MOUNTAIN TRAMPING100 YEARS AGO

STORY • PAGE 8

Ben English, Jr,. of Jackson and his sister, Jane English of Calais, Vt., have compiled the journals and photo-graphs taken by their grandparents, Walter and Ida Rachel James, of their explorations in the White Mountainsinto the book “Our Mountain Trips: Part I — 1899 to 1908,” published recently by Bondcliff Books of Littleton.

A New England family shares its passion for the mountains

New book chronicles hiking trips from a hundred years ago

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By Steve SmithContributing Writer

IN SOME FAMILIES, A LOVEof mountains flows downthrough the generations.

Mothers hike with daughters,fathers camp with sons, and a life-long passion for the high country iskindled anew.

For one New England family, thishappy union of peaks and peoplehas borne fruit with the publicationof “Our Mountain Trips: Part I —1899 to 1908,” a remarkable newbook edited by Ben English, Jr., 65,of Jackson and his sister, JaneEnglish, 63, of Calais, Vt.

In large format and stunninglyillustrated, it recounts a series ofexplorations undertaken in theWhite Mountains a century ago byBen and Jane’s grandparents, WalterH. James (1873-1963) and IdaRachel Butterfield James (1875-1966), at a time when camping andhiking (or “tramping,” as it was then

known) were savored in a moreleisurely fashion.

In 1899 this young professionalcouple from Massachusetts, both ofwhom had grown up on farms andmade early connections with theoutdoors, undertook the first oftheir many vacation journeys to thehills of New Hampshire. For thenext two decades they came to theWhite Mountains nearly every year,camping and tramping and exultingin the beauty of the streams and theforests and the summits. Along theway they introduced Ida Rachel’ssister, Lucy Ardena “Dena”Butterfield (1871-1955), and variousfriends to the joys and travails of lifein the woods.

Like many trampers of the time,Walter, Ida Rachel and Dena keptdetailed journals of their backcoun-try explorations. Accompanyingthese handwritten narratives werehundreds of magnificent black-and-white photographs, mostly taken by

Walter using a variety of camerasand formats.

These family records were passedon to Walter and Ida Rachel’sdaughter, Ruth, who herself becamean avid hiker, and in turn came intothe possession of Ruth’s children,Ben and Jane. Now, they have beenpublished as “Our Mountain Trips.”

Carrying on the family tradition,Ruth and her husband introducedBen and Jane to hiking at an early age.Both climbed their first peak, Mt.Cardigan, in 1947, when they wereseven and five respectively. Theirenthusiasm for mountains has been aconstant in their lives ever since.

Ben worked on the AppalachianMountain Club trail crew from1956-1958, and in 1959 he becameone of the earliest hikers to trekthrough the list of White Mountain4000-footers. A retired English andsocial studies teacher (including a20-year stint in Bartlett), he remainsan active hiker today. He is also an

avid local historian and has co-authored two books on railroadingin Crawford Notch.

As a young woman, Jane partici-pated in the AMC’s Mountain

Leadership Training course and ledhiking trips at girls summer camps.After earning a Ph.D. in physics, shefollowed her muse as a photogra-pher and creator of books and calen-dars, living in the shadow of suchmountains as Pikes Peak inColorado and Mt. Shasta inCalifornia. In 2002 she came fullcircle, moving back East and settlingin the Green Mountain State.

Not until recently did the Englishsiblings realize what a treasure lay onBen’s shelves. Last summer, whileworking on a family history project,Jane started leafing through some of

their grandparents’ journals andphotos. What she found was a fasci-nating account, in words and images,of what traveling and hiking andcamp life were like a century ago.

“It occurred to me that this was aunique historical record and that itreally should be published,” sherecalled. Ben agreed, and he con-tacted Mike Dickerman of Littleton,a longtime hiking friend whosecompany, Bondcliff Books, special-izes in publishing titles about theWhite Mountains. Knowing greatmaterial when he saw it, Dickermanquickly committed to publishing thebook.

Though “Our Mountain Trips”was essentially already written andillustrated, there was much work tobe done before it could be published.

Ben and Jane recounted that storyas we sat one recent warm andbreezy afternoon on Allen’s Ledge, aviewpoint partway up HedgehogMountain off the KancamagusHighway. We chose this location forour meeting because it offered aview over the Albany Intervale simi-lar to that shown in a 1904 WalterH. James photo reproduced in thenew book.

“Putting this together was a lot ofwork, and a lot of fun,” said Jane.“Ben’s wife, Judith, transcribed mostof the handwritten journals intocomputer files, then Mr. English,the retired English teacher,reviewed the text. As part of theproofreading process, Judith readthe journals aloud to us.”

This method of going over thebook, in keeping with the leisurelypace of the trips, revealed additionaldetails and bits of humor, she said.

Of the 19 trips described, 10 werewritten by Walter, or “Gramp,” as

“It occurred to me that this was a unique historical recordand that it really should be published.”

— Jane English, Co-author of ‘Our Mountain Trips’

In this 1905 photo from "Our Mountain Trips" a group of campers walks to thetrain that will take them home after a two-week sojourn at a backwoods campnear North Woodstock, NH. Their tents and packs had been sent separately tothe railroad station by horse and wagon. Pictured are two of the authors of thejournals that appear in the newly published book - Lucy Ardena Butterfield(third from right) and Ida Rachel Butterfield James (far right), who is holdinga deer antler she found along the trail to Mt. Moosilauke. The photo was takenby the third author, Walter H. James.

Walter H. James (L) and JamesJohnson (R) model the "doughnuts"they used to carry camping gear asthey set off on a tramping trip to theWhite Mountains in 1903. These bun-dles had a waterproof enamel clothon the outside with blankets and larg-er pieces of equipment wrapped onthe inside. Food and smaller articleswere carried in a bag. This photo wastaken in Dunstable, Mass. by LucyArdena Butterfield.

The two principal authors of "Our MountainTrips" - Ida Rachel Butterfield James and WalterH. James - pose at the James Farm in Portsmouth,NH before heading off to the White Mountains fora camping trip near Mt. Chocorua in 1904. Theyare each wearing dufflebags used for carryingfood and smaller gear items, while their "dough-nuts" are on the back of the horse-drawn buggy.The couple made numerous trips to the WhiteMountains from 1899 into the 1920s and keptdetailed journals of their adventures.

he was affectionately known, six were authored by IdaRachel (“Gubby”), and three by “Aunt Dena.”

They included several journeys to the Sandwich Rangeand the Mt. Chocorua area in particular, which involvedless travel time for those arriving from the south by railand carriage. There were also accounts of visits to NorthWoodstock and Mt. Moosilauke, North Conway,Franconia and Crawford Notches, Mt. Washington, andthe Northern Presidentials.

Of special note was a two-week sojourn in the AlbanyIntervale, mostly spent encamped on an island in DownesBrook. (Many of the camping practices used in those dayswould, of course, not pass muster under today’s “LeaveNo Trace” ethics.)

“It was neat to read about many places I’ve been to,and compare notes from a hundred years ago,” said Ben.“Some of these places you can’t get photos from any-more. I also remember seeing the old steps of the FlumeHouse in Franconia Notch when I was younger, and nowit’s great to read how my grandfather stayed there in 1903on one of his walking trips.”

The maps that show the trip routes in the book were ateam effort. Ben sketched the routes from road and trailmaps and penciled in the place names, then Jane scannedthe sketches and built the final maps using the QuarkXpress program.

Using her extensive background as a professional bookdesigner, Jane laid out all 168 pages of the book. Herunique cover design features a reproduction from thecover of Dena’s hardbound, gold-embossed journal.

This view of Potash Mountain looking west across the Albany Intervale was taken by Walter H. James on a tripto the White Mountains in January 1906. The location was near Shackford's, a small hotel that catered to visi-tors to the Swift River valley in the early 1900s. The dirt road seen here was the predecessor to today'sKancamagus Highway. Most of the fields have long since grown up to forest.

The digital restoration of the oldphotos — which were in the form ofprints, film negatives and glass neg-atives, some better preserved thanothers — was a painstaking labor oflove for Jane. She drew on her manyyears of darkroom and computerexperience working on her ownblack-and-white photographs.

“I just sat myself down last winterand did it,” said Jane. “It was easy tolose sense of time when I was work-ing on the photos. It became kind ofa meditation, taking out the scratchesand dirt specks. I’m very happy withthe way they came out in the book.”

The beautifully composed photosby Walter H. James in “OurMountain Trips” depict a variety ofsubjects - mountain views, backcoun-try camp life, trampers on the trail,waterfalls and streams, and roadsidescenes from horse-and-buggy jour-neys to and from the mountains. Thehand-lettered captions and storytitles were scanned so they could bereproduced in the book.

Of special interest are the portraitsof trampers sporting the garb of theera, such as the long woolen skirtsoften worn by the women. Alsoshown are the “doughnuts” thatwere slung over the shoulder to carrygear. In 1905 these were replaced bythe “AMC bag,” a simple canvas sackwith leather shoulder straps.

“We used this as a boot bag whenwe were younger,” said Jane. “Wedidn’t know anything about its his-tory until we started working on thisproject. We still have it and there’s a

picture of one in the book, and we’llbring this and other camping equip-ment when we do slide shows.”

The Ansel Adams-like quality ofWalter James’ photos promptedJane to use two dozen of them in anAmerican Transcendental Calendarshe designed for 2006. With the pic-tures are quotes from Thoreau,Emerson and other luminaries ofthe 19th century Transcendentalschool of thought.

For Ben, some of the most fasci-nating photos were taken at a lum-ber camp on the Lost River Road(today’s Route 112) outside of NorthWoodstock.

“Logging history has alwaysinterested me, and it was great to seethose photos of the camp — the out-side and the inside — especially thecook at his big cookstove,” he said.

On that 1905 trip, Walter, IdaRachel, Dena and friends weretreated to a meal of boiled beef andcabbage by the lumbermen. Thenext day they went to nearbyHenryville (today’s Lincoln) andinquired about a ride up into theEast Branch wilderness on the lum-ber railroad operated by the infa-mous timber baron, J.E. Henry.Unfortunately, Mr. Henry “was nota bit cordial,” and refused to letthem ride, presumably due to con-cerns about liability.

“Boy, I wish they had gotten a rideon J.E. Henry’s train,” lamentedBen. “That would have made a greatstory and photos.”

These and the many other tales in“Our Mountain Trips” makedelightful reading for the modern-day mountain lover. Though thejournals were penned a century ago,the writing style is fresh and vigor-ous and seasoned with dry humor.Walter and Ida Rachel and Denacome across as people you wouldenjoy sharing the woods with.

Both Ben and Jane noted that justas important as the fascinating his-torical content of the book is theexample it sets for a less hurriedmanner of enjoying the mountains.

"Whenever things get too hectic,I can read one of these stories andthings slow down for me,” said Ben.

Added Jane, "If there’s one thingI hope people come away with fromreading this book, it’s to slow downand not vacation so hard — getsome loafing time in. We encour-age people to follow our grandpar-ents’ example and enjoy the simplethings in the mountains. Grampalways said there’s nothing betterthan just taking a deep breath offresh mountain air.” s

The old AMC Hermit Lake Camp inTuckerman Ravine is shown in this photo takenby Walter H. James on a June 1906 trip to theWhite Mountains with his friend CharlesMatthews. The two campers journeyed fromPortsmouth, NH to Pinkham Notch in a lightwagon drawn by a farm mare named Dolly.They trekked up through the ravine, where theyfound snow piled six or eight feet deep, visitedthe summit of Mt. Washington, and then loopedback to their camp at the base of the mountain.

Though the journals were penned a centuryago, the writing style is fresh and vigorous andseasoned with dry humor.