Your Scribe was looking forward to reading the "cabin edition" of "Down East' magazine.

Judging from the cover, which shows a rustic cabin circa 1930, it looks like the editors gave furloughs to some of its staffers to leave toney Camden to travel upcountry and check out the wilderness.

But the edition - February - only had one story about cabin life!

And it was dulcet piece about a family that runs camps on West Branch Pond, 45 minutes north of Greenville, but having no "story line" that I could find.

OK, so I am bitter.

I spent $4.99 on a glossy rag that fronts as a real-estate directory for properties so expensive that Maine people truly cannot buy them.

Still, it gave me ideas.

The Stirlings, adult son, his mom and wife, take in customers and charge $99 per night. They have a half-dozen cabins, built a century ago, but according to the story, somehow cash-wielding visitors have found them.

(An aside: It all sounds too 'Down East' - you know, a family living the hardscrabble life in Maine without a care in their world or a cavity in the mouth.)

When I wasn't dissing myself for paying out a fin, I was thinking: Maybe I could do that.

Build cabins on the Sandy River, purchase a couple extra canoes and greet awestruck tourists from the Bronx, and maybe someday, Okinawa.

And then I thought, I don't have it in me to be a "cabinkeeper."

I don't lilke to wake up in the morning, and part of the Stirlings' success is American plan - where you provide three squares a day.

I don't even like talking to people, unless it's cocktail hour at The Granary restaurant in Farmington.

And then there is the wildlife. One of the Stirlings' suppositions about the future is more tourists are going to come north to look at the wildlife than to hunt or fish.

They have moose there, and a lot of deer. Probably some trout.

My neighborhood of New Sharon has barking dogs, but not much else.

I have seen one egret and one heron in the past four years. No moose. One deer, but that was hanging by its bloody hooves when it was registered at the nearby farm store. A lot of yellow perch, of course.

So no, I guess I won't be turning my 20 acres into a tourist retreat.

Looking back, I don't know why I bought the mag.

Oh, yes I do.

The title of the piece was "Cabin Country," and for obvious reasons I just couldn't resist.

Your Scribe finally got an estimate to have a well dug and installed.

About $6,000.

I was surprised it was this expensive.

But also, my (phone) sales rep said it would be driven by electricity.

I don't have power at the cabin.

Beyond that, I don't want a fancy water system that I can show off in Town and Country.

I wonder if I am a target of "upselling," where sales staffers try to sell a very expensive line of goods to a person who just wants an average product.

Anyway, I just want to have a hole drilled to about 15 feel, find water, and put a pump in that you work with your strong right arm.

Do dowsers still exist?

Does anyone know someone who can "find" water, and then drill a shallow well.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who is knowledgeable in this field.

I am currently reading "An Explorer's Guide to Maine," and right now I am cranky that 90 percent of it is about the coast.

The book is almost 700 pages long, and was written by veterans Christina Tree and K.W. Oxnard.

I should say "updated" rather than "written."

The first version (by Tree) came out in the early '80s, and the one I am perusing was 2003.

Actually, I am not cranky.

But I am amazed that to most drive-by people - writers and tourists - Maine is the coast.

That's nothing new.

But here are two thoughts.

The lakes regions in central Maine are the last places to buy waterfront property.

Based on the number of visitors who will be sent along the coast by books such as this, real-estate within 10 miles of the ocean will be under siege forever.

But in central Maine, in places like Franklin County where my cabin is perched, there is still opportunity to buy on a lake or a river.

Thought #2: I still wonder if there are 44 million "visits" to Maine each year.

This was a figure mentioned by the state tourist bureau several years ago.

It doesn't mean tourists, which are generally defined as staying overnight.

A "visit" could be from parents going to see their kids for the afternoon at Bowdoin, or a tour bus of senior citizens from Portsmouth up for the day.

Still, 44 million seems like a lot.

Assuming that the figure is close to being accurate, you can see why tourism in all its forms is being seen as the major industry in the future now that the mills, shoeshops and papermaking plants are just about history.

One good use of a cabin is storage.

In recent years I have been taking excess family goods to the camp, including furniture, diningware and photos.

I am trying to fill a wall with pictures in the outdoors, which would include a photo of my grandfather and the trophy bear he shot.

That portrait must date from the 1890s, and I'd like to think that he did not need donuts and/or a rancid racoon corpse to lure the 7-foot animal into range of his rifle.

Another category of goods I store is "my papers."

I have written two books. And since I have not been accosted by any library or institute to donate my notes and drafts, I have been storing them at the cabin.

(An aside: I envision a cartoon showing a couple of university librarians looking over their campus as they consider making a bid for (current) President Bush's papers. One earnest geezer says to the other, "I don't think we're going to need a space much larger than a gardening shed. He didn't read, and everything he wrote was fabricated by someone else.")

My first book was "Quiet Presence: Stories of Franco-Americans in New England" (Gannett Press, Portland, 1980). It sold close to 10,000 copies and is excerpted at the Museum of National Heritage at Ellis Island, N.Y.

The book is about the French-Canadian migration to the mills and shoeshops of northern New England, and is told in first-person accounts by the Franco-American workers themselves.

I have several boxes full of notes, photos and documents.

My other book was "Last Night in Hollywood: A Novel of Faulkner and the Fall Season" (New Sharon Press, Portland, 2004).

It was published by the New Sharon Publishing Company, which was actually my own invention since I published the book myself.

And there is the rub. It is very difficult to promote a self-published book.

Well, that was one rub. The other, which I don't dwell upon, was that it could have been an awful novel and not worth promotion or perusal.

Suffice it to say it didn't sell well.

At any rate, I have all the early drafts of that story, which was a novel about a Boston TV critic in Hollywood searching for a missing starlet.

It was based on my years as TV editor for Rupert Murdoch's Boston Herald in the late '90s.

One chore this spring will be to buy metal storage containers to keep the varmints out of my overflowing cardboard boxes.

Last fall I noticed that mice had been chewing up my photo collection of the Pepperell Mills of Biddeford.

I should get to that task, for it doesn't appear that any library is going to march forward with an offer to store my papers in their climate-controlled special-collections section any time soon.

Your Scribe is not one to lament the dearth of snow this winter, but here are a few memories:

'70s - Fortunes Rocks (Biddeford) - In the early '70s, there was a lot of snow. I remember one winter when the icicles reached down from the roof of the small (converted) summer cottage to meet the mounting snowdrifts. On sunny cold days it was magical.

1978 - This was the winter of the Blizzard of '78, though it was worse in Boston than in Portland. I was working at the Portland Press Herald. I (foolishly) went to work that morning. I was not on deadline, so I trudged down to Commercial Street. The tide was rising, and several manhole covers rose off the street with the tide. We were dismissed about noon. I couldn't see for the snow, so I followed a large truck onto the turnpike going south to my home in Kennebunk. Or so I thought. I ended up in Gorham before I realized that he had not taken the turnpike. It took me two hours to get home.

The '90s. I did time in Waterville, which got a lot of snow. Which was good, because I was ski editor for the Maine Sunday Telegram. I skiied at Sugarloaf, Sunday River, Mt. Abram and the other mountains almost every weekend. But I had to commute from Waterville to Portland - daily. You learned to hate those big semis as they came barreling past, putting you into a white haze.

Then there was the ice storm, when, in '96? I was driving west from Portland to Sunday River. All lights were out west of New Gloucester. I thought I was driving back into the 18th century. But arriving in Bethel, the lights were on. You had to admire the grit of the utility workers who struggled first to clear the roads of downed wires, and then to get the power working again.

2004. I had built my cabin, and was anxious to fix it up. So one March I took small pieces of furniture there. But did I have trouble walking the last 100 yards that were not plowed! I carried my Aunt Bea's sitting chair on my back, struggling forth like Dr. Zhivago coming home from the tundra. (An aside: What I had to look forward to was an unheated cabin without power, not the glorious Julie Christie as in the movie). But I struggled on, and managed to furnish part of the cabin on a day when I just should have stayed home.

Do I miss the snow?

No.

But snow does make for memories.

Your Scribe took a furlough from the blog, but is now back ready for a verbose new season.

One reason I wasn't writing was that numerous subjects that I had planned to address were non-starters.

I had thought about writing about snowshoeing, but it hasn't snowed.

I was going to go ice-fishing, but there's not much ice.

And I don't travel to the cabin often, since I haven't gotten off the dime to put in lights. When it gets dark at 4:15, the choices of activities are limited.

But I will soon get a digital camera, and will start posting photos of the cabin, the river, and other topics I write about.

I hope to build up a readership of amateur outdoorsmen like myself.

(An aside: I have been thinking about Donald Murray recently. He was a writing teacher at UNH for many years, and the author of at least 10 books on writing. For the past half-dozen years I have read his column in the Boston Globe. I felt I knew him, for he wrote about things like his personal history and his views about "maturity." He recently died at age 82. I will miss his voice. That being said, I was impressed by his willingness to share his life and activities. That is in small part what I am trying to do. Many people love the outdoors, and this blog is an attempt to gather a community that likes to read about that part of Maine.
That being said, I think I will make my postings shorter in the future. Then I won't have to fret about having a "full idea" that I must develop. As I read blogs throughout the Web, I note that many are just six or eight paragraphs. We'll see....)

Resolution for this week: Call Bert the Builder, and begin making plans to put in a generator at the cabin so that I will have electricity this spring.

If that gets done, I will call a well-digging company to get estimates on a shallow well for fresh water . . . .