TOWNSHIP 8, RANGE 9, Maine — Ellen Libby had never heard of Libby Camps when she became, as she describes it, “love struck” with Allie and Elsie Libby’s youngest son, Matt.
She didn’t know about the sporting camp’s rich history in northern Maine. She had never heard the hunting and fishing stories. And she’d never been to Millinocket Lake — which, for the record, is nowhere near Millinocket.
But it didn’t take long after her first visit to camp for her to realize she was in a special place.
She doesn’t remember whether it was sunny or rainy. Or maybe the whitecaps were rolling in off the lake that day. But she remembers the feeling — and the words she shared with her future husband and business partner.
“I said to Matt, ‘I just love this,’” Ellen Libby recounts. “The wind can be howling. [It doesn’t matter.] And I still say that to him, ‘I just love this.’ I do.”
This year marks the 125th anniversary of Libby Camps, and a steady stream of guests will head deep into the woods to experience the magic for themselves. Matt P. Libby and Ellen no longer are the owners — son Matt J. and his wife, Jess, run the place now, the fifth generation of Libbys to do so.
Ellen Libby’s sentiments are genuine but not original. Just page through the guest register in the spacious main lodge, and you’ll see variations on the same theme.
Some guests mention the food. Others mention the fishing. But many, as Matt the elder would say, “get it.”
Yes, fishing takes place here. So does hunting. And eating — more on that later.
But the place exists, in large part, because of the beautiful wilderness around it and the natural gifts you may see just around the next corner.
“Getting it” means you accept the fact that sometimes the fish won’t bite, sometimes it’ll rain and, in the grand scheme, none of that matters.
“No place better,” a guest from Mahopac, New York, wrote in the register, back in 2012.
That, too, is “getting it.”
Spend a day or a week or a month — like the old-time guests used to do — and you likely will get it, too.
Not part of the plan
Ask any of the four Libbys — Matt P. and Ellen, Matt J. and Jess — and they didn’t set out to continue the family tradition.
Matt the elder said he changed his mind while attending the University of Maine in Orono. His son followed suit, in identical fashion. Each took a summer job that proved unsatisfying.
The women they’d marry — Ellen was an elementary education major, Jess a business major — didn’t think they were committing to a way of life when they first visited the camp.
But that’s how it all turned out.
Ellen and Matt P. bought out Matt’s mother during their senior year of college and began their initial season as owners one day after graduation.
“I might have thought, then, that this was kind of a lark,” Ellen Libby said. “There were no [teaching] jobs available, so [we said], ‘let’s do this.’ And ‘this’ turned into THIS.”
Nearly 40 years later, she and Matt P. still live just down the lake and handle 10 outpost camps Libby provides for guests.
Jess Libby — then Jess Corriveau — arrived at Libby Camps 13 years ago after her college friend, Matt J., told her his father was looking for help.
Even her future husband laughs at the scene on her first day. Jess still remembers the date her life began changing forever: May 20, 2002.
“Her dad brought her up and dropped her off and said, ‘I’ll see you in a couple of weeks,’” Matt J. Libby said with a laugh. “She said, ‘No. I’m staying here for a month and a half, until my first day off.’ He said, ‘Yeah, OK. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. You’ll be calling.’”
She never called.
Not long into that first summer, she realized the owner’s son — a casual friend at UMaine — was a pretty friendly guy.
“He was the only one my age,” Jess Libby said. “I was the only one doing dishes, and he would come in and help and we’d talk.”
It wasn’t until Matt’s sister visited the camp that Jess learned her co-worker wasn’t always so helpful.
“She [saw him doing dishes] and said, ‘Oh. He likes her,’” Jess Libby said.
And the whole time — almost up until they announced they’d be getting married — Matt P. and Ellen didn’t realize a romance was growing under their noses.
“We had no idea that they even liked each other,” Matt P. Libby said.
At first, Jess Libby said she was shy and didn’t even like to walk through the dining room. That made her job tough: She was supposed to be waiting tables when she wasn’t cleaning cabins.
“I came and worked [at] it and loved it,” she said. “And I loved the people. The people become your family, not just Matt and Ellen and the guides but the guests.”
Getting it, getting there
Libby Camps is not the easiest place to get to — many of our state’s special, wild places are like that. But rest assured, it used to be much, much more remote.
Today, adventure waits outside the cabin doors at the traditional Maine sporting camp that is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. For decades, merely getting to Libby Camps was an adventure in itself.
Back then — until the 1960s, in fact — there was no road to Millinocket Lake. Early guests — before Allie Libby began shuttling them by plane in the 1940s — rode a train to Aroostook County, took a horse-drawn buckboard wagon to the outpost town of Oxbow, where they hit the water.
“[Guides] had to pole up the river for two days,” Matt P. Libby, the 60-year-old former owner of Libby Camps, said.
His son chuckled while reading mid-1900s brochure for the camp aloud. “‘The trip is full of charm, attended by no hardships, through a country teeming with interests,’” he read. “No hardships. It was only a two-day trip upstream. But no hardships.”
Matt P. Libby said that grueling journey was the reason his dad, Allie, learned to fly and bought a Piper Cub J-3 float plane in the 1940s. All of a sudden, the camps were accessible. Or, at least, “more accessible.”
That’s not to say Allie Libby ever lost his adventurous spirit. When the Piper Cub was destroyed during a windstorm, he buried much of the plane on the Libby Camps grounds. The old Maine guide salvaged the parts he could to earn some money back.
“The floats we ended up taking to town,” Matt P. Libby said. “Remember, we didn’t have any road. So he paddled the floats, the struts, with everything on it he could sell. He paddled those all the way down through the rapids to town.”
Today, both Libby men own float planes they use to ferry guests to or from camp or to the outpost camps. Neither admits to having tried to paddle a float from Millinocket Lake to Oxbow — yet.
Matt P. Libby does say he sometimes poles canoes, though.
Like recently, when he slammed into a boulder and fell out of his boat while showing off for his daughter, Allie.
“Nobody said I was good at it,” he explained.
There have been a few hardships on the way to 125 years in business, however. Matt P. Libby said no generation has been immune, save perhaps the most recent.
“Every generation, we almost lost it,” Matt P. Libby said. “I think the best it’s been is with [Matt J. and Jess], but it’s a challenge for them. They’re both college-educated, they wanted to make it in the world [and they have to answer the question], ‘Is this how we wanted to make it?’”
Don’t forget the food
Nowadays, Jess Libby handles the cooking chores and delivers the kinds of meals Libby Camps guests have come to expect — and celebrate.
“Beautiful place — fantastic food,” a guest register entry from 2002 reads.
That’s the way it was. That’s the way it still is.
But Ellen Libby said good food wasn’t necessarily a part of the camp’s allure when she took over the cooking chores.
“I knew nothing, and I’d be the first one to admit it, because [Matt P.’s mom] Elsie would be the second one to admit it,” Ellen Libby said.
“And I could notarize that,” her husband pitched in, remembering the not-so-good old days.
Elsie Libby stuck around for two weeks after the new owners took over, then headed back to town to live.
That left Ellen with some pretty big shoes to fill.
“Matt’s brothers will talk about my breadmaking and that it was good for bowling balls or doorstops or something. But I do make a pretty good loaf of bread now. I would say that took years — and lots of practice,” Ellen Libby said. “And it took me a long time to make a pie that I didn’t want to throw at Matt.”
“I ducked a lot,” her husband agreed.
The presence and cooperation of strong couples has been a key to the Libby Camps success, Matt P. Libby said.
And the contributions of Ellen and Jess can’t be overestimated.
“The girls have kept us in business for years,” Matt P. Libby said. “We fail miserably, but they do good. They make a bad day of fishing good.”
When guests come to Libby Camps, they’re often stressed and are looking to relax. Matt J. Libby said that by the time he flies those guests by Mount Katahdin, he sees them start to relax.
And, more than anything, that’s what the Libby Camp experience is all about.
“[It’s] the relaxation … the being pampered,” Jess Libby said. “You don’t have to cook. You don’t have to clean. [They see] the friendliness of everyone. They really connect with the guides.”
And they may catch a fish. Or shoot a bird. Or enjoy a day on the snowmobile trails.
Or, they may not — and they’ll still have a great time.
If, that is, they truly “get it.”
