Of course we get looks when we stop for gas in the northern town of Lincoln. It's not that there's anything unusual about seeing a bright-red Dodge Ram truck with a canoe lashed to its roof in this part of the state — we're in Sport Central. It's the sight of the two of us, me and my friend the painter Marguerite Robichaux, toppling out of the cab, hooting it up, one heading for the pumps and the other for the loo after nearly five hours on the road. The truck and gear imply business; giggly girls (of a certain age) do not.We have driven across the state, with ample breaks, from my friend's home in the western Maine mountains to go canoeing on Sysladobsis Lake, in Down East Maine. There are plenty of places to dip a paddle where Marguerite lives (over the years we've had many happy turns on Flagstaff Lake), but I don't have this canoeing thing completely down. My arms always grow weary, and I bang the side with my paddle every few strokes. Convinced I only needed a novel environment in which to learn, Marguerite proposed a canoe trip. We would have the loan of a camp, so no true privation (i.e., sleeping on the ground or drinking canned instead of bottled beer) would be necessary. Just a nice leisurely poke around a lake with a very funny-sounding name and an eating/drinking/ painting/writing/reading adventure with my pal. Who wouldn't sign on?

As we pass through the town of Springfield (population: 389) and find the turn to Sysladobsis, that delicious pre-arrival agitation sets in. How reliable are the directions? Have we written down the combination to the gate correctly? Will the key be where the owners said it would be? This is a camp borrowed from strangers, neighbors of friends of Marguerite's. We have no idea what awaits us.

So, when we finally see the very high peak of a very new metal roof poking up out of the surrounding trees, my heart sinks. While I was not necessarily up for portages and freeze-dried beef stew, I wasn't wanting satellite TV and a hot tub either — especially since we had told everyone we were going "camping." But it's a false alarm. As we round the bend and come into the dooryard, we see our camp — a squat, brown, shake-shingle number with green trim and wraparound deck that faces the lake. The metal-roof building is new construction — a soon-to-be bunkhouse — that is only partway completed. Ours is a classic sports camp: one big common room with a kitchen/dining area abutting the built-in bunk/couches. There's a small back room with a couple of beds in it. A good-sized woodstove stands between the two rooms. Despite the rows of windows, it's dim inside — it's always dim inside, hemmed in, as we are, by spruce. We set to work checking the propane lamps and hauling gear. Because we have done more than one of these kinds of trips, we fall into the happy, familiar rhythm of squaring ourselves away. Beds made. Outhouse found (after a mistaken wrangle with a lock on a privy-esque tool shed). Coolers stowed. Martini glasses iced. Books, art supplies, cameras, notebooks, pencils set out. Dish station set up. I notice a stack of journals and peek inside one of them. They are camp logs, dating from January of 1985 to the present. The reading I have brought along has just been usurped, and I look forward to poking my big nose into the story behind our borrowed digs.

I have to confess that when Marguerite decides it may be a little too windy and late in the day for a proper paddle, I am not disappointed. Instead, we decide to get the lay of the land.

Sysladobsis is part of the chain of thirty-two fingery lakes, ponds, and streams making up the Grand Lake Stream area of Maine. For better than a hundred years, the region has attracted sports — anglers and hunters — and, more recently, the winter sledding set. But, like most of this part of Maine, it remains refreshingly undeveloped. We are staying on the tippy top of the lake, and the few camps and houses we passed en route out of Springfield are mostly modest. One trailer, with a stunning array of junk strewn across its front yard, boasts a large, hand-painted sign: "Free kittens. Serve yourself."

As we set out to explore the point by foot, the first of many diversions occurs: I am immediately struck by the wild variety of mushrooms in various stages of growth and decay covering the forest floor. While I am no mycologist, I've had an interest in all things fungal ever since my first brush with slime mold a few years back. With my trusty field guide back at camp, we are left to come up with our own nomenclature as we pick our way around the various specimens: Brain on a Stick; Small Red Typewriter Keys; The Pancake; Parker House Rolls; Fake Wet Rubber Vomit; Fake Wet Rubber Dog Poo; and the star, Mr. Horatio Hornblower in His Day-Glo-Orange Velvet Pajamas. (And no, we were not sampling our finds. Mr. Hornblower was a chanterelle of some sort, hence the horn reference.)

The real diversion, however, awaits me within the pages of the camp logs. As Marguerite — who, I am ashamed to say, is almost wholly in charge of the meal department — putters around the kitchen, stirring this, tasting that, I read. My friend's cooking is almost as legendary as her painting; we have a tacit understanding we would rather eat well than distribute this part of the labor fairly. (Besides, I'm an ace with a scrubby and a dishpan.) Our menu includes Louisiana brisket and crowder peas (Marguerite maintains a home in Baton Rouge and brings a suitcaseful of food — including hunks of smoked meat — back to Maine from every visit); cold ham and summer salads, grilled chicken sausage with quesadillas, and her make-you-weep-it's-so-good caviar pie. I know back out in the world people are counting calories and cutting carbs, but they wouldn't last long on one of our outings.

At first, I skim the logs. The entries are no Emersonian meditations. They are a record, straight and simple, starting with the words on January 12: "We don't really own the camp yet" followed by "papers signed" a few days later. Capsized canoes (so-and-so, apparently, had too much to drink), trout caught, deer missed, and improvements made to the camp are noted. If there's something amusing or noteworthy, I share it with Marguerite. There's a lot about food, basic fare — spaghetti, stir fry, grilled steaks — and it makes me think: do we all, perhaps, head for the woods just to make meals more enjoyable? Friends and relatives, young and old, have penned their impressions of their visits. There are snapshot-like moments: "Stopped at Exxon Station on way to dump with chairs. Chairs stayed at Exxon station." "D. caught nothing but a few logs. P. and I caught D.'s underwear which he lost during his morning dip." "Caught one salmon. Set in snow outside camp and crows stole it. Bastards."

As pages are turned, names become more familiar, and I get a sense of the lake locals call Dobsie. I figure out who the owners are (F. and his wife, M.) and come to recognize their hands and voices. In my own notes I jot down guideposts — things and places we would never find on our own — which we use to augment our agenda: locations of swimming spots and fishing holes and marshy entrances to streams off the lake and directions to a fire tower I later imprudently climb directly after lunch one day (but which gives me a grand view of all that is Grand Lake Stream and of Katahdin behind us). Why, I wonder, as I get ready for bed that first night, are we going to have to spoil it with paddling?

The morning starts chilly for late August — it's in the forties. The wind and the water on the shore sound like a tarp flapping. But we have come to canoe, and canoe we will, whether it suits me or not. Because of the chop, my friend (always the gracious hostess) takes the stern, just until things calm down. We haul out of the cozy protected crook of Pug Hole and ply our way down the lake past Dollar Island and into open water. Whitecaps — whitecaps, I tell you — are soon breaking off the bow. I'm toiling and straining to be of help, all the while thinking, "I'm a good sport, I'm a good sport." But, of course, we soon see the eagle that lives just off our point fishing, and the climbing sun starts to take the sting out of the breeze, and I remember that it's a Wednesday morning and there are many people sitting in offices at this very moment doing real, grown-up work, and the voice in my head pipes down. My friend calls forward that I need not try so hard — that I'm making the task more work than it is. She demonstrates her elegant, effortless stroke, and I resolve to not thrash so hard, but as I bang and bash her canoe once more, I know it's going to take awhile.

We have set our sights on a distant, huge rectangular rock jutting out of the water at an angle, which I name "Minivan." (It looks like something Wilma Flintstone might've plunged into the drink.) When I point to the rock and announce its name, I know my friend sees what I do. She calls back: "I hope the kids got out okay."

But no matter how much we paddle, Minivan grows no closer. Finally, we haul off into a nook and beach the canoe to have a break. Here we are sheltered and can take in the beauty that is Sysladobsis.

Someone once said to me that all Maine lakes look the same, and I suppose it's true — the deep, dreamlike blue of the water, the jagged rim of spruce surrounding the edge, the bowl of pale-blue sky overhead, the tree-studded islands and the boulders poking up through the water's surface, the purple pickerelweed and pink smartweed fringing the shore. Yes, I've seen all this before, but lakes are different and alike in the same way snowflakes are. If you want to see the difference, you have to stop and observe.

As I've been musing, I've also been looking and not looking at the mud along the bank and realize there are two bulging eyes staring back at me. I gaze deeper and see the outline of a bullfrog. He gives a languid blink. I glance around him. There are more eyes. His harem? Suddenly, the shore that seems like any other lakeshore is staring back at me. This is the kind of moment slow and quiet going rewards.

These minor epiphanies mark our days and spark the evenings' conversations. Following tips and clues from the logs, we find all sorts of secret inlets on the lake. One in particular takes us deep into a marshy glade that opens into the mouth of a small rippling stream that is thick with blazing-red cardinal flowers. As we sit and rest, a mama merganser comes around the final bend of the stream, as though from around a curtain, and floats past us. In quick succession behind her are two, seven, ten — in the end we count twenty — merganser ducklings, chattering and floating by, with papa closing the ranks, perhaps preparing for the day's fishing lesson. It's another unexpected gift that stuns us.

Later that afternoon, we are sitting back at camp on the shore and see an enormous fluttery disruption past the hunk of rock that fronts the cabin, which I have dubbed Two-Bit Island in honor of its neighbor of greater denomination. A quick check through the binocs tells us it's our merganser buddies, and we decide to get a closer look. It's time for me to take the stern. As we launch, I have trouble getting us away from the dock, but we are soon under way, and I'm doing okay. Not great, but we are moving. Marguerite, now in the bow, can demonstrate various strokes — the J-Stroke, the Sweep, the Draw — and I try my hand at each.

Then we see it. A dark shadow overhead and a giant swoop near the brood. The eagle of Two-Bit Island. At once, I set my paddle in motion to get us around the side of the island where the birds are so we can try to do a head count. But when we see the eagle land in a tall pine and settle in to eviscerate his dinner (phew, a fish), I propel us around to the other side. The wind is up (always up) and negotiating a good turn is tricky to get a proper look at him. But I'm not thinking of paddling. I'm thinking of this magnificent sight and wondering if this creature that is splattering fish guts in the water just over there might suddenly decide to take a good talonful of my pate for an after-dinner palate cleanser. We remain with the eagle, paddling to different vantage points (we seem to keep getting a shot of eagle posterior), until we are ready to head back. And then it dawns on me: I have canoed. I got us where we wanted to go. Not with much grace and probably with a good deal of banging, but it was a first step.

While Marguerite is putting together our last fabulous feed, I am back at the table and the logs. I abruptly come to an entry dated 21 August, 2003. F. (whom I've come to regard as a friend) is short and to the point: "Final trip to the camp. M. prefers not to come." I read the words aloud and let them hang in the air.

What? Why? There is no explanation. I flip ahead, as though looking for someone who was standing here one minute and is gone the next. While the entries continue, there are no more by F.'s now-familiar hand. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I knew the people we were borrowing the camp from had purchased it recently, but it never occurred to me as I was reading that I wasn't reading their story. I look up. Marguerite is poised at the stove, not moving, with tears in her eyes. I'm crying, too. Good-bye F., good-bye M. Thanks for all the tips and laughs.

The next morning, we add our visitors' contributions to the book. I log mushroom and birds and flowers and nicknames. Marguerite leaves a gorgeous (though not-yet-dry) watercolor. Our closing line sums it all up: "We arrived as strangers but left as friends."

And maybe, just maybe, as a brief chapter in the colorful history of this wonderful place.