Anne and Bob Deming sit in front of Bear Lake, holding their second published book, “A Camp in the Woods,” which is now available for sale.

BEAR LAKE — Inspired by a single chapter in their first book, “A History of Bear Lake,” Bob and Anne Deming recently released their second book, “Camp in the Woods.”

The book, which released on April 28, wasn’t originally planned by the Demings, but rather came due to receiving a number of requests.

“People asked us if we’d consider extending that chapter in the first book into a book,” Anne Deming said. “We thought we didn’t have anything to put in a book.”

“Camp in the Woods” is a collection of stories from people connected to the Chautauqua County YMCA Camp in the Woods, which ran from 1928 to 1974. Despite having no personal connections to the Camp, the Demings took to Facebook to learn the stories of those who were there.

“We just had to re-create it,” Anne Deming said. “We learned a lot about this camp from what people said.”

By the time the Demings were done going through different comments on the Camp in the Wood Facebook page, they had quoted or referenced close to 500 different people. The names of all of those people can be found in the back of the book. And even though many of the people who were in charge of the camp had died, their children were also able to fill in some holes the Demings had when writing.

“We were also very lucky that we knew of three children of the camp director,” Bob Deming said. “We contacted them in 2018 and each one of them came through with a whole bunch of information. The youngest one came with his wife in August of 2019 and spent three hours here.”

Camp in the Woods is broken down into 10 chapters, with each focusing on a certain aspect of the camp, whether it be food, songs, or games and activities at the camp. The Demings’ personal favorite chapter is also one of the longest, as Chapter 8 details memories of campers they didn’t have specific room for in other chapters.

First book took 10 years to complete, but this one took just less than three. The Demings refer to it as their “pandemic book” because a big reason they were able to complete it with the speed they did was because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We were isolated so what else were we supposed to do,” Anne Deming said. “And the good news is that we didn’t kill each other. Trying to write a book together, we didn’t kill each other.”

The Demings thought this book would only be of interest to those people at the Y-Camp, while their first book would interest anyone who lived on Bear Lake. But on the opposite end of that, because instead of covering the entire history of Bear Lake, it focused on a small portion of it.

“The amazing thing to me is the number of campers who love the book,” Anne Deming said. “It gets them to remember what they knew back then.”

Because of the nature of the book, the Demings said they sometimes struggled to separate what was fact and what was fiction, based on people’s accounts. On top of that, Anne Deming said that one other factor is that they received very few negative comments on the camp, but that’s not because they just didn’t include them.

“There are hardly any negative comments in the book,” she said. “Because we didn’t get any. We had one person say they hated it and never went back, but that was it.”

The book was published directly through Amazon, and where it can be purchased for $20. The book features several pictures of the campsite from when it was active, and many first-hand accounts of those who were involved. The book has had sales all over the United States, and in some cases, has even had sales in Europe.