’s many stories dealt with a black bear.

“I’m resting on a moss-covered rock this day when I heard leaves rustle behind me. I peeked back around a tree and here comes a large bear, padding along and heading right down past me. He was 18 feet away. I leaped to my feet out in front of him, and he jumped, too. He stopped and took a good long look, turned and ran, not too fast, either. If those few dry leaves had not been back there to warn me, I haven’t the slightest doubt but in a few more seconds he would have been stumbling over my foot which stuck out past the tree, scaring the daylights out of both of us.”

Walter Arnold took to the woods east of Greenville with his father, who built the first camp in Township 7, Range 9, sometime in the 1870s. His father used the camp to hunt caribou, then sold and shipped the meat to Boston markets.

The elder Arnold’s son, Walter, carried on the family tradition, a mountain man, trapper and for 40 years of his life, a guide for folk who fish or fowled. “I was a guide for 40 years, mostly fishermen. I guided educators, politicians, theater people and I guess, a few with reputations not worth remembering. I recall one time a fisherman who they said was one of J.P. Morgan’s partners. The camp owners and several of the guests were all bowing and scraping to this man. I never did. I always figured everybody was made by the same God, and I didn’t have to bow to nobody.”

Before he died, Arnold delighted in telling visitors about his run-ins with moose. He told of being charged by moose several times.

“You have to remember, when I came here, I went four years before seeing an automobile. When a moose saw an automobile, or a man walking about in his territory, he wasn’t exactly pleased! But I learned how to bluff a moose. When a moose comes after me, I yell at the top of my lungs, and make him think I’m going after him. Make a lot of noise. This worked a couple of times when one of the damn things had me been between a rock and a hard place.”

Walter L. Arnold’s proudest accomplishment, oddly, never had a thing to do about life in the wilderness.

“See that machine over there? I learned to operate the thing when I was 61 years old. Pretty darn good for a man who never passed grammar school, and later, ran a an eight-day trap line – four days out and four days back – in winter temperatures 10 to 30-below zero weather. I’m proud about being able to run that rig with only a few mistakes.”

The “thing” or “rig” Walter pointed to was an old but working typewriter on the hospital-clean breakfast, dinner and supper table.

“I keep ‘er oiled and greased and works slicker than bear grease,” Walter bragged and laughed.

Walter L. Arnold’s annual report, usually a few weeks before Christmas, came off the “thing” he learned to operate at the age of 61.

One of Walter’s letters, I remember, ended thusly: “There is not a day in my life that I don’t take some milk into me. I have good teeth, the ones God gave me, and solid bones. I am as well as anyone my age.”

Walter was 78 when he wrote that paragraph. He died at the age of 86.