Notes from Maine - 2026/08/16
I’m at the camp with Albert (dog) today. Mom and my aunt are out on the boat with my brother and sister-in-law. It’s a perfect day. There’s a nice breeze and the temperature is 75° F (24° C). Being here at the camp reminds me of all the reasons I enjoy setting my stories in Maine. You look around at this lovely summer spot and it’s impossible to imagine everything covered in snow deep enough to swallow a person whole. It’s a quiet paradise right now, but in a couple of months it could be dark and stormy—raising the question of why anyone would choose to live in this climate. In fact, even today there’s a cool edge to the air that hints that summer is only a brief visitor in these parts.
We had a great visit with my aunt this week. I’ve heard all the news since her visit two years ago, and shared my own. I know a lot of the stories I told were from longer than two years ago, meaning that I’ve probably repeated myself quite a bit this last week. I think my recollections get refined the more I tell them though, so hopefully even the repeats were a bit more entertaining this time.
My aunt lives in Pittsburgh. I’ve only visited twice, both times for Thanksgiving. It seemed like a really neat place. I can’t imagine how I managed that last trip in 2008. Who took care of the horses? Who took care of the dogs? They must have done a stellar job, since nothing sticks in my memory. Any worries I had have been erased by time. On that trip, my nephew was an infant. I drove my sister and him from Virginia to Pittsburgh through good weather and then back home through an ice storm. Those things are firmly planted in my mind because I was nervous the whole time.
My current horses are a bit of a challenge. I think that’s why it’s difficult for me to imagine handing off care at this point. I have someone lined up in case of emergency, but I’m not entertaining the idea of recreational travel. I suppose that’s why it means so much to me when family visits. If not for their effort, in-person chats would never happen.
We turned on Maine Cabin Masters the other night and watched an episode that I hadn’t seen before. They really did nice work here at our camp. It’s not just that they accomplished all the modifications on my brother’s list, they also decorated the place and gave it character. The choices feel intentional, rather than just a random collection of “useful” items that my father found at the dump. We cleaned out the camp for him years ago, long before the remodel, and found no less than three sets of TV trays. This camp has never had a need for one single TV tray, let alone the dozen that my father had collected. There were multiple toasters so old that the power cords put off as much heat as the elements inside them. If my father had ever tried to cook here, he surely would have burned the place to the ground.
Now we have running water, a bathroom, and a full kitchen. Before Maine Cabin Masters, those amenities were just a dream. My father bought this camp almost thirty years ago. His parents had a camp just north on the same lake that they bought more than thirty years before that. Growing up, this place fostered all my best memories. Back then in the neighborhood, a lot of the camps didn’t have electricity or running water. It was more remote.
The play (and later movie) “On Golden Pond” was written about the next lake over. We would see the author, Ernest Thompson, over at the Village Inn sometimes. When the movie came out, locals watched every frame carefully, spotting all the familiar landmarks. Later, we all learned that the movie was filmed on Squam Lake in New Hampshire. That terrain must be a decent stand-in for Belgrade, Maine, to have fooled all those people.
I can’t think of where I would live if I didn’t live here. I remember packing up the car and my dogs decades ago and driving up from Virginia after school. It seemed like I was returning rather than moving to Maine. Although I’m a transplant, my roots have sunk deep. I’m not sure I would thrive if I were plucked from this soil.
My nephew made fun of me recently.
“You just said you ‘grew up’ here. You didn’t ‘grow up’ here.”
He’s both right and wrong. I wasn’t born here, and I spent the majority of my childhood down in Virginia. But, in a lot of ways, this is where I grew up. In fact, it may have only been recently. I think there’s a difference between where one is raised and where they grow up.
My father told me once that, inside, he still felt like he was fourteen. Chronologically, he was about eighty at the time. The other night when my friends came over to hang around and make art, I wondered absentmindedly if they had permission to come over. Permission? From whom, their parents? Maybe it was because my own mother was there. I framed the evening like a teenager having friends over even though nearly everyone was in their fifties.
It’s strange sometimes making new memories in places where so many people are missing. My brother and I joked about what my father would think of all the improvements he has made to his camp.
Imitating Dad, I said, “You kids f%&*ed this camp all up.”
We laughed—my brother knew what I meant. Dad wasn’t a big fan of change and would have thought that making the camp structurally sound and cleaning it up was somehow betraying the nature of the place. It’s beautiful, and the camp that my sister and I share is beautiful, but it’s weird being there without the people who first brought me to Maine and gave me the opportunity to love this place.
The lake still feels the same, at least. “Heavy traffic” on this stream means two kayakers and one neighbor, slowly putting by in their boat. Albert and I will enjoy the peace and quiet and then head back home where the horses are waiting for dinner. It feels like I keep moving forward because there’s nothing behind me but open water.
