Settling in at Little Sebago Lake

Typically, for the first week at camp we spend a good deal of time fixing things that have broken over the winter—or breaking things we will need to fix over the summer.





Unless we’ve let guests use our place after we leave at the end of the summer, we usually find things pretty much the way we left them. If guests have been there, however, I find myself rearranging dishes and towels and sheets on their respective shelves so that the order makes sense to me. I never stack the twin sheets with the full sheets. The beach towels are stored on a shelf of their own—definitely not with the bath towels. And I’m pretty compulsive about the way the plates are stacked—tan, brown, tan, brown, tan. Weird, huh?




Opening up means, first and foremost, getting the water going—pump, well, toilet—all in working order. This year it went smoothly, but not so last year: We turn on the hot water heater which promptly burns out because we forgot to first turn on the pump. The rest of the day goes like this: Go to the hardware store and get new parts for the hot water heater. Fix the hot water heater. Pour chlorine bleach down the well. Return to the hardware store for parts for the pump. Fix the pump. Return unneeded parts for the hot water heater and pump to the hardware store.