Settled in

I always have a writing project planned while I’m at camp. This year, I have several, including this blog. For two summers, I was lucky that my university supported my writing projects with grant money. Ordinarily, I stay very busy writing for at least the first few weeks I’m at camp—mostly during the rainy days of June, before I “settle in” as my mother would say. By mid July the humidity usually sets in. It makes the crackers soggy, the toilet paper damp, the salt unshakeable, and me lazy. I set aside my writing and spend the muggy days sitting on the newly painted deck , making a bigger dent in my stack of novels than my research books. At last I feel settled in to lazy lakeside living. Some places, like an ocean beach, are best when arrived at. But the lake is best for settling in, which is infinitely more satisfying than arriving.


From my reading (note how I rationalize my laziness):

“The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever.” —May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

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.