Camps on the leased lots were once a great way for Mainers to get a taste of the rustic life on a young family's budget. Sadly, this piece of paradise is disappearing. But paradise it was.
I owned a rustic camp on a remote Maine trout pond back in the early ‘90s. The camp was just over an hour from home and had one main room, a second floor loft and a small screened-in porch on the front. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing. We drew water from the pond with an old hand pump to wash dishes, and carried in drinking water from home. The outhouse doubled as a storage shed, and in breezy weather proved to be placed a tad too close to the camp. It had a woodstove, a propane range, and an ancient Servel gas refrigerator that I never really trusted. Once you navigated the half-mile stretch of camp road—which was basically impassable during winter and spring mud season—you parked above the camp and poked your way down a steep path strewn with rocks and roots. The blue of the pond would begin to filter through the trees, and soon the red-stained siding would come into view. You had made it to Loon Call Camp.
I had always dreamed of owning my own hunting and fishing camp and a place for my young family to spend time together in the outdoors
. After searching, it soon became apparent that the only camps we could afford were those available on paper company leased lots. The ambiguity of owning buildings but not the land took some getting used to, but for many families, like ours, it was the only option. In essence, we bought the structure but had no firm hold on the rocky slope it was built upon.
We spent seven summers at Loon Call Camp. Our two daughters were always in the water swimming like otters while the dogs paddled in worried circles around them. Both my kids caught their first-ever fish off the dock and learned to paddle a canoe and a kayak under our watchful eye. We built a fire pit along the water’s edge and cooked hot dogs on sticks and toasted marshmallows and made s’mores. We played marathon scrabble and card games under hissing Coleman lanterns and scribbled the scores on paper plates and pinned them on the rafters. There was no TV or video games or iPods, just a radio playing hushed music or a Red Sox game in the background. We would read books by flashlight in the loft and laugh and talk and fall asleep to the lapping of the water and the call of the loons.
Like everything in life, things change. The kids grew older and less interested in “going to camp.” My wife, Joann, and I would spend some weekends there, but it wasn’t the same without the pitter-patter of little feet. I continued to hunt and fish there, and snowshoed in every winter to shovel snow off the roof and slide in fresh propane tanks over the frozen pond. When the paper company started to offer leased lots for sale to camp owners in certain areas, excluding ours, we decided it was time to sell.
Nowadays, the Maine tradition of owning affordable camps on leased lots has just about ended. The paper companies that owned the land surrounding the myriad of ponds and lakes throughout much of Maine tossed the properties between themselves like hot potatoes until finally selling most of them off to a Boston investment firm. Nearly all of the leased lots in central Maine are now available for sale to the camp owners. That’s a good thing for people who can afford it. My camp, if still on a leased lot, would have doubled its original value today. If I had kept the camp and eventually bought the lot, the value would have quadrupled.
Looking back now, I don’t remember so much the trout I caught or the partridge I shot, but I think of my children when they were young and we were all together at camp. Unfortunately, with the demise of these inexpensive camps on leased lots, fewer families will be able to enjoy those experiences and memories.
Loon Call Camp paid dividends not found in a bank account. It was much more than just a small, rustic getaway perched on a hardscrabble hillside overlooking a pond. It was family.
_
Brad Eden is an artist, writer, Registered Maine Master Guide, and owner/editor of the online magazine www.uplandjournal.com.
Mike Woelflein
Bangor’s Husson College will officially become Husson University in October. But President Bill Beardsley is more focused on the students Husson is here for. They’re probably closer to home than you realize.
Normand Laberge
Tidal power is one of the cleanest, most reliable energy sources in the world. Eastport has some of the highest tides on the planet. What’s standing in the way of turning on the tidal power button soon? One three-letter word: Dam.
Brad Eden
Start your puppy off with these training fundamentals and enjoy a well-behaved pooch for life.
Henry Garfield
When Washington County’s school-aged population declined, Judson McBrine and his school board decided to comb the world for students. That decision has turned Washington Academy into a diverse, thriving private high school—with a globe-trotting head of school.
Annaliese Jakimides
For 57 summers, Alex Katz has used the “richer light” of Lincolnville to conjure up many of the pieces in his huge body of work: many eerily quiet, some passive-aggressive, all itchingly intriguing. Here is a glimpse through the eyes of the master.
Henry Garfield
Gather smart, motivated students led by creative, dedicated educators, tuck them away on a rural planet called the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, and you get learning results that are nothing short of stellar.
Photographs by Sarah Sorg
Annaliese Jakimides
New kitchen tools can alter our dinner plans, but they can't uncook the past.
Scott K Fish and Sean Faircloth
The Fairness Doctrine was a 1949 FCC regulation requiring broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner deemed by the FCC to be honest, equitable, and balanced. It was withdrawn in 1987; some politicians and activists are pushing for its revival.
