Fort Pond Summers

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.