Through the woods As told by the late lumberman, John Sinclair, a trip down memory lane runs

TOTE ROADS AND MEMORIES: THE STORY OF A REAL MAINE WOODSMAN, paperback, St. John Valley Times, Madawaska, September 2007, $14.95.

FORT KENT – John Sinclair was a giant of a man, a woodsman who became an icon in the Maine logging business, and an administrator who became one of the leading engineers of today’s forest industry.

Sinclair started working in the Maine woods as a lad of 16 when farmers were the backbone of the logging industry, cutting wood during the coldest winter months to supplement the family farm income during the Great Depression.

Born in St. Francis, in Maine’s most northwestern deep woods, Sinclair spent a lifetime traipsing through the woods on foot, with snowshoes, with horse teams and later by the more conventional means of today, the almighty pickup truck.

He died at 86 years old in October 2006, leaving his memoirs and written anecdotes unfinished. But his family and others thought what he had to say was important enough to make it available to future generations, so Sinclair’s musings, philosophy, decades of notes and life stories have been collected and published in “Tote Roads and Memories, The Story of a Real Maine Woodsman.”

Reading the book was reminiscent of sitting with Sinclair on the porch of the cottage on Eagle Lake he shared with his second wife, Rose (Nadeau) Sinclair, and chatting about the Maine woods and the logging industry.

His stories are of times when loggers moved the fruits of their work close to the rivers, where logs could be moved to sawmills and other markets during the high waters of the annual spring freshet. The log drives, which stopped in the late 1960s, were part of a time that preceded the trucks and trains of today that move Maine’s bountiful harvest from the woods.

Sinclair’s life also took him to other endeavors, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, when he helped survey and build roads around the Bar Harbor area, and did survey work with the Maine Forest Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. During World War II, Sinclair did aerial mapping photography all over the world for the U.S. Navy.

Returning home after the war, still a young man of 26, he returned to the woods as a forester, chief forester and a land agent, first for the Pingree heirs in Maine and New Hampshire and later for Irving Pulp and Paper Ltd.

In the mid-1960s, Sinclair helped establish the Seven Islands Land Co., which worked on family holdings of many old-time landowners across the state.

Sinclair was instrumental in the development of Maine’s Tree Growth Taxation program, the University of Maine Cooperative Research Program, and the promoter and one of the organizers of the North Maine Woods Organization in 1971. He was chairman of the latter organization until 1979.

Sinclair retired from the woods industry in 1980, more than four decades after entering the woods as a teenager.

He was also a great supporter of Boy Scouting, and one of the developers of the Maine High Adventure Program in the North Maine woods.

While the book may be a more difficult read for those who did not know Sinclair, for those who knew him and of him, it is a trip down memory lane. There were not many things that happened in Maine’s woods over the last half-century and more that Sinclair didn’t know about or was not involved in.

He tells of cutting trees with axes and single- and two-man saws, traveling by foot from one woods camp to another, on snowshoes during the heavy snows of winter, and of the development of policies protecting the Maine woods for generations to come.

You quickly learn that Sinclair firmly believed the protection of the Maine woods and its industry was best left to professional foresters and loggers and people whose families had been involved in the woods for generations.

He didn’t think regulations governing woods-related industry should be developed by part-time legislators and environmentalists, some of whom thought the Maine forest should be left alone. He advocated for people involved in the woods industries to develop policy, thereby preserving one of the state’s largest industries.

Even in his later years, when Sinclair was not actively involved in the forest industry, there was nothing he liked more than to discuss the industry, where it had been and where it was from, from his personal knowledge.

His book, his memoirs one could say, was finished by Rose (Nadeau) Sinclair, with the assistance of Darrell McBreairty of Allagash, after Sinclair’s death last year. His published work also included the assistance of Everett Parker, one of Sinclair’s friends; Sarah Medina of Seven Islands Land Co.; and Albro Cowperthwaite, executive director of the North Maine Woods.

Inquiries about the book can be made to Rose Sinclair, 415 West Main St. at Fort Kent. Her telephone number is 834-5371.