Lost Train of Thought

Lost Train of Thought

Noel Laflin

4-22-15

(Photo from Stanley E. Bellamy's "Images of America - Running Springs")

So there it was – the train.

Big and black and belching smoke, a narrow gauge Shay locomotive, the one always identified by a single metal star emblazoned upon the front of the engine, sat frozen in black and white time – right there - in what the author definitely identified as logging camp number seven.

Oh, how I loved the words:  ‘logging camp number seven!’ – the very place that would someday become a future boy’s camp - turned Scout camp - turned eventual church camp so many decades later.

The scene had been captured on film more than one hundred years ago.  And I had been looking for just such an image for nearly half that time.  Now, here it was in a slim paperbound book sitting upon my old dining room table.  It was what can only be described for me as a true ‘ah-ha!’ moment.  I do believe I even shed a tear.  Let me tell you why.

When I was a kid, I stumbled upon the remains of old narrow train railroad beds that once criss-crossed our four hundred acres of Scouting forest.  An occasional ancient wooden railroad tie or rusted metal spike could be found if one searched diligently and carefully enough through scratchy buck brush or layered pine needles.  Thick metal cable, the likes of which was used by loggers to ensnare and haul fresh cut timber a century ago, was still a common find, especially near the camp’s entrance right off the Green Valley Lake Road.  But what was odd was the positioning of some of this cable – especially those pieces that seemingly grew right out of trees themselves.

It would appear that some trees, oaks in particular, had a final say in the covering of these old wounds – growing around and encasing the metal strands which once wrapped about their trunks so very long ago.  I would like to think that given enough time, perhaps all of that old cable would be consumed.

I would sit or stand beneath those majestic oaks and pines, cedars, and firs, pondering what all of this meant. Walking across our old parking lot or crossing the small ravine on my way back to the mess hall or my cabin on Staff Hill, I would contemplate these things, wondering where the trains ran exactly, and how the place looked back then.

Over the next decade that I spent wandering these woods, I came to understand how this land – along with thousands upon thousands of adjoining acres within the San Bernardino National Forest had been stripped bare of all its original growth timber during the early years of the last century.  Six miles of track once stretched from the Brookings saw mill in Fredalba (just south of Hunsacker Flats – now known as Running Springs) all the way to the area simply known at the time as GreenValley/Lightningdale – the very land upon which I once pondered.

Over time, I came to understand how three heavy train engines were hauled by oxen teams up the old City Creek toll road – long before it was ever known as Highway 330 and put to work chugging slowly across those six miles of track, each heavily laden with massive fallen living giants - many with interior tree rings measuring their time upon this earth not in decades, but rather, centuries.

For much of my adult life, I sought out old photos of the era, always hoping that one – just one faded treasure from the past might inadvertently show a familiar landmark within the old Camp Ahwahnee property and finally prove what was rumored to be old lost logging camp number seven – a fabled place first brought to my attention some forty years ago. But decades of searching were all in vain until the moment when a single picture, hidden within a heretofore unknown book, jumped off the page and caught my eye.

The photo – old, but not faded in the least – shows a train loaded with freshly cut timber.  It sits upon all too familiar looking terrain.  There is track visible in the background, following a roadbed also familiar in its gentle bend.  There are tents and gear strewn about. 

And that is when it hit me that I was staring at the very road upon which I had walked at least a thousand times. That old star train, along with lost logging camp number seven itself was sitting midway between what would become Ahwahnee’s parking lot and mess hall.  It was parked at the very base of what would also become known as Staff Hill.

'Ah-ha!' I whispered aloud.  And then shed that tear in thanks.

Author and sister unwittingly standing - some 50 years later - where the train once stood belching smoke.