05/31/2026
Captain’s Log, Stardate: May 2026…Year 10 - The Story so far...😬😳🙄
Water, water everywhere…except where you want it to be…Year 10 opened with a bang…caused by the blow out of a pretty significant amount of plumbing and water lines. Each year, the water lines are blown out in the fall– a process that takes a little time and leg work, and then the campground is tucked in for the long winter sleep amidst the icy winds that are usually blowing off the lake by the end of November when we check the gate on the end of each season. It usually rains or snows or does a little bit of both as we swaddle and snug things in. November 2025 was no different. Except unbeknownst to us – it would be very, very different in the spring when we went to untuck and wake the sleeping giant.
Norm headed into camp in January and turned the water on to our house. Things seemingly went according to plan…always a welcome breath of fresh air🙂. Long about February, he started noticing that he was running out of water much quicker than what he should. Most people think we draw water off the lake. However, we do not. There is a 3000-gallon cistern that sits atop a hill behind the campground and a well and a pump that works its muscles to fill the cistern when it dips down to a certain level. Gravity, one of the greatest forces that can influence a system, delivers the water to the waiting campground below, where it disperses down several pipeline byways to find its way to the cabins, the bathhouse and the spigots of the waterfront sites and the seasonals. 3000 gallons is a lot of water at a first glance. But a running toilet or a relatively small leak can do some serious damage to what looks like a good store of water. Norm’s a big guy, but it doesn’t take 3000 gallons of water to keep him neat and spiffy for a week, so it was with growing perplexity and frustration that he kept reporting that the water level was down near the bottom of the reservoir again only a week or so after filling. There’s not a whole lot one can do in the dead of winter to solve these sorts of problems. They are hard enough to solve in the heat of summer. The hardest thing about a water leak is finding it. The fixing it is the easy part…unless it’s a colossal cluster of a problem that has arms and legs and has taken off running in every direction…which is what happened.
When the air began to warm and the snow began to recede and the ice on the lake began to lean toward its popcorn phase, the water problem became an escalating mystery of sobering proportions. How can there be water leaks when the water isn’t actually turned on? It’s a fair question…unless you’re at Seboomook – where the Universe seems intent upon challenging your intellect, your perseverance and your patience. Seboomook is the ultimate guru that a spiritual seeker could ever ask for…and while you might think you’ve had enough lessons, the Universe by way of Seboomook is insistent upon giving you more.
When the bathhouse doors were thrown open, the problems became painfully apparent. It was a case of what engineers might refer to as a cascading failure…when one small failing in a system triggers a cluster you-know-what of other failings that lead to what we now had: a cluster you-know-what of a water situation.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that when Norman came in and turned on the water to our cabin, a shut-off failed at some point over the winter, allowing water into some of the veins of the system. Water is both a resource and a nemesis with a strong, stubborn mind of its own when it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of the pipe in the bathhouse was split and rent like Poseidon himself had come up from the depths of Moosehead and waved his angry trident around, wreaking havoc with the minions who think that they have things at Seboomook under control.
The bathhouse is a hub where all of the veins of the water system down in the campground come and go. Water comes in through some pipes and then is pushed out to the various waiting ports through other byways. Just like a heart, when the arteries are healthy, everything hums along smoothly…but when those arteries get clogged and expand…well…things can get fairly complicated in a hurry.
The Seboomook Surgical Team was called in and the work began. We have a great group of skilled hands here at Seboomook…and the folks who’s arms those hands are attached to are pretty stellar human beans. We will be forever grateful for our little community up here in the woods who always shows up for us!! All of the pipe was stripped from the bathhouse and replaced. The split hot water heater was wrangled out of its corner and a new one installed. The splits at the stanchions were patched and stood back up at attention…and after a lot of hard work, a few cuss words and some frustrations shaped into good, hearty memories, Poseidon was vanquished and he and his angry trident dove back into the seas of Moosehead Lake and once more, all is right and well in the Kingdom of Seboomook…until next time. To be continued…
