There are five of us old guys sitting in a line here on the porch, gazing across the open area between us and the Dead Diamond River. The youngest is 72, the oldest 89. Mostly widowers, and a bachelor: old guys who’ve been cooking, sleeping, and living alone for quite a while. All cross-country skiers, canoeists, hikers, and outdoors people from way, way back, which is probably our strongest common bond.

Another bond is this place, a 27,000-acre grant of wilderness given to Dartmouth College in 1807 to undergird the finances of the college’s programs. It’s not as wildernessy now as it was when I first came here in 1968 – all-weather logging roads criss-cross it everywhere – but it’s a far cry from ubiquitous news media, cell phone coverage, and newspapers. I suspect that if we five were gathered anywhere, those sorts of things wouldn’t interrupt us, anyway; but here it’s guaranteed.

This open area, just below a small gorge and falls named Hellgate, was once the site of a large depot camp of the Brown Lumber Company. Cook shack, bunkhouses, stables, forge, and repair shops filled the whole space. Once you’ve seen the photos, it’s easy to sit here and smell the woodsmoke, hear the sound of horses, saw-filer, and whetstone, and see the gray jays flitting about – as they still do today – looking for treats to be stashed away against winter.

This old cabin, moved with great effort and skill from its former flood-prone location closer to the river and much renovated, is a sort of shrine to an earlier old guy, Pete Blodgett, Class of ‘25 and the uncle of Put, the second-oldest guy here today. After the cabin was moved and dedicated, Put noticed that brush was obscuring the lovely view of the falls from the porch of the cabin; so he and Jack (the youngest guy here today) went at it and whacked it down to size. Now it’s regularly mowed as smooth as a fairway, and the view is restored. Every now and then, in a shift of the air, the sound of the falls is carried into our consciousness. Someone put up a bluebird box in the middle of the fairway. Typically, tree swallows have moved in, and are currently swooping everywhere, feeding a brood from sunup till after sunset. Kiki trotted curiously toward the box, just once. She got strafed. She ducked and scampered back, ears flat on her head.

She’s been an absolute delight to me here. Put and Eric took off on an ambitious (for old guys) hike and bushwhack this morning. She really wanted to go. No, I said, you stay here; it’s gonna be a pretty good hike. She quivered as they strode away, and when they turned a corner and disappeared, was off like a shot. Wild horses couldn’t have held her. I felt like a parent who’s just dropped off a child at college, and kept peering at the spot where they’d reappear – if they did at all. Finally I lunched and fell asleep, and next thing I knew was wrestling a wriggling, happy puppy trying to tell me how much fun she’d had. She was wet, too; the river was low when they reached it, so she’d splashed right down the middle for the easier going. As soon as she settled back down, she resumed rooting beneath the camp for the snowshoe hare family living there. They’d come out while she was gone, but quietly disappeared when she returned.

It’s been a perfect day for a bath in the wide, gravel-bottomed pool beneath the falls. Some of us trekked up – avoiding the swallows – stripped, and hopped in. When John, the oldest guy, went up, Kiki and I tagged along to make sure he survived. There were people at the pool – you need a permit and key to get in here with a vehicle, but anyone can hike or bicycle anywhere on the roads; they’d covered about ten miles to get here – and they watched with mounting interest as John, who’s from the Putney School and unembarrassable, took off one bit of clothing after another. When he was naked, they all moved self-consciously to the farthest part of the pool and tried not to watch as he ducked in, soaped up, and rinsed off. They were all young and fit, and none of old guys looks much like Johnny Weismuller anymore.

I chose a stick I figured Kiki would want to take away from me if I held it close. She made a pass at it; I threw it out into the pool; and she was suddenly amphibious! It was as if she’d done it many times before. She swam out to it, grabbed it, and paddled back ashore. John was by then dried off, so we came back together to the porch, for a whiskey, some nuts, and deer flies, enjoyed in the very best of company.