Mt. Moosilauke (1935 ) - Summit Camp
". . . The Summit Camp was a spacious structure, really a three storied house with dormers, such as prosperous New Englanders would build for themselves in the valleys over a century ago except that it had thick tie rods at each corner securing it from the second floor diagonally down to the bedrock, and half of the first floor exterior walls were rock three feet thick.
In our day the house had seventeen rooms: a large kitchen, dining room, living room with fireplace, three large bunkrooms and several double bedrooms plus a spacious attic with a few more rooms. It could comfortably accommodate sixty people and around ninety to over a hundred in a pinch. Then we had to double up people,sleep them on extra mattresses on the floor, and feed them in two shifts.
Since the Summit Camp was closed and shuttered for almost nine months each year it was always musty as an old trunk by June. When we first entered it each spring in the dark with flashlights it seemed like the House of Usher. What might have happened in here all during the long frigid winter's battering? We half expected to hear moans or groans not knowing what we might discover as we went from one dark dank room to another checking the place out. It was like a tomb until we opened all of the shutters and most of the windows to let the life of light and air back in.
My problem when I began my first stint on the mountain on a June day in 1932 was mainly one of hard work. Hard work packing heavy loads, hard work getting the house in shape and keeping it in shape, hard work taking care of our constant flow of guests. We did everything. Each of us packed loads twice a week. I was not used to carrying anything that amounted to much and regarded heavy loads as pure poison fit only for mules.
We did all the maintenance. During the four seasons I was on the mountain we did carpentry, plumbing, masonry, glazing, blasting, electrical wiring, window washing and enough painting to cover several acres. That was the building and grounds part of the job. Then there was the innkeeper's part: cooking, dish washing, bed making, sweeping, food ordering, book keeping and playing host. Since I was as lazy or more so than many people this took some getting used to. During the first two weeks of July I wondered whether I could make it through the season and why I had been so stupid to take the job. By the middle of August I was in love with it. . . ."
From "A Home On A Hill" by Landon G. Rockwell, pp. 268-305, The Moosilaukee Reader (Vol.1). ©1999.
