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Page #3
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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.