White Oak Pond

Of the small Lakes Region ponds, White Oak remains one of our favorites. For starters, the state prohibits outboard motors larger than 7.5 horsepower. The few houses along the shore have small docks with canoes on racks, rather than huge docks jutting out into the lake with behemoth powerboats tied up waiting to be released. The lake seems tranquil and relaxed. On a Memorial Day weekend we saw only one other boat, and it was a solo canoe. About a dozen quite unobtrusive houses dot the shoreline, primarily along the northeastern shore and the western end. Several privately owned islands, including a quite large one, provide extra shoreline to explore. The heavily wooded shoreline harbors white pine, red oak, red maple, and a few stands of hemlock. After quite a bit of looking, we actually found a sickly white-oak specimen; this is pretty far north for white oak. We also found a variety of fern around the lake: huge stands of royal and cinnamon ferns along the shore, with dense carpets of various wood ferns farther up the banks.