Lake Umbagog
1907
August 9
(No 10)
  Thus far I have been writing in the past tense
and chiefly of times long since gone. I will now
return to the present and transcribe here some of the notes
that I jotted down roughly this afternoon.
Lake House.
  As I sit on the front piazza of the Lake House I marvel
that the outlook is so little changed. The foreground to be
sure, is littered and defaced by piles of lumber and of
dowells, by dilapidated carts and barrels and by other
debris of similar kinds not to speak of a recently erected
and very objectional shed. But over or beyond all these
I see the wooden bridge that crosses the river; the curving
bit of rapid; the Savins, now grown into large trees and
among them a few houses; the square two-storied grist mill
painted yellow and low, unpainted saw mill at its rear,
above these the mill pond with the Swallows skimming over it
as of yore; and beyond the pond the tapering spires of tall
spruces and balsams, the broader heads of sapling pines and
the gleaming white trunks of old canoe birches half-obscured
by the foliage of various kinds. In this particular view I miss only
the huge dead pine on which Eagles and Herons used to
perch. As I write the words I hear the cry of a Great Blue
Heron and looking up am delighted to see no less than
five of these majestic birds flying in company over the
pond towards the Lake.
  The Umbagog House is gone, of course, and its cellar
hole, if it even had one, of which I am not certain has been
filled and grassed over. Tall plum bushes and wild saplings
of various kinds grow all around what was once the garden.
The canoe birch which sprang from the top of a pine stump
by the front door of the house is now fully sixty feet high
by two feet through just above the ground. It is green and