If you've been up to Maine with us, you've experienced the cabin on Huk Queem-o island and the serenity surrounding Lower Wilson Pond. The island name came from mimicking the sound of loon calls.
My late grandfather, Robert Dishman, a profound Political Science professor at the University of New Hampshire and author, purchased the Dishman family camp for $300 in the early 1960s. Before the island served as capsule for family memories, it stood as a boy's summer camp. The history on the island marks an intersect for both new and old generations enjoying nature and its beauty.
My favorite memories include building a rope swing with my uncles, wakeboarding, and fishing at night after dinner. This camp offered an escape from my reality back in Boston. It was a place where real world stresses disappeared against the sunsets on the back porch and the sounds of the wind through the trees. This is the place I considered my happy place.
The cabin burnt down this past week, leaving only the chimney and smoking debris as remains. All signs point towards an electrical wiring malfunction from solar panel work done the previous day, installed by an apprentice electrician.
Fortunately, nobody was injured or harmed in the fire. Our incredible friends and neighbors, David Ketchum and his family, noticed the flames and alerted Greenville Fire Department. I, along with the entire Dishman family, extend our deepest gratitudes towards the first responders, The Ketchum Family, and my uncle Pat Schaefer and aunt Dee Dishman, who helped transport the firefighters across the pond.
The Maine Forest Rangers and Greenville Firefighters contained the flames and created a perimeter to stop the spread.
I was up there last week just chilling, what I've been doing my entire life, and now it's gone. This is the second fire that we've had as a family. Back in 2018, we had a house fire in Swampscott that woke us up in the middle of the night. Maine was my place of refugee after the first house fire. It symbolized my childhood and early life there. Both fires taught me life can change overnight so be grateful for today.
The island is full of time capsules and sentimental memories. The artifact that I believe is the biggest loss is the Guest Book, where our friends and family staying with us would sign and describe their stay. Entries consisted of my first time as an infant up there and entries spanned back further than that with fishing stories from my Grandpa, whose ashes went down with the fire on the mantle. I wish those stories were engraved in stone.
As we begin the cleanup and start thinking about the rebuild, I would like to capture memories and images from Maine. If you'd like to write a post or send me an email to [me@jackdishman.com] with your guest book memory / entry, I am planning on hosting these stories in a way that will be preserved outside of a physical copy and also displaying them up in Maine for future guests to read.
This was originally written and posted in September 2022 on BlogChain, and was lost for ~2 years after the product was shut down (IPFS content was unpinned). This article was recently discovered thanks to my mom taking screenshots of it at the time!
Bonus pics of interior!!!
Thanks for reading along! In the next article, I'll talk about the cleanup and framing the rebuild!
