Overnight at Birch Campsite

The morning sky was the color of the water in East Grand Lake, a deep and darkening gray. The weather was mid-60s and gusty. All were conditions that might portend bad weather, as my friends and I prepared to set out for an overnight camping trip near the Canadian border on Spednick Lake in Maine. I was prompted to organize the outing by my doctor friend, Steve Inglis, who visited us last year at my fishing camp and had returned now for this adventure. Together with my locals—Greg Rollins and Ted Stratigos, both frequent mentions in this column—we loaded up the Defender and hitched up the canoe and Greg’s boat, both full of tents, sleeping gear, food, and essential supplies for the next 36 hours in the woods.

Andy Brooks, a longtime friend and fishing guide, met us at the dock off Castle Road in Forest City. We all piled into the boats and were out on the water by 10:30 AM, Andy leading in his canoe. The sky continued to threaten but never opened up during our 45 minutes or so traversing the lake—a real blessing.

The campsite, maintained by the St. Croix River Society, seemed welcoming enough. There was an open fire pit and cleared areas for tenting. My trepidations about an “outhouse” were unwarranted, as Greg had taken an old toilet seat and fashioned a makeshift commode for us. We decided no cell phones allowed. Everything was just fine for our needs, which was to fish to our hearts’ delight. We focused on bass and perch all day, breaking briefly for a lakeside lunch of Andy’s burgers. That night we had fresh fish over the fire with grilled steak – a fine dinner.

The wilderness experience is worthwhile, bugs and all. Sure, the terrain is a bit uneven, but so is life at times. I slept on a cot, but my friends used their sleeping bags with roll-up mattresses on the tent floor. The temperature never dropped at night, so we unzipped the tent windows for any stray breeze. The lake loons, nocturnal and vocal, kept us awake past midnight with their mournful calls.

We were all up the next morning at daybreak, bleary-eyed but happy to have made it overnight without incident or unwelcome animal visitors. The serenity of the lake environment combined with the lack of connection to the outside world created a pleasant sense of being outside of time—we kept checking with each other to ask what day it was—a feeling that lingered even after we had packed up to go home.

I looked forward to returning to my soft mattress that night and felt satisfied. I recalled the words of Henry David Thoreau: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”