October 06, 2010 - More on our journey with 'Focus'OCTOBER 6, 2011 1 SUFFOLKTIM iviore on M 0
our journey wit `Focus
ng along the Avenue of the Giants in California, we camped alongside this giant redwood
Let's pick up wnere we iert on Iasi ume aner Lri�
eling around our country and continue with t
writings and travels of Focus on Nature.
When we were married in 1950 we borrowed a to
from the Goldsmith family for a trip to Montauk
see if we'd like camping. Later we purchased a larl
heavyArmy -like tent with one side all screened. I i
member one time we spent three rainy days in it
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where we ran into South(
schoolteacher Bea Payne and her husband, B
from Shelter Island.
PAUL STOUTENBURG
that dwarfed our campe
FOCUS ON NAB UKt lne iasL uiLiC wC
used the tent — on a
camping trip to Maine
when the kids were
older — we went to
<1 pick it up in the mom-
ing and found a snake
coiled up underneath
PAUL STGUTENBURGH it! That night I remem-
ber, too, the mosqui-
toes were so bad, inside and out, that we all got in the
car and drove around to try to get away nom rnem.
With no air conditioning and the windows open, the
mosquitoes got in the car with us anyway so we head-
ed back to the tent and fought them there.
We then 'graduated to an 18 -foot Holly trailer,
which we used to travel around the Great Lakes
in 1962, the year after the road opened north of
Wawa. We visited the big Fond du Lac Indian Reser-
vation and stopped at huge grain elevators, where
we watched grain being dumped from freight cars
into waiting ships at the docks. They shook the cars
as if they were empty egg cartons to get every piece
of grain out.
We were so far north that it stayed light late and
the kids could swim until 10 p.m. We had two flat
tires 50 miles apart and had to cross the border
twice from Canada to the U.S. to get to a Montgom-
ery Ward store to replace them. We found out later
the company had bought up tires that were sitting ir.
storage for a long time for that particular camper.
With these added expenses, money was getting
tight as we traveled on our summer school vaca.
tion. We called to say we would be heading hom(
and not complete our trip all the way around thE
r;rPat rakPC_ but we were told. "Don't come home
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We enjoyed photographing puffins in Maine and again in
Iceland when we visited Flatey Island where this bird with
its unique bright red bill nested.
Your house is rented." Actually, Barbara's mother
had rented our house to Douglas Moore's prot6ges,
John Kander and Fred Ebb, who together wrote the
music and words for "Cabaret" on our piano while
spending that summer in our home.
One year, we headed to Newfoundland, where
Peter and I figured we could get to see and pho-
tograph the famous Atlantic puffins and razor -
billed auks that nested in burrows there. When we
stopped on our way to camp along the coast of
Maine we went on a lobster boat out to Machias
Seal Island, where we spent a night in the light-
house with fresh fish chowder for supper and a
p ace to sleep on the floor. At first light, we found
our puffins and auk's and spent the morning pho-
tographing them.
While we spent our time on the island, Barba-
ra, Roger and Peggy spent their time camping at
Cobs Cook State Park. Once we were able to get
the pictures we were after, we didn't need to travel
farther north, so it gave us time to spend camping
and exploring Acadia National Park, where I got to
see my first moose.
Over the years Focus has received many letters.
One lady moved away from our area and when
reading a Focus article about picking and mak-
ing beach plum jam said she could "just smell the
beach plums cooking." At the time, Barbara's Aunt
Libby was picking and making beach plum jam
for her church to sell, so I talked her into sending
ajar to the lady.
Once, when camping down south, I wrote about
yellow pine kindling known as firewood. A classmate
of mine living in Texas read my article and on a trip
back home he brought me a can of ft.
Fran Woodward never got to Hawaii but told us
when we returned from our tenting tour of four of
the islands there that she had been able to travel
along with us via Focus. She said they had always
planned to make the trip when they retired but her
husband died before they got there so she was able
to enjoy it through our eyes. This is just a sample of
some of the many comments we've received from
our readers over the years.
Focus got mixed up in politics once. Our oppo-
nents asked Troy to stop Focus while I ran for public
office — first for town trustee and later for coun-
cilman. They felt it was an advertisement for me.
Troy said as long as the article didn't get political, he
wouldn't stop it. Once we mentioned the name of a
candidate from Fishers Island while sailing out that
way and Troy cut his name out.
Another time there was a half -page vertical ad of
our grandson fishing from a dock and the Focus on
Nature story was about fishing with him. Troy said
I could run one or the other but not both. I chose
to run the ad — and I won. The ad showed our then
3- year -old grandson Robby sitting on a dock with a
fishing pole in his hand saying, "Vote for my Pa and
there'll still be fish around when I grow uD."