In a weekend battle at The Fort at No. 4 in Charlestown last year, a man dressed as a Delaware Indian snatched Wesley Hennig's fiancee, Dell Dacosta, tying her hands and dragging her across an open field.

The kidnapper asked for Hennig's tomahawk in exchange for Dacosta's safe return.

Hennig refused.

Instead, he offered the captor, a man from Massachusetts who works in water conservation as a day job, a few bottles of wine. The man accepted.

The incident, of course, was scripted, and it represented a portion of what dozens of Upper Valley historical re-enactment buffs love doing every few weekends in New England's warm months.

But with a recent announcement that the Fort at No. 4, the Valley's re-enactment hub, will close at least until fall because of financial struggles, enthusiasts have lost one of their favorite sites for summer camping and faux battles, and Hennig and Dacosta have lost the locale for their dream wedding.

The Fort is a reconstruction of the northernmost British settlement on the Connecticut River before the French and Indian War. Until this year, it has long hosted re-enactments of that war and the American Revolution.

“It's a shame. It really is,” said Horst Dresler, owner of Anything Printed in Woodstock and a re-enactor for 25 years. “We're just going to be moving our focus elsewhere for a little while, unfortunately.”

Fort trustee Matt Blanc said fewer people were visiting the site, donors were giving less money and bookings for summer camp field-trips plummeted from 8,000 in 2007 to 3,000 last year to fewer than 500 this summer, creating a $100,000 budget deficit and forcing officials to rethink their business plan in the coming months.

“Everybody is really bummed that it's not going to open, but we're not hearing the solutions as to how to fund it,” Blanc said. “The re-enactment piece was not supporting the Fort enough that we could bridge the gap with private donations.”

Some of the re-enactors said they hope officials will make a better effort to target local residents when the Fort reopens.

“They just did not reach out to the community at large,” said Dave Bridges, of Randolph, “even when times were good.”

For liability reasons, Blanc also told Hennig and Dacosta they couldn't marry at the site while it was closed.

“We're not insured to do that,” Blanc said. “Our insurance company said absolutely no way.”

The couple said they'd planned on it for months and now may instead marry at Hennig's Barnard home.

“We're very disappointed,” said Dacosta, a native of Montreal. “It's not going to be the same really since we really wanted to go there.”

Dave and Ann Bridges said the closing, even if it's temporary, is especially sad for them because they were married at the Fort in 2000. She wore an authentic formal silk gown and her husband, she said, wore a velvet 18th century outfit. All of their guests, more then 80 of them, were also in period pieces.

The Bridges, along with Hennig and Dacosta, belong to John Warner's Company of Green Mountain Rangers, a group of 28 men, women and children from the area who recreate the battles fought by a militia of the same name that fended off the invading British in 1777.

Despite the closing of the Fort, little else has slowed down their summer schedule, with more than a dozen trips planned between now and September in Vermont, New Hampshire and New York, socializing with and shooting blanks at people from across the country.

They call re-enacting a hobby, but really, playing basketball on the weekends or attending a regular Friday card game or making paper mache crafts is a hobby.

This, in fact, is much more.

Their faces light up like kids showing off new toys when they highlight their garb, matching the slightest jot and tittle of 250-year-old attire.

“I actually thought when I was getting into it that it was men playing like little boys,” Dacosta said. “But now I love it.”

When in full battle mode, Hennig, a maintenance worker at Woodstock Elementary School, sports 24 different articles on his body, including 12 weapons. Well-hidden knives are stuffed in his jacket and pants, a tomahawk perches inside his belt, and his right hand grips a $700 musket.

A pipe and a raccoon tail are strapped on each side of his hat, while a mink-bone earring hangs from his left ear. Normally, a silver ring also dangles from his nose.

His clothes cost enough that, if the style made a comeback, they'd put the price tags on runway model apparel to shame.

Hennig's red and blue coat costs $475; his canteen, $100; his shoes, which are interchangeable from foot to foot, $110; and his leggings, called “gators,” $90.

“You're probably looking at $2,000 worth of stuff,” he said, holding his arms out on each side to illustrate a full view. “I've got probably close to 10 grand invested in my stuff, and every year we buy more.”

On their trips, which typically last two days, the re-enactors keep it as real as possible, outside the basics, and sometimes they even go without those.

For one, the re-enactors follow a tradition known as “passing the bowl.” Rum, nutmeg, cinnamon and a host of other ingredients make up the flavorful concoction that, as the name implies, is passed around for the adults to drink.

“I don't know what it is,” said group member Alan Legacy, of Randolph. “But when it goes down, it burns.”

Colonial Americans didn't use lighter fluid or propane grills, so the re-enactors don't either. The women, who spend most of their time cooking, grill venison, wild turkey and brook trout on a cast-iron grate over an open fire, most often started with flint and steel.

Many locations don't offer showers, leaving the campers to use a tin basin filled with water in their tents.

“I find a way to bathe,” Ann Bridges said. “Trust me.”

And, other than emergencies, cell phones are forbidden.

“There's no BlackBerrys on the field,” Dave Bridges said. “People aren't running around texting each other.”

On cold nights, they do admit, a propane heater sometimes does find its way inside the tents.

All five of the Bridges' children have participated. The youngest, 8-year-old Caleb, made his first trip just weeks after he was born, but his parents had to cover him with a blue plastic tarp after a heavy rain leaked through their tent.

Eventually, it forced them to leave the event.

“It rained cats and dogs,” Ann Bridges said, adding that they no longer use that tent.

Caleb, who's favorite site is New York's Fort Ticonderoga, “Fort Ti” for short, is looking forward to his upcoming promotion to drummer.

“I'll get paid more than a private,” Caleb said, pumping his fist.

“And you'll get shot at more,” his mother added with a laugh.

Dresler, who plays a Loyalist and enemy of the Green Mountain Rangers, actually met his wife, Deborah Goodman, at a re-enactment event and eventually married her at The Fortress of Louisbourg, a restored fort from the 1700s in Nova Scotia.

Now, they're on opposite sides of the battle, and the couple isn't above some teasing.

“My Ranger unit will fire at her when she's walking across the field,” he said. “And she'll direct cannons at me when I’m walking across the field.”

In some ways, Hennig and others say they may just live in the wrong century.

“I also had a love for it,” he said of the Colonial days. “I wish I was born 250 years ago.”

John Woodrow Cox can be reached at 603-727-3305 or jcox@vnews.com.