Etna
Shumway, who died April 8 at age 87, operated Moose Mountain Lodge — a popular cross country ski destination with sweeping views and charmingly rustic accommodations — with his wife, Kay, from 1975-2010. Over the last eight years, Shumway devoted himself to protecting the land, working with the Hanover Conservancy to create Mill Pond Forest and later Shumway Forest, the latter a 313-acre gem that increased to nearly 3,800 the acreage of protected and conserved land on and around Moose Mountain. At about 2,300 feet, it is Hanover’s highest summit.
“It was a very pure thing, his love of the outdoors,” said stepson Chris Crowley, one of five children Peter and Kay Shumway had from previous marriages when they wed in 1968. “He always wanted people to use the trails. He had that ethic. He absolutely wanted to make sure people enjoyed Moose Mountain.”
During the lodge’s heyday, Shumway sometimes waited up until 2 a.m. to greet late-arriving guests. With a reputation built almost exclusively by word of mouth — the Shumways advertised but once, in a regional magazine — his jovial disposition and enthusiasm for life on the mountain was contagious to the many families who returned year after year for wintertime escapes.
Guests staying at Moose Mountain Lodge received three square meals, Kay handling much of the cooking while Peter made salads out of his own garden’s veggies and tended to two fireplaces.
By day, Peter could be found out on the trails with everyone else.
That is, if he wasn’t busy rescuing arrivals who got stuck getting up Moose Mountain Lodge Road or lost on the back roads of Etna and Hanover Center.
“It was before Google and GPS, and a lot of people got lost on the way there, even though we thought we provided really good directions,” Kay Shumway said. “The way up here is a muddy road and people would get stuck in ditches. Peter would go right down there with his truck and rescue them. He was very laid back and could always cope with things that came up. He was a wonderful person to live with because he never got stressed.”
Not even when important decisions were on the table. In 1986, a lawyer from Boston arrived to inform the Shumways they had first right of refusal on the 313-acre woodlot that today occupies much of Shumway Forest. The lawyer offered for Peter to sign off on the land on the spot, but Peter said they wanted to think about it.
“As soon as the lawyer pulled away, Peter looked at me and said, ‘We’re going to buy that land,’ ” Kay Shumway recalled. “I was thinking the same thing.”
As for building and maintaining trails, Shumway called upon up to 30 volunteers for trail clearing weekends each fall, and they’d finish with a big meal together.
“People actually came from all over the country to help, because Peter made it so much fun,” Crowley said. “He loved people and he loved listening to people, so he was always great company. And having all those volunteer days really helped to keep the lodge what it was. It wasn’t a very polished place and it didn’t charge a lot of money, but Peter always did things to shape the environment to make it better without getting more expensive.”
Avid Skier
Shumway grew up in Lynnfield, Mass., a then-rural community north of Boston. His father, Carl Shumway, was a Dartmouth College graduate and early skiing pioneer — in 1913, he was part of a Dartmouth student group credited with the first ski ascent of Mount Washington — and Peter and his two younger sisters, Nancy and Lorna, were exposed to skiing early and often.
“In the wintertime, we skied every day, in the woods behind the house or anywhere there was snow,” said Nancy Shumway Adams, two years Peter’s junior. “There was a place called Blood’s Hill, an estate at the bottom of our street where we all skied. No one worried about liability back then.”
Shumway attended high school in neighboring Wakefield, where he co-founded a student ski club and became a state ski jumping champion. He and Nancy also attended a ski school at Dartmouth set up to teach children of alumni. But he did not excel academically and, much to his father’s chagrin, instead of Dartmouth, matriculated to the University of Maine after high school.
“The joke back then was that all you needed to get into Dartmouth was a note from home, but really, his grades weren’t good enough,” his sister said. “Our father was not a warm and fuzzy guy, and he and Peter didn’t get along at that time. Peter wouldn’t accept any money from him to go to college.”
Shumway left Maine after one year to join the U.S. Navy, and was stationed in Havana near the start of the Korean War. A year after returning from service, Shumway was a student at Boston University when his mother, Frances Bean Shumway, died by suicide.
“It was such a tragedy, because she was a very bright woman,” said Adams. “She suffered from depression her whole life. It was a family illness. Our grandfather (Alfred Elmer Bean) also took his own life and so did one of our aunts.”
Driving a taxi for spending money, Peter met his first wife, Krystyna Warren, while still at BU. After graduating, the couple moved to the Hudson River town of Garrison, N.Y., where Peter pursued a career in wholesale lumber sales. They had two children, Warren and Krysia, who both remained in Peter’s custody when he and Krystyna divorced in 1966.
“I was 7 years old, my sister was 6½ and he was left to raise us on his own,” Warren Shumway said. “Raising two kids is a lot of work, but he still found time for things like canoe adventures on the river. I think he took it in stride.”
Peter met Kay Carter at a party in 1968, and he offered to help her find a pet boa constrictor that had escaped near her Bedford, N.Y., home. They never found the snake, but married that summer and later moved, with their five combined children, into a farmhouse in South Salem, N.Y., near the Connecticut line.
Often vacationing in Northern New England, in 1973 the family took a trip to Lancaster, N.H., to look at a water-powered sawmill that was for sale. Deciding against the purchase, they stayed with one of Kay’s friends in Hanover during the return trip.
The friend brought the Shumways to Moose Mountain Lodge — then being operated by owners John and Mary Clarke — and they were smitten with the atmosphere, declaring they’d return the following winter as ski guests.
They didn’t because of a gasoline crisis and poor snow, but in the springtime, Peter learned the Clarkes were considering its sale. The Shumways paid them $96,000 for the lodge, including two acres and another 40 acres jointly owned with neighbors, in June 1975.
“We always intended to keep it a ski area; that was our dream,” Kay Shumway said. “We ended up doing it for 35 years.”
Somewhere near the middle of that tenure, the Shumways built a tradition of traveling each spring after Moose Mountain Lodge closed for the season.
Often the trips involved more skiing, such as a voyage above the Arctic Circle to ski in Norway, or Peter’s trip with friends from Hanover to ski the Haute Route in the Swiss Alps.
They also visited Italy, Ecuador and Canada over the years.
“One of the things I respect so much about Peter is that he built a lifestyle and career out of the things that he loved doing,” said Crowley. “He was a great example to all of us that you could live simply and still live very well.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.