WINDHAM — Barry Bernard knows his grandfather would scoff at him calling his house on Pettingill Pond “a camp,” with its washing machine and wine fridge, just 15 miles from his home in Portland.

Getting to his grandfather’s camp in the North Woods required a 5-mile drive down a logging road, followed by an hourlong hike.

“But it’s the same kind of feeling,” Bernard said about going to his camp off Route 302. “You come up here, and you just kind of relax.”

There are other things that his and his grandfather’s camps — along with most of the ones you’d find throughout Maine — have in common: the binoculars, the fishing rods, the oil lamps, the never-ending projects.

Although camp “is more of an attitude than anything,” Bernard said, there are certain tangible objects that make camp feel like camp, some for their function, others for what they add to the ambiance and many because people just can’t bear to throw them away.

“Once things go to camp, it’s going to stay there,” Bernard said.

To come up with a list of the things you’re likely to find at any Maine camp, we talked to a handful of people with intimate knowledge of this Maine-specific form of lake life — not to be confused with sleeping in a tent or spending the summer teaching archery to kids.

While there are some obvious items you would find at any summer home, like life preservers and Adirondack chairs, we tried to narrow it down to the things that truly make a Maine camp.

1. Mismatched cookware and cutlery

Warped cooking pots. A cast-iron pan seasoned for generations. Forks, spoons and knives in patterns from across decades, handed down from primary homes when a new set was purchased.

“A variety of different cups,” added Catherine Cyr, associate curator at the Maine Maritime Museum, where her exhibit “Upta Camp” is on view through Oct. 19. “It’s not supposed to be pristine.”

Tim Cotton, a writer and retired Bangor police officer, took it a step further.

“Camp is a dumping ground,” he said, describing the set of blue ceramic dishes with cracks and chips at his Washington County camp as the type of thing “no one wanted to throw it out because it’s your grandmother’s.”

2. Tattered towels and sheets 

The same goes for the towels and sheets that are too worn to keep using at home.

“Instead of going to the dump, you bring it to camp,” said Cotton, whose new collection of essays, “Donut Holes for the Soul,” includes musings on camp life.

Kathleen Hackett, the writer for “The Maine House” and “The Maine House II,” noted the number of chenille bedspreads at the camps featured in the books — a photo of one showing frayed strings stretching down from the fringe.

3. Expired spices, condiments and canned food

When everyone who comes to camp brings their own jar of peanut butter, food items start to amass beyond what you can reasonably use before their expiration date.

“How many different types of mustard do you need?” said Bernard, who makes sure to clear out the shelves of the camp fridge at the end of summer in what he calls The Annual Cleansing of the Condiments.

Then there’s the stuff that supposedly never goes bad. At Bernard’s grandfather’s camp it was Vienna sausages, and he wasn’t a fan.

Decades from now, it’s in camps that we’ll probably still be able to find cans of B&M Baked Beans made in Portland, even through the factory closed in 2021.

“You sniff it,” said Cotton, like with soup that expired two years ago, but “you eat it anyway, because it’s camp soup.”

4. Random reading material

When Bernard was growing up, it was always comic books. In the outhouse, Cotton said, you’ll find the 30-year-old magazines.

Whether people bring books with them and leave them behind or pick them up at yard sales when they’re in need of something to read, the assortment found at camp is bound to be eclectic, if a bit confounding.

Cyr said you might pull a book from a shelf and find yourself thinking, “Why was someone reading ‘The History of Oklahoma’ in western Maine?”

5. A cribbage board and other games

It’s no wonder there was a surge of interest in board games during the pandemic, when people had little else to do. Kind of like at camp.

If there was an official Maine camp game, it would be cribbage, but more widely played board games are sure to have a presence, too — most likely with pieces missing.

In the checkers box, they’ll be replaced with bottle caps, Cotton said, and the board will have duct tape in the middle.

Or you might get up to camp and find “a puzzle mid-completion,” Hackett said.

It’s not unusual for a good game of cards to keep people up well past midnight, Cyr said. “These grandmas and grandpas who are in their 80s and 90s are staying up to bet quarters.”

6. Bad artwork

Hackett, more politely, called it “Sunday painters’ artwork.” Landscapes and local wildlife are frequent subject matter.

Think dogs playing poker, Cotton said, or paintings done by kids at the camp, still there even after those kids have already inherited the place.

7. Nature-themed knickknacks

Is a camp even a camp without a Big Mouth Billy Bass?

In Bernard’s boathouse, the singing fish is right by the sink, and the rule for his grandkids is that they have to wash their hands before they can push the button, which they’ve done so often the battery’s dead.

Analog replicas of animals are scattered throughout the grounds: a sign in the shape of a loon, a small stone bird on a windowsill, a metal lobster hanging at the top of the stairs, carved wooden bears in a frame.

8. Things from L.L.Bean

The iconic Boat and Tote bag is a given, Hackett said, but there’s a good chance of a braided rug being in there, too, and, in Maine, there’s a good chance it’s from L.L.Bean.

“Camp and L.L.Bean do come hand in hand,” said Ryan Eldridge of renovation show “Maine Cabin Masters.”

And if the wool blankets aren’t from Bean’s, they’re probably Pendleton, Cyr said.

9. Repurposed items

Maybe it’s an oil can that’s been empty for decades but now looks vintage and is basically decor, Bernard said.

Or an old milk can turned into the base of a table.

Add that to the sticks, driftwood, stones and shells that Hackett said constitute interior design at many a camp.

But the most creative repurposing we heard was from Bernard, whose father made a pontoon boat out of oil drums.

10. Notes on the door jamb

Eldridge said there’s always “an area where the heights of all the kids that have passed through the camp over the years has been recorded.”

Cyr said at her husband’s family camp on Worthley Pond in Peru, different pens or pencils were used for the markings, all labeled with initials.

Hackett said the doorframe is also where you’re likely to find important phone numbers. At Bernard’s place, it’s where they keep the instructions for closing up camp: shut the windows, douse the fire pit, turn off the water heater — which might come with its own note about kicking it to make it turn on, Cyr said.

11. A guest book

Always having people stopping by is a big part of camp life, Cyr said. That’s why you have to have plenty of seating, including “a wooden rocking chair that’s completely uncomfortable” and no one sits in unless it’s all that’s left, Cotton said.

Inviting people to stay over or use the place themselves is also important to a lot of camp owners, who are proud of their slice of paradise and want to share it. But in exchange, they’ll insist, you have to sign the guest book.

“Some of the sporting camps will mention interactions with wildlife, nursing something back to health,” Cyr said.

At Bernard’s grandfather’s camp, he said, “you had to write who was on the trip, what was the weather, what did you have to eat.”

People have started claiming weekends at his place in Windham for this summer, a schedule he keeps in his head.

“Anybody that wants to come up is more than welcome to come up,” Bernard said. “To us, it’s the more, the merrier.”