On Wednesday, August 3, 2016, Colby College and the Maine Lakes Resource Center in Belgrade Lakes Village announced a formal partnership devoted to watershed research and water quality improvement. The MLRC-Colby Watershed Research Project builds upon an existing fruitful collaboration. It provides a framework for continuing research by Colby College professors and students on the lakes and in surrounding communities, as well as the potential for considerably expanded initiatives. (Update: Following a merger with the Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance in December 2017, the building is now called the “7 Lakes Alliance.”)
These archival articles are presented “as is.” Except for minor corrections or clarifications, most have not been updated since they appeared in print. Thus, some details may be out of date, and some hyperlinks may no longer work.
Busy, Bustling Belgrade Lakes
by Esther J. Perne
Pick a weekend — not just any weekend. Pick the first weekend in August when Belgrade Lakes Village and the many lakes of the Belgrades are humming with activity. Most other weekends there is a lot of hum, too, but this particular weekend is vibrant with some pretty special, and pretty typical, traditions.
Leading the list is the Saturday night double feature: the Bean Hole Bean Supper at the Belgrade Community Center for All Seasons, sponsored by the Belgrade Fire Department and the Belgrade Lakes Loon Calling Contest at the Belgrade Lakes/Rome bridge, sponsored by Castle Island Camps. Dating back several decades, both events continue to draw huge, happy crowds, here for the day, the week or the weekend.
It is difficult to pinpoint when a summer weekend starts, perhaps Wednesday, perhaps Saturday, because it's summer and it's vacation and because of all the wonderful reasons for just going to town, or village as the case may be — strolling, shopping, chatting, people watching, eating or attending an event.
Aside from the bean supper and the loon calling, other village events of the weekend include Britannica Acoustic Duo on Friday evening, a Stand Up Paddle Boarding, Kayak & Canoe Relay Race on Saturday, an Aquafest on Saturday and a Lakeside Artisan Show on Sunday, all based at the Center for All Seasons, and the Belgrade Lakes Market on Sunday at the Maine Lakes Resource Center on Main Street.
Although the Village is the hub, throughout the Belgrades the beat continues — literally with the concerts at Snow Pond Center for the Performing Arts in Sidney, including the musical Little Women and the final New England Music Camp concerts of the season at the Bowl in the Pines on Lake Messalonskee.
And beyond? There are fests and festivals, anniversaries and fairs, art walks and benefit walks, theater by and for all ages, lectures and museum programs, and music in waterside parks.
If it sounds like the whole region is busy and bustling, it is. But that first weekend in August has some pretty special traditions in Belgrade Lakes.
'Twas February in the winter of '64 and Central Maine was buried in snow. We'd had back-to-back storms for most of what seemed like a month straight. The plows had made such high snow banks we were putting tennis balls on the car antennas to help avoid accidents.
Tap, tap, tap — pause — TAP, TAP, TAP even louder. I became aware that the noise was real and not a dream. It was my father Clifford rapping on the kitchen ceiling heat grate with a broom handle. The grate offered what little heat there was to my room directly above, and Dad thought it a great sport to use it as an alarm clock. He had hired me and my summer friends Ralph Pope and Hunt Dowse during the February school break to help shovel the roofs of the 22 camps that he was responsible for.
The boys were sound asleep in the spare room after driving up from their family homes in the Boston area the previous evening. They had arrived around 7 p.m. in Hunt's '59 VW bug. As was par for the course, the bug had no viable heater and the boys had walked into our Main Street house in Belgrade Lakes looking like a couple of Eskimos. Ralph told of scraping the windshield (on the inside) about every 10 minutes, so that Hunt could keep the beetle between the lines on the Maine Pike. It had taken them nearly 5 hours to come the 180 miles due to headwinds and the 36 horsepower engine.
Mother Elsie held supper for them and they devoured the beef stew and hot biscuits like they hadn't eaten for a week. As usual, Dad hit the sack about 7:30 the night before so his 5:00 a.m. rising was nothing unusual. Of course, we teenage boys had sat up half the night playing canasta interspersed with ping pong competitions in the dirt floor cellar.
As we boys grudgingly got ourselves up and dressed, mother appeared in the kitchen and fired up the stove. The big black cast iron spider came out and the deer meat, eggs, and bacon started smelling real good.
After a big feed for all of us, we were about ready to go when Dad said, "Don't forget to wax the shovels." He had asked us to bring the shovels into the attached shed the night before so the steel would be somewhat warmer and free of frost. After holding the shovels over the Franklin fireplace for a few minutes, we used bars of paraffin wax to rub over the metal blades. No sticking snow shovels for us, and believe me, this is worth its weight in gold if you are shoveling all day.
As daylight showed its cold, gray beginning, we headed out in the near zero temps and got buckled into our snowshoes. In those days, the shoes were ash framed with gut webbing and leather straps. Many of our shoes were left over from grandparents who had made their own. Repair was commonplace and snowshoes could be kept usable for many years. Every size and type were common, a couple being "bear paws" and "pickerels."
We each carried one of the shovels over our shoulders and took turns dragging the short ladder that would be needed. In some conditions and when flat roofs were involved, we also dragged or carried a wooden snow scoop that could remove large amounts of snow in a shorter time.
A view of the west (Long Pond) side of Main Street, Belgrade Lakes Village, looking north.
We crossed Main Street from my parents' house and wallowed up and over the high snowbank, then down beside the Lakeshore Hotel to Long Pond. The destination due west was barely visible in the bleak beginnings of morning, but enough to keep us from getting turned around. Someone drew first duty to break trail and the other three fell in line. Everyone knew that excessive chatter was just wasted energy, so after a few lame jokes we settled into a quiet cadence.
Within the hour we had passed Blueberry Island and were nearing the shoreline where the Herling camp sits. This is the most northerly of the three camps that were our job for the day. We didn't carry water in those days and all ate some handfuls of snow while we perused the job at hand. Both Ralph and I knew this place well, as we had both worked for Mrs. Herling at the age of 11. During the summer, we had shuttled groceries from Day's Store in her 12-foot dory with a 5.5 [horse power] Johnson outboard.
The Herling camp was fairly small with a hip roof and we all took a side and started shoveling the waist deep snow. The first "youngster" whose side was finished went to do the small pump house building.
We then moved on southerly to attack the Cottrell place. The two buildings there were tougher to do with a high pitched roof on the main camp and several shed roofs to boot. Boys being boys, we most usually either jumped or dove off into the piles when a roof was done. Ladders were for getting up only, except for Dad.
We were done there by noon, and walked the shoreline south to the Bourne place. We took 15 minutes to rest and eat our somewhat frozen sandwiches, ate some more snow and headed onto our last roofs of the day.
By 2:00, the roofs were cleared. As we buckled into our snowshoes and readied to head home, it was clear that fatigue was creeping in, mostly with Dad. He usually followed us on the trail a few paces back, which we perceived as typical of an older man. When Hunt took a peek back as we trudged back across the lake, he noted that Cliff was tipping a bottle.
It was later at home when we checked the pocket of his Mackinac barn coat that we discovered a pint of Haller's Reserve. Neighbor, Lee Law, who used to help Dad before his health failed told us boys that the bottles' contents gave sustenance for such a long hard day. He called it "old Indian rubbing balm and cognogative." Uncle Byron used to call it a "small snipper or snifter," regardless of brand.
And so it was, at 3:30 in the fading afternoon, Mother met us at the door as we stuck the shoes and shovels into the snow bank and came inside. Another day was coming and tomorrow we would hit the camps down off the long narrows toward Castle Island. The owners for tomorrow's run would be the Hermans, Truebloods, Doyles, Falks, and Halls. That required snowshoes as well but not so long a slog.
Snowmobiles were just entering the scene and father (Clifford) thought of them as silly gizmos. After his death in 1971, their popularity grew and I suspect no one ever again snowshoed across Long Pond to shovel camp roofs. The next winter I had my first snowmobile, a Ski-Doo with a 10-horsepower Rotax engine. The old wooden snowshoes got very little use after that and we see them now hanging on walls as decorations. Now I see that snowshoes are mostly all aluminum frames with man-made webbing and straps and are mostly used for recreation.
The weather was warm last week, making jumping in the lake quite attractive. I am a certified Invasive Plant and Water Quality Monitor for the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program, so I did some snorkeling, looking for invasive plants in Tracy Cove. (None found!) I also took my biweekly water quality measurements, measuring temperatureoxygen profiles and Secchi depths in both Upper and Lower Long Pond. When I examined the upper basin profile, I noted a cool, well-oxygenated (16° C and 7.5 PPM O2) at about 25 ft., at the base of the thermocline.
I happened to have a fishing rod with me so I began trolling at that depth. I quickly caught several nice bass in the 34 pound range and two salmon, one about 16 inches and the other slightly smaller. I released the larger salmon and kept the smaller one, which had fairly recently been injured in a narrow escape from a Northern Pike. It made an excellent dinner, basted with tarragon butter and grilled.
Salmon tail with scars from pike attack.
As I was headed back toward my dock, I noticed a man in a small boat anchored on top of one of my favorite fishing spots, a small shoal to the east of Loon Island. He did not look like he was fishing and I was concerned he might have engine trouble so I cruised by to talk to him. Turns out he is a third-generation owner of one of the camps at Pinehurst, right in Belgrade Lakes Village. He was watching his kids and nephews and nieces pick blueberries on the island. When the kids had a good fistful of berries, they would swim to his boat to unload the berries, washing them in the process. They were having a great time and keeping cool. More fun than Long Island and South Jersey where they spend the rest of the year!
Granddaughter with nice smallie.
We also had a short visit from our grandkids this week. My granddaughter had gotten a new fishing pole for her birthday last month and wanted to test it out so we went out fishing for a while. We spotted several schools of landlocked alewives at the surface, being chased by big fish from below. We cast to and trolled around the schools for a while. She caught two nice bass (3-4 pounds) and was pretty excited as you can see by the grin on her face. They then wanted to swim for a bit so I towed the kids to the rocky cove known locally as "The Graveyard," and we swam and hung out on the rocks before heading to Day's for ice cream. I think some pretty good memories were made.
This is a perfect time to make a few memories of your own, on the lake or hiking some of the nearby trails. And bring a kid or two.
