With a cap over its bed, it’s ideal for carrying rougher and larger loads than I’d care to put into Mother’s Prius. It has a snazzy minimalist ash-and-oak roof rack designed and executed to make other carpenters gasp with envy, it can carry ladders, a canoe or a small boat, or a load of lumber. It’s to land transportation what a canoe is to a camping trip: You can take along more stuff than absolutely necessary because you have the room and don’t have to carry it.

Right now I’m fishing from my Adirondack guide boat – another perfect vehicle – on a lovely pond in northern Maine. On one side, the dark reflection of White Cap Mountain fills the surface; on the other, a few hundred yards away, the graying log cabins of West Branch Pond Camps stretch along the shore. The American flag barely stirs on the spruce pole in the yard beside the dining hall. I can see Mother reading in the sunshine in a lawn chair in front of our cabin. A pair of carpenters with a small air compressor is shingling a new building soon to be the camp store. And in the far right corner of the clearing, sticking up above the other guests’ vehicles, is my little blue truck, 300 miles from home and just waiting to be loaded for the drive back to Vermont. Old-timers, I guess, felt the same way about horses, when they got especially good ones.

West Branch Pond, located in an unincorporated township, is a little tough to locate. Road maps generally don’t name it, probably because it’s been situated in lumber company domain for so many years. GoogleEarth doesn’t come up with it, either. I had to zero in on the nearest hamlet, Kokadjo, about 30 miles north of Greenville, and follow the roads in the driving directions till I came onto it. It’s the headwater pond of the west branch of the Pleasant River. The Pleasant, from the point of view of the old-time river drivers who had to run logs down it during the spring flood, has to be one of the most inaccurately named features of Maine geography. A few miles down, it flows through a deep, tortured gorge full of waterfalls and sharp bends, the spectacular Gulf Hagas. The whitewater paddlers’ guide to the rivers of Maine features a little dial for each one, with an arrow pointing to green for easy, yellow for difficult, and red with a skull-and-crossbones logo for the hard-core paddler. The West Branch is hard-core.

None of that, however, is even hinted at by this pond. The weather’s been cool and quiet. We’ve had a fire in the cabin stove at night, and by dawn snuggled together for warmth. Small brook trout have been rising almost without a break since we got here, and there’s usually a moose in sight somewhere on the pond – the most we’ve ever seen, in fact, outside of Baxter Park. When we’ve paddled up close to them feeding in the shallows, their casualness has been almost insulting; they duck back underwater for another mouthful of pond weed. A brilliant pair of loons cruises the shoreline, diving casually for snacks of brook trout. And a pair of Canada geese, no doubt chased away from the golf courses of Greenville, where they make awful messes on the fairways, seem to be settling in here for the summer.

All very lovely and quiet. There’s time to fish before breakfast, which is announced by an old Bangor & Aroostook locomotive bell housed in a cupola atop the dining hall. Meals are just as they have been for generations in northern sporting camps: whatever you want for breakfast; whatever’s being served for lunch and supper. The menu is fixed by the day. Arrive on Thursday, as we did, and supper is prime rib. As with trucks and guide boats, what’s not to like?

West Branch Pond Camps has been in continuous operation since 1885, and has had only five different owners. The current proprietors, Eric Stirling and his wife, Mildred Kennedy-Stirling, are graduates, respectively, of Bates and Bennington. Mildred’s currently doing a master’s at the new Vermont College of Fine Arts, and their child, Avis, is the center of attention in whatever room she toddles into. Eric is the chef, and produces amazing non-greasy breakfast doughnuts made with cake flour and buttermilk.

I first came upon West Branch Pond last winter while doing a television story about the recent purchase of 29,000 more acres of Maine woods by the Appalachian Mountain Club. Eric is delighted by the new neighbors – he has a small inholding for the camps – because, even though the club’s goal is diverse and sustainable use of the forest, there’ll be fewer devastating clearcuts and thundering log trucks around the pond. With the development of other nearby camps by the AMC, West Branch is now a year-round overnight stop for camp-to-camp skiers, snowshoers, and mountain bikers. It’s dog-friendly, too. Several guests have their dogs with them.  

Last winter I asked Eric what was the best time to come back to fish for the native brookies. “May fifteenth,” he declared with assurance. Even though I’ve been around long enough to discount that sort of specific answer, I’ve still managed somehow to be here right on the button. Sure enough, the fish are here and hungry. But tomorrow morning after breakfast we’ll load up the magic carpet, bump out over ten miles of dirt road, and take off for home and responsibility again.