LITTLE ORLEANS -- Elwood Higgs loved to hunt, meaning he loved this time of year.
No one in these parts can recall him ever bagging a white-tailed deer in nearly two decades of hunting at Green Ridge State Forest. Yet every deer season, the Hagerstown firefighter and a group of longtime friends returned to a small, well-kept camp tucked among barren hardwoods in mountainous eastern Allegany County.
The Windy Hollow Hunt Club is not fancy -- nothing more than an old trailer with a frame addition, a place away from the city, a good place to spend a few days with buddies.
And so, again this year, soon after Thanksgiving, three members of the old gang -- Larry Williams, Bill Scally and Ron Moser -- were out the door with their rifles, camouflage and fluorescent-orange gear, heading west. For 10 days or so, they ++ hunted, played cards, downed beer and occasionally showed up at a nearby watering hole. Elwood Higgs -- he was at camp again, too, in spirit, not to mention a rather unusual way of being honored and remembered. Mr. Higgs, you see, died at age 69 two years ago this past summer. His remains rest at Windy Hollow, ashes stored on a shelf in a peanut-butter jar.
"Elwood sits up there and keeps an eye on everything," said Mr. Moser, a retired state fire marshal from Hagerstown. "He still talks to us. He loved this place -- he really did." So much so that during his last season of hunting at Green Ridge -- about six months before his death -- Mr. Higgs asked one of his friends and fellow hunters to have his ashes spread at the 1-acre camp, nestled off a dirt road in the 40,000-acre forest.
His buddies honored his wishes. After funeral services, the hunters gathered at Windy Hollow, drank a beer in Mr. Higgs' honor, said a few kind words and then spread his ashes near a stand of hemlocks.
"His ashes kind of fell out in a clump," recounted Mr. Williams, a Hagerstown firefighter. "We had to spread them around a little bit.
None of us had any practice in spreading ashes, you know."
When some of the men returned a week later, they found Mr. Higgs' remains still there on the ground. So they scooped them up, tucked them in a jar and took it inside the trailer.
"We're on a year-to-year lease here," Mr. Williams explained. "We might have to move some time, and we want to take Elwood with us. He worked with us, and he was around us all our lives."
Mr. Higgs' remains don't always rest on the shelf. It's not uncommon to find the jar resting on the Formica table as the guys play cards, down ice-cold Schaefer Lights and Bud Lights, and reminisce.
"Elwood came up here more than anybody else," recalled Mr. Scally, who owns a sports shop in Hagerstown. "He used to come up by himself. He used to hunt and fish. He loved Green Ridge."
Asked about her father's memory being perpetuated in such a way at the campsite, Mr. Higgs' daughter and only child, Barbara Higgs, also a Hagerstown resident, replied: "I think it's neat. He -- would be thrilled, and he would laugh at [them having his ashes]. I think it's pretty funny, too."
Mr. Higgs, whose wife, Jane, died 20 years before he did, was a Hagerstown city firefighter for nearly 30 years. And he was among the founding "gray shirts," the nonofficers of the Fire Department, who formed the hunting club in the early 1960s.
Although he was frequently around, Mr. Higgs didn't hunt as much during the last years of his life. His health had been poor after a heart attack that struck as he helped fight a fire in Hagerstown.
"Then, he even spent more time up here," Mr. Scally said. "He came for the camaraderie. There were years when he could have gotten a deer, but he didn't. It wasn't what he came for."
Mr. Higgs' affection for this camp and his buddies is evident in a yellowed thank-you letter he wrote after they presented him with BTC pair of binoculars at his retirement party in the late 1970s.
"Windy Dingbats," he wrote in neat cursive. "There is never a dull moment among the members of the Windy Hollow Hunt Club regardless of whether it is in camp or some tavern or a place no one would want to mention."
Mr. Higgs enjoyed his share of good times. Pictures of him -- along with others showing hunting trophies and men snoozing on couches and playing cards -- are tacked over a doorway. The pictures show a bald, bespectacled man wearing a red clown-nose or deer antlers. One shows him with his bottom teeth sticking out.
"He used to love to click those teeth," Mr. Scally said. "We used to call him 'the clicker.' "
He provided his buddies with plenty of fodder for jokes and conversation. There were times, they say, that he'd go out for milk or bread in the morning and not return until evening. He had gotten to know many of the locals, and he'd stop and visit. Other times, he'd stop at a ridge to watch trains pass in the distance.
Then there was the time the hunters took off to a bar across the river in Green Spring, W.Va., but found the tavern closed. Mr. Higgs said he wasn't going to pay 50 cents again to cross the toll bridge in Oldtown. So he backed his vehicle back over the bridge and sped away when the tollkeeper fired a shot.
"He was a great person," recalled Robert "Buzz" Manley, a Hagerstown firefighter and former member of the club. "I used to make him mad before he went to bed and he would cuss all night."
"I loved him to death. We all had some great times together."