Preacher in the Woods

The Rev. William James Burger was making a parish call. After he passed the guarded gate at Lower Cupsuptik, he drove through the Maine dusk between high forest walls of spruce and balsam. By the time he reached the Crowley Brook Camp, five deer had bounded out of his headlights' glare.

In the bunkhouse, 70 men lounged on the benches or in the double-decker bunks, reading pulp magazines by the dull oil lamps. The rafters over the hot stoves were festooned with drying socks. As soon as the poker players cleared the cards and money from the table, the minister set up his small silver cross and two candles and began to talk.

First, he told them the news they wanted to hear--about how the steamer, Frost, was all set to boom the pulpwood across Lake Mooselookmeguntic. Then he told them about the men he had seen at the other lumber camps. After a while he worked around to religion, passed out some leaflets and invited the men to look at the Bibles and paper-covered Gospels he had piled on the table. Most of his congregation were French Canadians who understood little of what Pastor Burger had said, but they were glad to find "La Sainte Bible."

So, with the beginning of the log drive last week, began another season in the strange ministry of Bill Burger. Pastor since 1944 of the North Eastern Lumber Camp Parish under the Presbyterian Board of National Missions, Pastor Burger serves an estimated 30,000 lumberjacks and expects it will be another two years before he has visited all 250 camps in his territory. Burger is New England's first full-time lumberjack preacher.

Son of a Trenton, N.J. butcher, 34-year-old Preacher Burger butchered and dishwashed his way through Wooster College, then went to Yale Divinity School. For two years he had a parish at Graniteville, Vt., for four at Haverhill, Mass. But, though he has a wife and three children at South Ryegate, Vt., it will suit him fine if he never has another "civilized" parish. He doesn't particularly relish the black flies, mosquitoes and winter temperatures--but he prefers them to elders, sewing circles and church suppers.

Beside the members of his husky flock, pint-sized (5 ft. 2 1/2 in.), bookish Pastor Burger looks even smaller than he is. But he has a voice that can outshout any of them, and he knows how to use a picka-roon to nudge the four-foot "blocks" from their great stacks into the river, and how to help sluice them through the dams with a pike pole. "Wish I had a soft job," the men sometimes yell at him when he comes by in his red and black checked jacket; but they laugh when they say it.

Presbyterian Burger does not go in for hellfire or glory-shouting, and he does his best to steer clear of pious advice. His main job, as he sees it, is to provide an opportunity for worship to men who are isolated for months at a time. He also tries to be a good listener to tales of woe about women, money and liquor.

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