July 21: Squam Lake

After a hearty breakfast, Marthe and I set out on a 2.5 hour drive to New Hampshire and Squam Lake, in the town of Holderness, New Hampshire.  That is where my friend and former hiking colleague, Hilde Sanderson, from the Norway hike of 2004, spends half her year, sojourning in the winter in Florida.  She and her husband built a beautiful house in 1958 ( imagine a house of simple, Nordic beauty, regaled with large, picture-front windows), fronting Lake Squam.  She is a retired professor of anthropology, and he had been a professor of English.  He is no longer alive, having died in 2011, but she is still very much alive, a whirlwind of activity and zest for life at 89 years of age.  A long-time runner of marathons, a great hiker and an exemplary human being, she was the spirit of kindness to Marthe and me, and showed us nothing but the most genial hospitality.  

Squam Lake is a lake located in the Lakes Region of central New Hampshire, south of the White Mountains.  The largest town center on the lake is Holderness.  The lake is located northwest of much larger Lake Winnipesaukee. Squam Lake was originally called Keeseenunknipee, which meant “the goose lake in the highlands.”  The white settlers that followed shortened the name to : “Casumpa,” “Kasumpy” or “Kesumpe”  around 1779.  In the early 19th c., the lake was given an Abenaki name, “Asquam,” which means water.  Finally, in the early 20th c., Asquam was shortened to its present name, Squam.  

The 1981 film “On Golden Pond” was filmed in the town of Center Harbor on Squam Lake.  The lake is a nesting site for common loons and is a good place to see them in breeding plumage during the summer months.  Bald eagles and great blue herons are also known to nest on the lake, and we were able to see all of them on the lake, even 6 loons!  Their cries were certainly as strange, unearthly, and mournful as any sound I have ever heard.  

We had breakfast at the lake’s edge, enjoying the warm breezes and the constant lap of the water against the shore.  Later on we hiked a 5-mile round trip up to an overlook of Lake Squam—a magnificent site and a view worth remembering.  Then, towards the shank of the evening, Marthe went kayaking and swimming while I lay on the pier gazing up into the clouds and getting my fill of the sounds of the afternoon, especially the mating calls of the loons.  Again, we had dinner at the pier, then dessert inside (a meringue pie), before declaring it a worthwhile day.  What a wonderful, enchanted place this is!  As ever, Sylvia.