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The Bradford Camps on
Munsungan: A Seaplane Friendliness All it's Own.
By Zachary Barnett
Aviation Digest, Fall 2002
I am lying on a hammock at The Bradford Camps on Lake Munsungan
in the North Maine Woods. It’s a
Sunday in late July and storm clouds are moving in from the west.
I scan the skies briefly and return to my book.
The story is E.B. White’s “Death of a Pig,” a humorous account of
transformation in the last days of White’s pig.
The transformation is White’s, who in the final hours finds himself
surprised by his own grief. I
empathize, for as I lie here, contented by the lapping of the waves on
Munsungan, one of the boys from Folsom Air Service is flying in on a seaplane to
take me out of here. But I am not ready to leave. The Bradford Camps isn’t
built for leaving, it occurs to me. If
only the dastardly airplane had never been invented. The irony is immense.
Munsungan is one of the deeper lakes in the region known as
the Pingree Partnership, a 3/4 million-acre conservation easement.
The Bradford Camps was founded here in 1890, and is now on it’s fifth
owners, Igor and Karen Sikorsky, who took over in ’96 and have kept the
traditions alive. They still cut
their own ice every winter, build their own cabins, serve all meals in the
dining hall, and generate their own power.
And it’s open through the fall for the hunting season. However, the
Sikorskys have broadened their reach by becoming more family-friendly and
welcoming in eco-tourists looking for a place to hike, kayak, and explore.
Munsungan is also seaplane friendly, and guests often drop in announced
(or not so) for lunch or a day of fishing.
There’s aviation gas available with advanced notice, and half the
guests arrive by charters out of Greenville, home of the Greenville Fly-In 45
minutes away.
My father and his pals first came here in early spring of
1956 to fish the “ice-out.” His success with Munsungan’s salmon and
fondness for life at The Bradford Camps brought him back for the next 45 years,
a tradition he passed on to my brothers, brother-in-law, nephew and me.
As I said, it is late July and on this occasion I did not
venture to The Camps foremost to troll salmon flies. Instead, I have come with others to hear the amazing story of
a man and his vision. The man is
Igor Sikorsky I, one of the prime forces in aviation history.
What makes this weekend so special is that this story is being told by
his son, Igor II and his grandson, Igor III, the 41-year-old owner of The Camps.
The Igors first came up with the idea for “Sikorsky Weekend” -- a
two-night presentation -- a few years ago, and it’s now a yearly tradition
featuring guest speakers, slides, pictures and videos.
And the story is
amazing – as much a mystic journey as tale of tenacity:
Four years before Kittyhawk, a ten-year-old Igor Sikorsky
has his precognitive dream: He is standing in a cabin that is shaking, and when
he looks out the window, he sees that he is passing 1000 feet over a crystal
green sea. His father, the
preeminent psychiatrist in Kiev, believes in his son’s vision and mortgages
the family estate so that young Igor can travel to Paris and learn all there is
to know about flying. By the eve of World War I, Sikorsky is Russia’s premier
aviation architect and the mastermind behind the Czar’s powerful air fleet.
But then comes communism and Sikorsky flees to America to begin again on
an abandoned chicken farm on Long Island. And
many years later, having achieved his remarkable success, he looks out the cabin
window of his Amphibiana aircraft and sees the crystal green sea of his
childhood vision.
“I did not try to break the laws of gravity,” he tells
a son one night after a speaking engagement.
“I tried to obey them.” There is much more, of course, and the tale
– not well known, yet – will move all who come to share in the experience.
Now, as I lie on the hammock, I see the far-off speck of
Folsom’s plane dropping beneath the clouds.
I close my book. Chad “the wonderboy,” The Camps’ handyman, has
wheeled my luggage down to the steps of the dock and continued on to check his
bait traps. Karen is off
hanging laundry having sent me to the hammock to read White’s pig story.
And Igor could be anywhere. The
three of them have become good family, and I will the miss the laughter and easy
friendship when I am gone. Many a night I have sat with them on the dock
listening to the loons and telling lies. My
nephew still recalls his first visit when we talked Igor III – an old
Dartmouth lacrosse goalie – into tending goal in his chainsaw gear.
Like I said, this place isn’t built for leaving, and postponed departures are a source of pride around here. If only I could sit on that porch another hour. It may not be the death of a pig, but every time that Chad comes for my luggage my own grief surprises me.