We've been dreaming of a little getaway camp on a lake, kind of like the one in On Golden Pond.

And even though we can't yet buy anything, we've been looking. One property advertised as 14 acres of waterfront land grabbed our attention. Because we can't yet make an offer, we've driven to the property several times and walked what we can walk. A fair amount of the parcel is in wetlands, particularly in the woods leading to the brook -- the "waterfront" part -- where maybe we could keep our canoe and launch it to head out to the lake powered by our "new" used electric canoe motor. When we walked through the woods, as we neared where the brook should have been we encountered five- and six-foot tall wetland veggies.

So far, though, we've found no usable "waterfront." What we did find the other day, while looking again at an aerial photo of the site was a structure crossing the mouth of the brook that is advertised as the access to a nearby lake. The structure looked from the air like a dam.

The realtor, who has been sending us possible properties, checked into the structure and the listing realtor told him it was a beaver dam. Yup, a white beaver dam that forms a straight line across a wide area of a stream. The property owners there and an agency are planning to remove the beaver dam, the listing realtor told our realtor. (Of course, that white line falls within the boundaries of the 14-acre parcel at which we've been looking. What other landowners would have any say in removing a dam in the waterway on that property? And since waterways are actually public -- read "Maine Department of Conservation," no local landowners could remove a beaver dam.)

Ever wonder why real estate sometimes sells so slowly.

The "waterfront" on that property is along the brook from which apparently we'd have trouble canoeing out to the lake without falling over the "beaver dam."

Our Steuben property, which we'd love to sell if we can ever get the court to evict the tenant who is violating his lease, has strange corner markings. Following the deed description of the unsurveyed six or so acres, I found a boulder at one corner which must be one corner since the deed description says a boulder is there. I followed the compass directions through the woods to the brook, where the next marker of the 40 plus-year-old lot is supposed to be a metal stake in the center of the brook. I never found the metal stake that probably had long before rusted and floated downstream past where another metal stake is supposed to mark the third corner in the center of said brook. Anyway, no marker there either.

But deciding on both those boundaries by the shape of the brook on a hand-drawn map accompanying the deed, I followed the third compass line back out to the road. That corner is marked, according to ye olde deed, by a maple tree. I haven't decided which of the half-dozen maples at least 40 years old is the right one. I picked one close to where my compass deposited me on the road.

From there it was easy; follow the road to the beginning point.

I even marked the trees along my compass-found line with orange ribbons and both neighbors agreed with my lines unseen.

Then, one day I met a surveyor and told him of my line-finding adventures. He informed me that over 40 years, the magnetic compass readings would have shifted a bit. I went back and checked, and found the "bit" not enough to make me go through our -- or their -- woods and change the locations of all those orange plastic ribbons.

Although I haven't asked them since talking with the surveyor, apparently the neighbors still agree I've marked the correct line. Do I plan to ask them? You can figure out the answer to that one.

Way back when I was a minister, I belonged to a ministers' board. That group may not be found by precisely that description in the New Testament, where I also haven't found any clergy, but I belonged to it just the same. And someone donated a fairly large tract to us that was located on the shores of Lake Whoopdeedoo, although since my memory is not always as accurate as our iMac's, that may not be the actual name of the lake.

A neighboring landowner informed our board that she had had hers surveyed and learned that she actually owned part of our tract. We, of course, hired our own surveyor who did his task and then told us that the neighboring landowner's surveyor had surveyed her tract by reading the deed backwards. Actually, he advised us, we owned part of her land and we could have it if we wanted.

Part of the Appalachian Trail corridor boundary line heads into the woods on the opposite side of this haul road. A slight gap in the treetops a little to the left of center indicates the survey line. Milt Gross photo.

Maybe we weren't found in the New Testament, but we were a bunch of nice guys (in those days there weren't many gals, nice or otherwise in the ministry) and responded that all we wanted was the land that we understood from the beginning had been donated to us.

That difference between the neighboring landowner and the Nice Guys Board was never argued. The land is still there, as far as I can tell from my Maine Atlas and Gazatteer.

Maine is famous for its old deeds, written longhand while that maple or oak that marked a corner was still alive and well. I wonder how a surveyor today would know where to begin his survey.

One of my volunteer -- no one would pay me for the little I know about this chore -- chores for the Maine Appalachian Trail Club is to check the survey lines along the corridor of the AT in a three-mile-long stretch of unbelievably rough turf in a canyon. At my previous assignment, I one day found a permanent survey monument, because a local person found it by accident and showed it to me. The rest are buried somewhere, where I couldn't find them, although another bunch of MATC guys and gals did one day on a practice search. I wasn't with them so I have no idea where they are.

I only know from an old sign I found hidden in the woods, allegedly on that line where I did find yellow survey line paint blazes, that the line was run there during an AT relocation in 1975.

I used to be able to follow those lines by looking up, where I could see a subtle opening going through the tree tops from when the boundary-line trees had been cut and left that space.

Now the other treetops have grown together.

So now I go by the moose prints, because those four-legged survey-line specialists love to follow the slight opening where the line goes. If I'm really smarter than a moose, shouldn't I be able to find that same opening.

On the one occasion that a moose mooseally (the moose term that substitutes for "personally") showed me the line by trotting along it ahead of me, I had trouble following because I was hotfooting it in the opposite direction.

At our home-turf -- Our Final Resting Place -- property, also not surveyed, I found two orange plastic ribbons, one of which when I followed the compass directions was apparently in the wrong place. I suspected both were wrapped around the trees by the realtor who handled the sale to us or by the former homeowner whose guess was as good as anybody else's.

A new neighbor, who bought the house above us, asked me one day if I had any idea where our dividing line was.

"Right about there," I answered, pointing down the road. "You'll find an orange ribbon."

"Good enough for me," he said.

This beautiful pond would be our perfect pond-side hideaway except that is is within the Appalachian Trail corridor so we can only enjoy it as hikers. Milt Gross photo.

This is how Maine property lines ought to be decided, as any wildlife would tell you if you asked them. The turkeys and deer wander across this line without caring what belongs to whom as long as it all belongs to them.

Our search for that On Golden Pond-like dream continues, first by a web search and then by driving to and walking on what may or may not be the right land. So far, no one has disagreed with us, that the land we're viewing and on which we're walking is the right land -- the land for sale.

But we haven't found that lake- or pond-side On Golden Pond-like dream camp. Maybe there's none left to buy in Maine. Or maybe Plum Creek has the last bunch of On Golden Pond-like dream sites, which we can't afford even if their project is finally approved.

We have our canoe and electric motor, just not the lake or pond.

We may have to buy the On Golden Pond video or DVD and enjoy the pond by freezing it at a place showing the pond while we view it. That's some water view.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2009