Classic Poem

Yes, that's a pine — a York State pine.
It seems lost down here in this stubbly brush
Of low scrub-pine that grows along the bars.
I'm always lonesome for that tree down here,
The friend I wintered with up in the North;
White pine, with seamed, grey-green smooth bark
And slender needles soft and delicate —
The cones so long and smooth. If you had lived
When you were young in Northern lumber camps
You'd love white pine; I call it York State pine,
But it grows up and down the Eastern coast
Mixed in with other pine, yellow and pitch,
And loblolly, that's down here on the dunes.
They're not so fine, not friendly kinds of trees.
Their needles are too stiff to bend and sing
When the wind whistles, like a York State pine,
And croon above the rafters in the night
As soft and mournful as the sound of rain
That strips the frost-touched leaves in early fall.

I can't forget where first I came to love
White pine in our rough Northern lumber camps.
'Twas on the Sacondog; (we called it that
But Sacondaga is the rightful name.)
If you will look some day on the State map
And find just where the Sacondog turns west
In Warren county and then shoots straight down
Through Hamilton; it was in there I spent
Ten winters in the woods with lumber gangs,
Hauling pine markets to the river bank
To float down to the Hudson in the Spring
When the ice left the river.

Why is it
The old life vanishing from field and hill
Now in my memory seems so beautiful?
When I look back, it was a rough, wild life,
Yet it was hardy, wholesome, sweet and clean
That life has gone. You know the Big-Rock Bend
Where the old Sacandog cuts through the gorge?
There was a lumber camp as wild as sin
Built up in there some forty years ago.
Log houses and log bunk sheds for the men,
A few framed dwellings primed with ochre paint,
A ramshackle hotel, a general store
Where we drew credit from the " Company, "
A big " Bark " tannery, bridged on a creek,
Puffed spits of steam, as the log teams drove by.

We peeled the hemlock in the Summer time
For tan-bark; hemlock's prime to peel in June.
With a sharp spud in those days I could peel
And stack — if I was fresh — a cord a day.
Around the camp the timbered hills rimmed up
Like dark green clouds fringed low against the sky.
At sunrise they lay black against the dawn;
At sunset they were painted like the sky.
Back in the hills — some five on to ten miles —
The shanties stood, where the log choppers lived.
They chopped and limbed the logs; we skidded them,
Then " teamed it " down the river, logs chained high
To our bob sleds. The roads were glare with ice —
A log road wasn't much — just a cut trail —
But we had horses then; they'd brace and slide
Bad hills on all four feet. One time I fell
Before my load to almost certain death.
Old Nell, my off mare, jumped clean over me
Sideways into the snow, and stopped the load.
I tell you, I took care she had her oats
When I put up my horses for the night.
We used chains on the runners for our brakes.
Sometimes they wouldn't work on the steep grades,
And when the load got going 'twas a run
With death till we struck level down below.
I'd swing the reins and yell " Giddap " like mad
At my old bays. We always beat it out
And got down safe, although it made us puff.
The log-road's gone; a year ago they built
A spanking brand-new auto road in there.
The camp's gone too; you'd never know the place.
It all burned down; you'll find just here and there
A few logs tumbling down among the brush
To tell you that folks lived there long ago.
They shipped the tannery off somewhere else;
The hemlock bark gave out. They use oak now,
But hemlock is the best.

There's nothing left
To mark the place but one poor, creaking shack.
An old man lives there just to sell soft drinks
To auto-folk who come in summer time.
Upon the hills the hemlock and white pine
Are growing fast, for the State owns the land.
I never cared for any tree that grew
Except a pine; they're leaves and boughs and bark,
But pine is friendly. I went chopping once,
And never put an axe into a pine
But that I hated to; it seemed alive.
And I tell you when I am laid away
That I don't want a marker over me
Of marble, or some other fancy stone;
If I can have my way, 'twill be a pine .