A live storytelling show exploring the folklore of American logging camps, where lumberjacks imagined and shared tales of 'fearsome creatures' around campfires.
Fearsome Creatures comes to the McMenamins Mission Theater on Monday, October 12, as part of the Forest Pub series. The World Forestry Center is putting it on in partnership with the Portland Story Tellers Guild, and it's a live storytelling show rather than a lecture.
The material comes from the folklore of American logging camps: the "fearsome creatures" that 19th and early 20th-century lumberjacks imagined and shared around campfires. They used these tales to entertain each other, to explain the unknown, and to initiate newcomers into life in the woods. The show brings those stories to life, and the storytelling format lets the humor, mystery, and cultural traditions of logging camp life take center stage. It's a look at how people used their imaginations to make sense of isolation, danger, and wonder in the forest.
The evening is part of Forest Pub, a monthly program by McMenamins History at the Mission Theater in NW Portland. It runs every second Monday, pairing guest speakers with the way forests touch every part of our lives. The Mission Theater itself has a bit of its own history: it was home to the Swedish Mission Covenant congregation in the early 20th century before it became a neighborhood theater-pub.
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Doors open at 6 PM, and the show runs from 7 PM to 8:30 PM on Monday, October 12, at the Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St, Portland, OR 97209.
