Do you have an outdoor mentor?

By Sam B.

I was at a Greater Lovell Land Trust event recently, and the speaker asked the crowd, “How did you come to enjoy the outdoors?”

After some discussion, most people in the group came to realize that someone had introduced them to the outdoors in some way and inspired them or acted as their mentor. Some were taught to canoe, others to camp out, build a fire, use a map and compass, hike, climb mountains, or even just explore.

My mentor for the outdoors was Great Uncle Walt.

While I had the benefit of a big extended family who all seemed to enjoy the outdoors in different ways, Uncle Walt stood out.

Walter Austin Rodney, born in 1914, was the sixth of seven children in my maternal grandmother’s family. Walt was the third of the four boys.

He grew up helping with the small family farm on the outskirts of Boston. His father worked at the local tannery in addition to the farm. At the time, most families in the area worked their own farm in addition to a full-time job.

For a few years during the Great Depression (1929-1941), Walt and his older brother Ed worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps building the Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts. He was drafted into the Marines during World War II but never left the States.

After the war, Walt returned home and worked in various jobs. He never moved more than a few miles from his old neighborhood and when his parents died in the 1960’s, he purchased their home, and our adventures began.

To all the cousins and other neighborhood kids, Uncle Walt was undoubtedly what’s now known as the “Funcle” or “The Fun Uncle.” We would be out in the neighborhood near his house and he’d appear and ask “Want to go for a walk?”

The answer was always “Yes.” Luckily for us, development and suburban squall had yet to reach the area, and we had hundreds of acres to wander in and explore.

Every walk with Uncle Walt was a unique experience. There was no standard route or need for trails. Even if you ended up at the same spot, the path and sights along the way were different.

Several times we checked out the baby foxes at the den he’d found. He taught us to lay on our bellies and peer over the hill so we didn’t scare them into the hole.

Sometimes we’d go right up to the den itself and analyze the skeletons and feathers of the animals they had caught.

Uncle Walt also taught us to bang on den trees with a stick. If you were lucky, a raccoon, squirrel, or even a flying squirrel would peer out one of the holes.

Other times, we would walk along or play in the local brook. On one memorable occasion, Walt suggested that we build a dam. He pushed a dead tree over the brook and had us place sticks and pack leaves behind it. Within an hour, we were wading and trying to swim in the chest- deep water.

For several winters, Walt built and maintained a ski trail on the hill in his backyard with several routes. It was steep and short like the top of a ski jump. Walt even had lights installed to ski at night. He never got a rope tow going, but on a few occasions, skiers were towed up with a snowmobile.

Walt’s legend in the neighborhood was symbolized by his carving in what was known as the ‘Initial Tree’. The Initial Tree was a big old beech tree that people had been carving their initials in for many years. It was a rite of passage to carve your initials in the tree and in 1965, I carved my “SB ‘65” in 4-inch block letters in an open spot on the lower left side. I used the same Cub Scout knife that had taken off the top of my thumb a few months before.

Above my initials were initials from my cousins and some of the older neighbors, along with “Rat Fink” carved by someone. I still don’t know the significance.

Walt’s initials were the focal point of the tree. He carved his WAR initials with conjoined letters merged together as one, 8 inches tall and deep into the tree. He had also added a scroll below his initials as an artistic flair.

His contribution was art while ours bordered on graffiti.

Through the years, the initial tree began to rot away. It became hollow and one by one the initials disappeared into scars and smudges, except for Walt’s which looked none the worse for wear. Before the tree fell, his initials were rescued from the tree and are now kept as a memento by his youngest daughter.

Some of us also had the luck to spend time with Uncle Walt at the family place in Lovell. Here he was truly in his element. There were bigger woods and mountains as well as lakes and ponds for longer and different adventures.

While in Lovell, I also got some personal tutoring on how to catch frogs both with your hands and with a net. With your hands, it’s best to approach the frog from the side and use your front hand as a distraction, sometimes even twitching your ring finger and then quickly, but gently snatch the frog around its hips.

With a net, it’s best to approach the frog with the net open in front of the frog so the frog jumps into the net and then quickly flip the net over on the frame to lock him in.

These are proven techniques and are still being used today.

On one of our frog catching sessions, Walt was taking me in the rowboat to the prime frog catching area of the pond lilies and weed bed when suddenly he dropped the oars and jumped overboard. He quickly resurfaced standing fully-clothed in chest deep water holding a painted turtle.

I have to admit, I haven’t tried this method.

Walt also had fun and creative ideas for activities on the water. He proposed running a zip line across the cove to the big pine tree 120 yards away. He also wanted to put a big mirror on that same tree so our east facing waterfront could get afternoon sun. I was inspired to try this one afternoon and found that it didn’t work well. The mirror needed to be repositioned every few minutes, and when it was on the right spot, it blinded the sunworshippers like ants under a magnifying glass.

This past weekend, Walt’s daughter, his grandsons, great grandson as well as a few members of the old neighborhood visited our place in Lovell. Everyone got to tell and re-live their favorite Uncle Walt story with a smile on their face.

I hope you feel the same way when you remember your outdoor mentor.

Thanks Uncle Walt, you left a great legacy.