We Took to the Woods

Fans of the Maine backwoods, down-east humor, and New England-ania more generally will want to read Louise Dickinson Rich's We Took to the Woods (Down East Books, 2007, or if you are really lucky, Grosset & Dunlap 1942, like Bill gave me for my birthday).  Rich has a marvelous eye for the funny detail and a dry sense of humor that combine to pretty brilliantly describe her experience in a very remote region of Maine.  No hothouse flower she, Rich describes her life with a certain amount of relish, organizing her chapters as responses to an omniscient third-party interrogator who poses questions like:

Isn't housekeeping difficult?
Don't you ever get bored?
Aren't the children a problem?

And the like.  (Many of these chapters appeared as stand-alone articles in publications like the Atlantic.)  You could say there is a certain defensiveness about it all, and there is definitely a sameness in that pretty much all of the anecdotes are light and the woods are omnipresent.  But there is a wry-ness to her humor and I do like a writer who uses the word swell occasionally.

Richardson meets her future husband, Ralph, on a canoeing trip in the area in 1933 and moves up to Maine pretty quickly to live with him year round.  (Tragically, Ralph dies in 1945 and that is the end of that.)  They support themselves by writing, and by providing a transport and portage service between Pond-In-The-River dam and Lower Richardson Lake, where is the so-called hotel as she calls Coburn's Lakewood Camps, precursor to our happy place Lakewood Camps.  While they are several bumpy hours by car and maybe boat or ice-sledge from any town, this is no solitary Thoreau-ian existence.  The woods, as it turns out, are filled with characters ranging from their straight-from-Maine-Central-Casting handyman Gerrish, to loggers who may or may not be felons but are gentle giants with kids, to the damkeeper's jolly extended family, to the occasional FBI agent.

You can learn a lot from We Took to the Woods, like how to drive on thin ice - "keep the doors open, go like hell, and be ready to jump" (80) - or how to make a very tasty-sounding upside down raspberry shortcake (162).  Or how to be an authentic Maine guide.  I'm going to quote a long piece here about this specimen - a type both completely serious and hilariously invented - because I think it nicely represents Rich's style and subject.

  "Of course a guide has to be a good woodsman and canoeman and camp cook and emergency doctor, and the State of Maine ascertains that he is, before issuing him a license to guide.  But he could never earn a living if he didn't also make the grade with the sports - same as dudes of the West - as 'quite a character.'  He has to be laconic.  He has to be picturesque.  Maine guides have a legend of quaintness to uphold, and, boy! do they uphold it.  They're so quaint they creak.  They ought to be.  They work hard enough at it.
  Here's the Maine guide.  He wears what amounts to a uniform.  It consists of a wool shirt, preferably plain, nicely faded to soft, warm tones; dark pants, either plus-fours, for some unknown reason, or riding breeches; wool socks and the soleless, Indian-type moccasin, or high laced boots.  He carries a bandana in his hip pocket and may or may not wear another knotted around his neck.  But he must wear a battered felt hat, with a collection of salmon flies stuck in the band, and he must wear it with an air; and he must wear a hunting knife day and night; and he must look tough and efficient.  If he has high cheek bones and tans easily, that is his good luck,  He can then admit to part-Indian ancestry, accurately or not.  Indian blood is highly esteemed by sports.  Naturally he could do his work as well in mail-order slacks, or in a tuxedo, for that matter; but the sports wouldn't think so.  Sports are funny.
  'That fellow there,' the sport is supposed to say, showing his vacation movies in his Westchester rumpus room, 'was my quarter-breed guide.  He's quite a character.  Never had any education beyond the seventh grade, but I don't know anyone I'd rather spend a week alone with.  That's the real test.  He's a genuine natural philosopher.  For instance, we were talking about the War, and he said - and I'd never thought of it this way before - .'  What the guide said he probably lifted from Shirer's book, but translated into Down East, it wouldn't be recognizable.
  A few livid scars are a great asset to a guide.  It doesn't matter how he got them.  Maybe as a barefoot boy he stepped on a rake.  The holes make swell bear-trap scars, acquired one night up in the Allagash when the thermometer was at thirty below and the nearest settlement was fifty miles away."  (53-54)

The whole book is like that.

Rich particularly loves the events of the woods:  when the logging camps are in session, or a log drive down the river (one of the last of its kind) or the National Championship Whitewater Races which used to be held on the Rapid River because the flow down its rapids could be regulated by the dam.  She also likes the solitude of the woods:  fishing in remote ponds, berry picking, tramping through the snow.  The Richs have plenty of access to modern comforts:  a telephone trunk line, electricity, mail order to supply every want and need.  Just no indoor privy, which even Louise admits is a tad chilly in the winter.

But you know, it is a small price to pay.  Good company, baked beans, beautiful scenery:  really, who needs anything else?  The final chapter is about her need, as perceived by others, to go to the Outside.   Locals feel that you need to go Out every once in a while, or else you get a bit squirrely.  Rich does finally, after about three years, and appreciates the experience, but doesn't feel the need to go again anytime soon.
  "So after all, why should we bother to go Outside?  there would be only one reason, to see our friends; and our friends come here instead.  We have swell friends, as I suppose everyone has, and we'd much rather see them here, undiluted by people we don't like, than Outside.  So if they are willing to put up with off-hand meals for the sake of lounging around in their oldest clothes and being free to do and say what they please; if they are willing to swap their own good beds for our not-so-good ones plus a lot of excellent scenery and fishing; if they want to take the long, involved trip in with nothing much at the end except us and the assurance that they are very much more than welcome, why, that's the way we want it, too.  And that's the way we have it."  (315)

Maine 2015: We Took to the Woods - But Stayed at the Hotel

I really wanted to write another journal about our second trip to the idyllic Lakewood Camp on Lower Richardson Lake in central Maine.  And I will give you some highlights, so stay tuned.  But if you really want to know what it is like up there, you should just read Louise Dickinson Rich’s We Took to the Woods (Grosset & Dunlap, 1942), which is a memoir of her life in the very same woods – just a couple of miles from Lakewood Camps (which she refers to, jokingly, as the hotel) – albeit in the 1930s and 40s.  Rich’s wryly affectionate tone fits so perfectly into the piney Maine woods that you will never want to leave.  She makes it sound simultaneously kind of awful (no indoor plumbing) and perfectly marvelous (characters and adventures and warmth and humor, all delivered in a kind of friendly Katherine Hepburn style).  While we aren’t driving around the place in Packards, or lunching on endless canned goods, Rich’s tale will do more to lure you to the area than my little notes ever will.

5/22/15

We are pretty excited to be returning to Lakewood Camps for our second annual “fishing” weekend with our friends the Kafka-Gibbons.[1]  Boy let me tell you that it is a totally different drive to Maine when the sun is out.  Last year, (some) fear and trepidation and (lots of) clouds and rain.  This year, rainbows follow us in the launch’s wake, boding well for the weekend . . . except for an unusually stiff wind that makes our trip across the lake longer than it should be, and causes the flags at camp to stand straight out in a stiff salute as we arrive.  After our crossing I feel like I have eaten 500 York Peppermint Patties. 

It is pointed out to us but even we flatlanders can’t miss the unusually low level of the lake this year.  Maybe they didn’t have any spring rains, or perhaps there were a couple of hot days already that just made the snow evaporate rather than melt slowly into streams.  Whatever the cause, there is new rocky shoreline to explore, and the dock rides so high you could take a stand-up paddleboard under it.  (Not that you would want to – the lake temp is about 50 degrees.  But you get the visual.)

But o you cruel sun, you mocked us with your light and shallow warmth, so quick to dissipate as you set.  Now my fingers are so cold I can barely type. 

The thing about going to a camp like this is that it is exactly the same every year, even when it is not, and that is just how you want it to be.  So dinner is chicken parm and apple pie, as last year, but the lake is low and the dock looks different.  A little change is good, but pie for dessert should remain forever and always.

Another thing about going to a camp like this where everything is exactly the same every year is that you still wrestle with the big decisions, even if you’ve made them before.  Do we fish tomorrow or hike?  One-day or three-day fishing licenses?  Bag lunch or lunch in the lodge?  Will there be molasses cookies wherever we end up?  It takes forever to sort out these details, but that is the point. 

Despite firing up our Franklin stove before dinner, it is almost dead when we return because we lingered over the first of what will become a raging post-dinner Yahtzee habit.  So we stuff as many logs as can fit into the stove, put on more pajamas than we’ve ever worn in our lives, and try to sleep.  At least we won’t be hot. 

5/23/15

If you like a cool pillow and sheets, Lakewood Camps is the place for you.  If you stick your face out from under the sheets it gets very cold.  But under the sheets you are treated to a faint air de mothball.  

I think the sun came up beautifully this morning but it was too cold to go outside and see.  Word is that it was in the high 20s last night.  Paul, who may at times be a saint, brought me coffee.[2]  

Even the lodge is cold at breakfast.  That is cold.

We have moved up in the world because Delmar Cabin is pretty fancy.  The living room area is a little bigger than Welly, and it doesn’t tilt quite so much. And the porch roof is new.  Best of all, it is in a little enclave on the far side of the lodge, away from the other cabins, with just the K-G’s cabin, Trail’s End, next door.  It is like our own little compound which is pretty great.  There are even rustic street lights to show the path at night.  Before 9:30 of course.  After that, you'd better have your flashlight.  If you don’t remember all these details, check out last year’s journal for the deets.

In an effort to warm up, several of us take a very long walk this morning, while Paul just plunges in for a long fish down by the dam.  On our walk back we passed lots of fishermen hiking out to their cars with nary a fish.  Paul fished all day but Peter noted that the tranquility of his day was not disturbed by fish.  The boys are full of bon mots this weekend.  Paul says that there are no bad adventures, only bad planning.  He was careful to point out that he himself did not say this (what an excellent example of academic integrity!).  Nevertheless, this is why he has six sets of base layers for waders.

After that exhausting morning we nap outside under the blue sky wrapped in blankets not really sleeping but unable to form coherent thoughts or words and our eyes are most definitely closed.

If you are really lucky or maybe just in the right place at the right time, Whit will slip you a molasses cookie.  If you are really nice you will break it into small bits to share with your family.  But you could also just not tell anyone and eat it yourself. 

Patty takes me and Peter down to cast some flies after our nap and cookies.  It is quite beautiful but the river is indeed low.  And the wind wreaks havoc with our lines.  (Lines?  Sheets?  String?  In fishing, each piece of equipment has a special name.  I don’t remember many of them, although I am immensely proud of my new waders and ginormous wading boots.) 

Tonight's meal is another winner, from the popovers to the blueberry pie (prime rib in between).  Maureen stops by the table après to share news of former guests but I concentrate on pie.  

5/24/15

The stove had me worried last night but it is behaving now and finally starting to send out some heat.  Although it is more comfortable this morning than yesterday.  Possibly even 40!

Bill notes that there are any number of charming details in our cabin.  Like the light in the bathroom that you turn on by tightening the bulb in its socket.  (Turning it off is trickier.)  And the many chairs that have "give "which is a euphemism for torn and sagging seats.  The bureau drawers that require two hands to open because they are so old and swollen and have spent years in cold and damp and heat and dry.  And those mothball-y blankets.  This all provides an excellent visual/sensory background for We Took to the Woods. 

Today was the kind of day (mostly) that you expect to have at camp in Maine. Glorious blue sky, warm sun, a touch of breeze to make the trees talk to each other.  Paul takes me and Bill fishing in the morning and Izzy clomps along cute as can be in her waders and oversize sunglasses, to splash around and keep us company.  

She courted the muse of the river and spontaneously started creating original poetry.  Here are her favorites:

You splish and splash but don’t get wet

You see a flash, and then you fret

Because that bass you did not get.

Whit’s cookies are delicious!

And so are all the other dishes.

No electricity at night makes me superstitious,

But when I see the generator, I’m not suspicious

In the day, you can catch lots of fishes

My only wish is

            To go back to Lakewood Camps

After this she simply starts narrating the entire fishing process in a sort of epic form, with heroic language like  "the fish gigantic" and so on.  It is hugely entertaining.

Another morning undisturbed by fish (for us – Paul caught one later in the day) until Bill caught . . .himself!  He took a tumble in a rock and managed to hook his pinky.  Since Paul was scoffing at the local custom and fishing with barbed hooks, this presented a bit of a challenge.  But if you run a fishing camp you have to be prepared for this sort of thing and it turns out that Whit is also an expert at removing hooks from body parts.  His says that his secret just to pour as much betadyne as possible over the wound, but in fact the removed the (what kind of fly) painlessly and efficiently.  (Although he did tell Bill not to watch at one point.) Anyway, now we have a story to tell and any pain was dulled by roast beef sandwiches and homemade chocolate pudding for lunch.  

You feel a bit indulgent, almost shamefacedly so, when you have lunch in the dining room on a nice day.  Shouldn't you be out building character?[3]  But of course if you were, you would miss chocolate pudding and that would not be smart, and you might just lose a character point for stupidity.  That is something you can ponder on the way to your post-prandial nap.

Quite a bit of canoeing and kayaking also happened today and Peter had such a good time fishing with Paul that he stayed down at the river after Paul came back up to give the girlies a lesson on the dock.  You surely know the saying that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day but if you teach him to fish he will eat for a week. Paul and Patty have taught us all how to fish so how come I am still doing all the cooking in our family?

We don’t hear as many loons this year (they are probably too cold) but while the girlies and I are out paddling we actually spot one that might be swimming with a chick.  It gives our flotilla a wide berth.

We have achieved the state of relaxation where conversation happens more in fits and starts as we sit on porches gazing out at the lake, and includes random comments like “hel-lo dead mosquito in my drink” from Izzy.  If you realize that this state of mental melt, not lots of fish, is the desired result of a visit to Lakewood Camps, then you have achieved true understanding.  Character, schmarachter.

5/25/15

It is always a good idea to get up early one morning and sit on your porch to see the day.  Of course, it has to be warm enough that a blanket and pajamas will do, which today is finally the case.  There are lots of birds twittering - there always are here - and a little bit of ripple on the lake, and a motorboat speeds by in the distance.  Who is up and out so fast so early?  Someone anxious to get a fish, no doubt, therefore possibly someone who has not achieved mental melt.  It is overcast this morning, which doesn't bode well for the day but makes for a lovely pastel sunrise over the lake.  

This is my favorite part of any day, watching the water wake up.  Another boat makes its way across the far side of the lake, and swings in a wide arc toward the camp’s dock.  Who is arriving now, and why?  Who is leaving early, and why would you do that?  Whit comes down his apron to bid those unlucky breakfast-missers adieu, and brings the cart up for the next unlucky souls.

Dinner last night ended with pumpkin pie which was difficult for me, but if that is the hardest trial I have to bear here I think I will survive.

Here's how hard a winter it was up here.  The ice has been out of the lake maybe 15 days.  When Whit and Maureen arrived the first week of May, there was still ice between the cabins.  Some of the south-facing, sheltered daffodils are blooming right now, but more are still just thinking about it.  The flowering trees have buds but that's it, and the rest of the trees have that misty early spring green, but nothing particularly robust in the way of leaves yet.  Maureen tells us that when they get up here in early May, they have to brace some of the buildings to stand up straight, because the snow and ice made them all lean so much.  The ground under our cabins is still frozen, so they won’t actually settle until later in the summer, and then, says Maureen, “We’ll see what we’ve got.”  That's just how it goes in Maine when the winter is hard.  

Next year we might come over Labor Day weekend, which would be splendid because then we could swim.  Paul swam this year, and claimed it was manageable.  But he did put on a lot of clothes for dinner that night.  In any case, we are glad to be planning our return to “the hotel,” even if it is more than a year from now.[4]

My city jewelry hangs cold and heavy as we motor back across the lake to The Outside.

---

[1] The K-Gs are down one teenage boy (Gabe) but up one super-friendly sister (Cathy), so while the overall amount of food consumed has probably decreased, the chat factor is increased exponentially.  She's a talker, warned Patty.  This is an example of the pot calling the kettle black. 

[2] At Lakewood Camps I drink coffee because tea feels too refined.  Plus which, I expect it might be a challenge to get a decent cuppa.

[3] Another reason to love Louise Dickinson Rich:  she feels that living in the Maine woods, particularly with no plumbing, in the winter, builds character.  (17)

[4] Richardson describes it as follows:  “Middle Dam is quite a community.  There is the dam itself, a part of the system for water control on the Androscoggin, with the dam-keeper and his family, Renny and Alice Miller and their three children, in year-round residence.  Then in summer the hotel is open.  We only call it a hotel; it is really a fishing camp.  In winter it is closed but there is a caretaker, Larry Parsons, who stays in with his wife, Al, and a hired man or two.  So the permanent population of Middle Dam hovers at around nine, and that is comparative congestion.  We get our mail and supplies through Middle, and it is the point of departure for The Outside, so its importance is all out of proportion to its population.”  (16)

Maine 2014 - Gone Fishin'!

Friday

The drizzle starts shortly after hitting the Maine Turnpike with everyone else from Massachusetts on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  A sign a little later helpfully informs us that the Fire Danger is LOW today.  Whew.

This is our third family trip to Maine, and as the previous two have been fun (too much at times, see K'Port 2010), we sign on immediately when our friends the Kafka-Gibbons family (Paul, Patty, Gabe, and Charlotte) invite us to join them on their annual trip to Lakewood Camps, a fishing and sporting camp in the Rangeley Lakes region.  They promise to outfit us with fishing gear, and great plans are made to ensure waders and fishing instruction for all who want it.  Bring entertainments and layers and flashlights, we are told.  Patty also notes that while fashion is not a priority, liquor is. 

To get to Lakewood Camps “(since 1853),” you drive and drive and drive some more.  On the Maine Turnpike you might see something like this emblazoned on the back of a car:  "Ass, grass, or cash, nobody rides for free."  Keep classy, Maine.

Once off that big highway, you wind through the global village that is central Maine:  Poland, Naples, Paris, Norway, etc.  It is a bit like going skiing, in fact it is almost all the way to Sunday River, although not quite as cold (see Bethel Maine 2012).  At some point you turn right and think you are really in the middle of nowhere, and then you realize that in fact you can get here from there. 

(To pass the time we are listening to Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I hope that I can someday use the phrase "he gnashed his teeth at me in devilish fury" because it is such a perfect articulation of the idea of teeth-gnashing.) 

Then after you drive some more, you finally get to a dock with a small parking lot, and Tom is there to greet you and stow your gear on the launch and ferry you across the lake.  You will see a loon, that is pretty much guaranteed, and it will be the first of many.

Eventually you will see the camp, and land at the long dock and you might just think to yourself wow, it is now not only wet and rainy but cold and windy.  All your bags and coats and boots and Monopoly and fishing gear and bikes and the aforementioned booze, is toted up to your cabin while everyone smiles through the drizzle and seems genuinely happy to be here.

Our cabin is named Welokennebacook but is known as Welly because who knows how the Indians actually pronounced that.  It tilts a bit to the left, but the K-G’s cabin is held together by a giant cable running through it.  The cabin to our left dips rather alarmingly in the middle.  If you want to play marbles, go to the main lodge, where things seem to be on the level.  

The digs are, um, rustic, but in a real camp way.  There is a big room with tables and chairs and the Franklin stove that we may want to get going STAT, and a little bathroom and two bedrooms.  There are copies of magazines about fly fishing lying around, and reproduction posters from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Game that say things like "GEE MISTER!  WILL THERE BE ANY WHEN I GROW UP?" and showing a scrappy boy with a stick fishing pole asking this question of a well-dressed fly-fisherman who has a basket loaded with fish and a scurrilous look upon his face.  You might almost say he is gnashing his teeth at the poor wee lad.

I note ladies in skirts in the old-time pictures hanging slightly askew on the wall of Welly, so clearly fashion was something of a priority, once. 

Isabel is immediately enchanted with the whole place.  She gets to hang out with the big kids, including the super cool Charlotte, and she can dash around outside to her hearts content.  She and Charlotte explore, discover squadrons of hummingbirds, start a puzzle, and go kayaking after dinner. 

You don't need to go out in a kayak at dusk to hear the loons, you can hear them from your bed, it is that quiet here.  But it is very nice to float out a bit in the gloaming and hear those stunning birds chortling and calling mournfully in the gathering darkness.  You might even think you are unearthing that inner peace that folks say is to be discovered in just such a pursuit.  Until your son bumps his kayak into you and starts bickering with his sister. 

Saturday

If I went outside right now, would I actually spot the woodpecker who has been working so furiously, if with indeterminate rhythm, on the outside of the cabin next door since 5 a.m.?  Possibly.  But that would require putting on more clothes.  Which is not necessarily a bad thing, considering that it is about 45 degrees in here.  IN here.  But that in turn would require removing oneself from one's cocoon of blankets and pajamas in front of the fire (which one just made, yes, I am an awesome backwoods mom).

But there is also that inside-of-an-oyster early morning light over the lake, hills emerging out of the mist, sunrise business going on so out I go camera in hand, and hooray, spooked that woodpecker! 

Only half an hour until the electricity comes on. 

Here's what the little sign on the wall has to say about the Franklin stove.  "This Franklin Stove is an invention by Ben.  He told us it works best with the doors closed, less smoke and more efficient use of the wood.  He said no lightening [sic] would strike your camp if you place some paper on the grates, add some cedar kindling on top, and then some hard wood.  If you should burn only cedar, lightning may come your way."  He's right, as it turns out.  Well, I don't know about the kindling, but I can speak for the doors-closed bit.  This thing is cooking now.

Oh my god he is back.  He is like that woodchuck in Caddyshack.

You’d better get up before the bell if you want breakfast.  Bells are rung at 7:30 (breakfast), 12:30 (lunch) and 6:30 (dinner).  At dinner the night before you can order bag lunches, which consist of a giant sandwich on tasty homemade bread, some fruit, and a couple of the best molasses cookies ever.  One expects a good molasses cookie in Maine, but these are real winners.  Meals are generally hearty New England fare - prime rib, haddock, turkey, and such, but the glory of this kitchen are its pies.  With pale, thin, Crisco-only crusts (so says Whit, owner and cook of Lakewood Camps), last night's blueberry was a perfect purple pile. 

But we’re here to fish, not ruminate on the food.  Fishing, I'm told, is a bit like skiing.  Equipment intensive (I would venture even more so than skiing since wild animals are involved so not only is there stuff to wear and stuff to catch fish with, there is also stuff to keep fish in, like magnetic nets).  At breakfast you'll see folks who've already been out and caught fish.  Everyone is dressed in shades of khaki because apparently fish can see colors, so they would know you were out to get them.[1]  Except for blue, which might confuse them into thinking you are the sky.   

A lot of time fly-fishing is spent trying to think like a fish.  (You might be wondering, like I did, what is the other kind of fishing called, if this fly-fishing.  Just “fishing,” apparently.)  Fish are smart, you are told (they know you are not a friend).  But also dumb (they think your blue shirt is the sky).  They are strong, but also lazy.  They don't keep bankers' hours, but they're out there whenever you are.  They are in the still water, but near the fast water because that is where the food is.  They are hungry, but not today.  They know you are there, but they don't because fish are dumb.  And so it goes. 

Basically you look at the water and try to “read it,” which remains a bit of a mystery to me, and then you cast and cast and cast and hope that a fish takes pity on you as a beginner and bites.  If you are fortunate enough to have Paul as your instructor, you get lots of encouragement and have the great pleasure of seeing your son, who looks very handsome and tall in waders, cast like the picture on the cover of a 1950s-vintage outdoors magazine.  Is he a chubber in the making?[2]

I did ask what new fisherpersons are called, you know, like greenhorns, or swabs.  There isn’t really a term but fry was proposed.  I am totally fry.

But here’s the really great thing.  You are standing in a cold rushing river, and YOU ARE NOT WET.  Fishing is wicked equipment intensive but the best of all are the waders since they mean you can practically frolic among the boulders and never get wet.  It is quite fantastically fun.  And there are birds everywhere.  I'm told that people see God on the river, or find themselves, or become otherwise transformed.  I can report that none of those things happened to me but I really did enjoy it.  

After all that effort and your molasses cookies you might need a nap.

The day is yours to do with what you wish, and while most fish, others, such as Isabel and Charlotte, might build a survival shelter in the woods.  At 6, however, anticipating that 6:30 dinner bell, you might gather on one or another cabin's front porch for cocktails.  If you are thinking ahead you will have already started your fire so that your cabin is toasty by shower-time and bed later.  Then after a giant dinner you can break out the Monopoly board.  But you'd better be ready for bed by 9:30 because that is when the electricity is shut off and not even the water runs.  So you build your fire super-high before you go to sleep and it is still cold in the morning so you have to get up and start all over again.  

Izzy is particularly fond of wrapping herself in a giant blanket and plunking down in front of the fire for a good read.  Clever girl.


Sunday

At Lakewood Camps you rise not necessarily with the sun but with the g.d. woodpeckers at 6:06 a.m.

The sign board in the dining room at breakfast states the choice of dinner entrees, and after much discussion about the relative merits of each choice, you place your order.  Today it said BRINED ROAST TURKEY or HONEY BAKED HAM.  Under that were two drawings, one of a pig, the other of a turkey.   Under them it said 'decafe or regular joe.'  I ordered Regular Joe the turkey while Peter is looking forward to ham from Decafe the pig.

No fish again this morning but I'm pleased to report that I've developed a little blister just below my right ring finger, and my right arm is feeling a little fatigued from all that casting.  While not yet at the point where I have actually caught a fish, I'm feeling pretty chuffed about my progress.  I tried a Crazy Eddy for a while.  Turns out that Crazy Eddy is not the guy across the river but a kind of fly.  This is one that you use in rapids, apparently, as it looks like a wounded – not dead, per Gabe, but wounded – minnow.  Bill wonders if it has Xs for eyes, or perhaps just one X since it is not dead, but wounded.

At lunch we chatted with another family who come here regularly, the beautifully-coiffed Melissa Lee and her husband Duncan who has the vaguely maniacal intensity that signifies a hard-core outdoorsman.[3]  They told us about the trip they have planned for later this year, to fish 140 miles south of the Arctic Circle.  Apparently you drive for 20 hours, the last ten on logging roads with only intermittent strips of tarmac built by Chinese logging concerns, then you get on a float plane where the non-English speaking pilot shows you the EPIRB button in case the plane goes down and he is out of commission.  Then you are at the camp but to actually fish you take a boat across the lake and hike another hour to get to the fish which are in fact the same kind you get here in the Rangeley Lakes region but about four times bigger.  Not my cup of tea but that Duncan sure does have an extraordinarily accommodating wife and son. 

Bill and Patty are happy to have found kindred canoeing spirits in one another, and take a long sunny paddle across the lake while Izzy and Charlotte help wash potatoes in the kitchen for dinner.  KP!  The boys take a muddy bike ride which ends with leaps into the cold lake, and only one iPhone casualty.  You can join in any of this, or not, and if you do, your book and reading glasses will be right where you left them on the porch when you come back because it is that kind of place. 

I don't think I've mentioned the birds, except for the g.d. woodpecker and the crooning loons on the lake.  There are your usual gulls and Canada geese, and any number of woodland birds chirping away.  I believe I saw a merganser while fishing.  There are also swift houses all along the dock and those attractive blue-backed fellows swoop and soar overhead as a pack of kids hang over the edge catching chubs.  If you sit on the porch of the main lodge you may feel like you are coming under attack from the hummingbirds who buzz around and fight and dive onto the feeders and in and out of a nearby cedar like Spitfires over the British Channel.  This time, I know our side will win.

Maine really proves the adage about the weather changing every ten minutes in New England.  This weekend we have had cold, fog, gentle rain, driving heavy rain, wind, hail, warm sun and cloudless blue sky, and even a double rainbow over the lake.  

Monday

The morning is spent packing up and preparing for the long and pretty boring drive home, and wheedling molasses cookies out of Whit. 

I think we did all experience that sense of inner discovery that going to the woods is supposed to engender.  Here’s what we learned:

Peter has the makings of a fine fisherman, and displayed remarkable equanimity when faced with the potential destruction of his phone by freezing cold lake water. 

Isabel has a new bestie in Charlotte and learned how to wash potatoes and really really really loves Lakewood camps, so much that she cried this morning and made Bill swear that we would come back next year.

Speaking of Bill, the raging after-dinner Monopoly game revealed that he is a capitalist pig-dog slumlord rail baron.  Who knew?

As for me, I like fishing.  I would go out right now if I could, but what would I do if I caught a fish?  I haven't had that lesson yet!  Besides, the waders are kind of cold, having sat out on the porch all night.  I think I'll stay here by the fire a little longer.

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[1] Fifty Shades of Khaki could be the name of an erotic novel set in a fishing camp if that weren't so incongruous I can't even finish this sentence.  

[2] Chubber:  super-outdoorsy-type, wears ragg socks and hiking boots with shorts and is a member of the Outing Club wherever he goes to college.  I don’t know if there are female chubbers, but Nat Crane, director of William Lawrence Camp is the archetype.  This term may or may not have been invented by my parents, but it was certainly popularized by them. 

[3] Duncan is not a chubber.  I can’t really explain why but if you saw him next to Nat Crane you’d understand.