Another Camp

Night and day, from yesterday's tiny cottage. But this one beats everything else for character, says the owner, and I agree.


South end of Skaneateles Lake. It's noon, and the steamship from the village is slowly progressing down the lake to Glen Haven with a cargo of merry-makers from New York City. They took the train up for a weekend in the Finger Lakes. Tonight they'll dance and feast at the hotel, then climb aboard the steamship and make their way home again.

The ladies wear crinolin, the gentlemen wear boaters. They pull up at the Shady Beach Marina to disembark. Some go off to the little store on the corner, others wind their way to the hotel. Some look back up the lake and there, on the western shore, is a house going up.

Three stories high, built into the hillside, it rises from the stony beach. Inside the hardwoods are lovingly laid, the stone fireplace being built to warm the seasonal home on the cold nights of summer. Seven bedrooms for sleeping or dallying, all with windows toward the lake. The center is open so that from the hallway above the fireplace and massive dining room table can be seen, shouts can be exchanged. Oil lamps swing out from the walls in the long evenings, casting shadows on the heavy furniture.

The revelers leave tired and late and as the steamship chugs past they see the new Camp - hardly a cottage - rising up from the mist on the lake. Someday, they think, someday I will have a place like that.....