A New Year At the Lake

Photo: Dave Breton

This past weekend one of our summer neighbors in New Gloucester, Maine, visited our adjacent cottages on True’s Point, on Sabbathday Lake, where the ice is just beginning to take hold along the shoreline after a fairly warm winter thus far.  The ice on other sections of the lake was up to three inches thick and already there were a few brave souls venturing out on the dangerously thin ice to tempt fate and go ice fishing. Much of the lake is either still open water or only transparent thin ice, but that is not enough deterrent for anglers who have been waiting patiently since the open

Photo: Dave Breton

water fishing season closed at the end of September to wet a hook.  Things are looking up, however, and the temperature began to drop later in the weekend and a passing winter storm dropped a few inches of new snow.  So winter may have finally arrived.  Perhaps.  It is even snowing here in Washington, DC this morning . . . these four inches are the first real measurable snowfall of the season.  it might be all we get.

And so here we are starting out fresh in a new year and it is time once again to begin looking toward to those summer months (and they will be here before we know it) and a return to the lake in June.   I look at the barren deck and the quiet lake beyond in these photographs and it is not difficult to envision the deck tables and the festive rainbow-hued umbrella . . . the grill standing ready.  I recall all of those stunning summer sunsets, each one different from the ones before.  It is thoughts like these that help me get through these gray and damp months of winter.

If all goes as planned I will take my annual winter trip to northern New England in the next few weeks, and if I do, I will certainly make my own outing to True’s Point and Sabbathday Lake to have a look at the cottage and the lake at the height of winter.  I am sure I will find it much changed from its appearance in these early days of January.  It has always been a bit of a treacherous go as I managed to navigate the icy and snowbound two-track that leads from the main road back to the lake.  I am only able to get as far as the top of the hill behind the cottage where I abandon any attempt of going farther.  The rest of the drive is buried under several feet of snow.  From there I could look down to the cottage with snow drifted high against it exterior walls, an ice fisherman’s bobhouse positioned on the ice in the spot where we swim and fish in the summer.   There is no fear of thin ice.

Looking at these recent photographs of the cottage and lake, and thinking back to my previous winter visits, I can’t help but see myself sitting under the umbrella on a warm summer’s day.   It won’t be long.  I can take comfort in that.

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