The very best summers of my childhood were spent with my family in a cottage – what New Englanders call a camp – on Fort Pond, just outside of Leominster. When I was a child, there were few year-round residents or weatherized homes on Fort Pond, just lots of water and woods and fairly primitive structures. It was a dream come true for a nature-loving kid like me.
You had to walk down a steep hillside with railroad ties as steps to get from our camp to the water, but it was worth it. We had a tiny sandy beach, a small boat dock, and a “float” – a square floating dock anchored out a ways in the water, perfect for a sunning break from swimming in the always-chilly spring-fed pond. I loved to swim and spent hours every day in the water. There were a couple of other girls close to my age nearby, and we would take walks in the woods or row a boat to a little marshy area where the fishing was good.
One night a week, Fort Pond got social with the “Finn Hop,” a dance at Camp Kaleva, a Finnish settlement across the pond. The music was similar to American square-dance fare – fiddles, accordion, etc. But the best part was the wonderful pastries the Finnish women brought. The Finnish kids got in free; we non-Finns had to pay to get in. My fee was often waived because with my blonde hair and fair skin, they often assumed I was a Finn.
My older siblings had a motorboat most years and liked to water ski – something I was unable to master until later. And as teenagers, they felt stranded away from town for the summer. My decidedly non-outdoorsy father had never enjoyed living in the woods or the daily drive to and from town. So the Fort Pond summers ended about five years after they began.
I still dream about Fort Pond . . . looking across the water early in the morning, when it was calm as glass except for the little bubbles feeding the pond from the underwater springs. I swat mosquitoes while picking blueberries and wade through muck to catch bullfrogs. I wake up on the second-floor sleeping porch I share with my sisters, my eyes aligned with the tree tops.
