Maine Outdoor Journal

2009’s Labor Day may have been late, but the change of seasons arrived punctually with it. The signs -- some literal, some figurative -- appeared overnight. On the billboard outside Rangeley Lakes Builders’ Supply, advertisements for gas grills and barbeque accessories gave way to “We have -60 antifreeze.” At camp, the little red arrow on the round thermometer outside the kitchen window descended to numbers not visited since April; 38 degrees at 6 a.m., sending me shivering to the woodbox for newsprint, kindling and firelogs. Sea smoke -- what’s it called on freshwater lakes? -- signaled the cooling of the water on Mooselookmeguntic and Richardson and the Dam Pool between them, so recently warmed to fish-stunning levels by our late-summer heat wave. Down on the coast, at Maine Mall, a pirate waved at motorists to lure them into a Halloween costume shop; Christmas cards were on offer at the big Borders bookstore.

The near-perfect (or was it actually perfect?) Labor Day Weekend weather inspired an exhausting output of energy on outdoor activities. Kayakers and canoers churned the waters, sharing space with weekend anglers; bicycle racers converged on Rangeley, hikers clogged the trails up and down the slopes of the western mountains.

The baldest feature of Oquossoc’s Bald Mountain is its trail. Many decades of ascents and descents by countless shod feet have created a channel for the rain and snowmelt runoff, erasing millennia of nature’s slow, steady accretion of topsoil and exposing an ankle-spraining obstacle course of boulders and tree roots. The blue trail blazes seem quaint on a thoroughfare that is in places thirty feet wide and that would be difficult to stray from on the darkest moonless night. On Saturday, nearly continuous foot traffic puffed up the little mountain for the privilege of admiring the vista from the observation deck of the hilltop tower, a view limited only by horizons on a gin-clear day. Far below the waters of Rangeley, Mooselook and Cupsuptic lakes glowed like sapphires. The west wind, crisp as an apple, whisked away the perspiration of the climb and refreshed the climber for the return trip.

At the venerable encampment of Upper Dam on Sunday morning the Camp Owners’ Association sat in the sunshine on wooden benches arrayed in a semicircle on the green lawn in front of Twin Camps and conducted its annual business. There was an accounting of incomes and expenditures, a collecting of dues and water fees, and some grousing about the mess some contractors had made while restoring a couple of camps and how to prevent such carelessness in the future. The Upper Dam tote bag, already a best seller, and the 2010 Upper Dam photo calendar were passed around to entice additional buyers. Linwood White, the grand old man of Upper Dam campers, teared up as he remembered his great friend Jim Fisher, who passed away earlier in the year leaving the east side of Twin Camps to his children. A moment of silence was observed. Following the meeting tables were set up for the annual picnic, featuring a high-calorie array of homemade main dishes, side servings, salads and desserts, and after lunch the campers clustered on and around Lin White’s dock for the fiercely contested Upper Dam boat race, whose makeshift craft had to be a minimum of three inches long.

Fishing? Some. But the waters need to cool and churn a bit before anyone has what could be called a big day at the Pool.