Upta Camp

I wrote this for Down East magazine in 2002, and included it in my book, A Life Lived Outdoors,published last year by Islandport Press. Hope you enjoy it!

Every Mainer has a camp. It may be a place weown. It may be a place our friends own. It may be a placewe rent every summer. It may even be a campground andsimple tent. But it's ours, even if only for a week or twoeach year.

Camp is a Maine tradition - anchored in our imaginations ofthe North Woods, yet often nearby on a lake or pond, thebetter to access it on hot summer days. I know one couple whose camp is 100 yards behind theirhouse on a man-made pond.

Camp may be rustic with a two-holer. It may have plumbing and hot showers. It may have a kitchenor just a Coleman stove on the picnic table. It may be on the water or deep in the woods. But it isalways the most comfortable place on earth.

Our camp is tucked just outside the northwest corner of Baxter Park on Nesowadnehunk Lake. Itwas once part of a well-known sporting camp. It is a place of wild critters, eager trout, and manymountains - quiet, peaceful, relaxing, restorative. And yes, of running water and hot showers.

Camp is a key component of our quality of life and mental health.

Camp is laying in bed at night and listening to the haunting cry of a loon. It's looking out the windowas you enjoy a steaming cup of coffee in the morning and seeing a moose amble on by.

Camp is an Adirondack chair, knotty pine walls, old furniture, and sitting up late playing cards orgoing to bed early as soon as the sun sets.

At our camp, we've barbecued outside while watching a brood of young rabbits race each otherround and round our picnic table, picked wild berries keeping a close eye out for bears, and paddleda fast stream in our kayaks, getting knocked completely out of the kayak by a "widow maker."

Camp is a wild brook trout caught on a fly or a smallmouth bass on a spinning lure, a hike up amountain or a stroll along the beach, a gorgeous Magnolia warbler in your binoculars or a big blackbear coming toward you in the road.

Camp is for kids - of all ages - dangling worms at the end of a hook with a grandchild hoping for awhite perch, splashing in the water on hot summer days, playing lawn games, and of course, cookingS-Mores over an open fire. Chocolate never tasted so good.

Camp is bean-hole beans, pancakes, eggs and bacon. For some its venison from last fall's deer.Camp may be the place you go every year to hunt deer or upland birds or to fish.

For me, camp is the sun, rising over Strickland Mountain that lurks over the left shoulder of ourcamp, enjoyed in solitude from the boat as I whip a dry fly toward feeding trout; a hot cup of thedarkest coffee, grounds scouring the bottom of my cup, as soon as I get in from fishing, andblueberry pancakes with real maple syrup from our Mount Vernon neighbors followed by a bowl ofstrawberries picked the day before along the trail behind camp.

Camp for my family is two does galloping all over the front law in the spring, kicking up their hoovesafter a long confining winter; a cow moose escorting her calf past our camp toward the shore for adrink; a black duck with six ducklings hovering in the lee of our boat in the lagoon; a merganserswimming past the beach with a dozen little gansers following all in a row. It's also the heartache ofseeing her each week with fewer chicks until she is left with a single duckling that she guards with adesperate ferocity.

To get to camp you may drive, boat, bicycle, or walk. But once you are there, you stay close to home.You revel in the fact that "there is nothing to do."

I just love it when friends ask, "What on earth do you do up there?" You can't imagine. You mustexperience it to understand.

Camp is the family gathering for a traditional week every summer at the lake, or just the two of you,tucked far away from civilization. Or maybe even just you, a time of quiet reflection with nodistractions.

Camp is the place we read that stack of books we've been saving.

Camp is no cell phone, computer, or television - often its no electricity.

Well, perhaps you'll have electricity and all of these gadgets and more at camp with you, but youcan't hear the cry of the loon if the TV set is blaring, you can't read a great mystery while you aretexting, you can't get away from the office if you carry the office with you to camp.

Maine's camps and campgrounds are the cure for all that ails you. Take the cure this year.

http://georgesmithmaine.com/articles/georges-outdoor-news/july/2015/upta-camp