For the past three years, Alex Hooper has looked forward to his yearly 10-day visit to Pine Tree Camp. For the past two years, the blond-headed 10-year-old has arrived at North Pond in Rome as a celebrity of sorts: The Searsport youth has twice earned more money than any of his peers during the annual Paddle for Pine Tree Camp.

And this summer, he proved that the lessons he learns at this special place in the Maine woods matter to him.

“He won top prize as the top fund-raiser and he wouldn’t take the prize,” says Pine Tree Camp Director Harvey Chesley. “He said we had to do something for camp.”

Chesley told the perpetually smiling Hooper to think about his decision. Hooper came to Rome with a plan: An ice cream social should be scheduled for all 90 of the children with disabilities who came to this week’s session … and the counselors could come, too.

Alex single-handedly raised $1,800 for the camp he loves. His team, The Amphibians, raised $3,800. And on one hot evening this week, gallons of melting ice cream will run down the chins of smiling campers, thanks to their friend, Alex.

That’s the way it is here. And that’s the way it’s always been, ever since the camp opened 60 years ago.

“Camp is for the campers” is rule No. 1 on the camp’s top 10 list, Chesley points out, and making sure that rule is followed isn’t too hard.

All you have to do is follow the lead of a 10-year-old boy who spends most of his time in a wheelchair … or of any of the other campers who look forward to their yearly visit for the other 11 months and 20 days of the year.

“It’s not the highlight of their summer,” Chesley says. “It’s the highlight of their year. It’s what the kids live for all year long.”

There are many reasons for that attitude. Some are complex. Others are simple. Here, the campers have fun. Here, they’re the top priority.

And here, they fit in, in ways society often doesn’t allow.

“This is a place where, regardless of their disability, they can come and they’re normal,” says Erin Rice, the Pine Tree Society’s communications director. “They’re not stared at. They’re just normal kids doing normal things. And that’s something that I hear a lot from the older kids. When they’re here, they’re just typical, but the world around them doesn’t always treat them that way.”

Over on the beach, Rice’s words ring true. Parked under a tree are several empty wheelchairs.

The owners of those chairs are out on the water … in kayaks … having fun.

“[The adaptive kayaking program] gives them another means of independence, another mode of transportation,” Chesley says. “They get out on the water and a lot of these folks can beat you and I up and down the lake, they’re that good at it.”

Swimming and archery are two of Hooper’s favorite activities, though he admits that everything about the Pine Tree Camp is pretty cool.

Catherine Jalbert, 18, who has been coming to camp since she was 8, echoes that sentiment.

“The friends, the people,” she says softly. “I like pretty much everything here.”

Jalbert, whose spina bifida dictates that she spend most of her time in a wheelchair, has developed a bit more outdoor experience over the past few years. She has taken Brewer High’s outdoor education class and taken paddling and hiking trips with the group.

Others aren’t so experienced … until they come here.

“I was talking to a mother the other day who is staying with her daughter,” Rice says. “When the daughter was 8 she and her husband were talking and they realized that she had never touched a tree before.”

The outdoor world, so familiar to so many children, was completely foreign to the little girl.

Now she attends Pine Tree Camp. She knows what a tree feels like … and much more.

Eighty camp staffers make sure that campers have the experience of a lifetime every summer. And they make sure that for the rest of the year, those campers are dreaming about their next Pine Tree Camp visit.

That makes everything worthwhile for people like Chesley, who steadfastly honor the camp’s legacy of never turning away a camper, even if they can’t afford the $1,400 tuition.

“I look forward [to getting out of bed in the] morning, because you see the smiling faces, you see the kids that are ready to go out and have some fun,” Chesley says. “They’re excited to go out and see what the day’s going to hold for them.”

It might be an hour of fishing, or swimming, or paddling. Or it might even be an ice cream social.

“If the campers have an activity or something that they want to do and we can make it possible, then we’re gonna find a way to do it,” Chesley says.

And that’s the kind of attitude that Alex Hooper and his fellow campers can appreciate … and emulate.

Hampden youth lands big fish

Last fall I told you about young sharpshooter Chris Francis of Hampden, who bagged his first career deer – a 192-pound 7-pointer – after seeing nothing but wild turkeys for most of deer season.

Earlier this week I heard from Chris again, and he had another tale to tell.

This time, the 12-year-old was eager to talk about fish. And on a recent trip to Alaska, he ended up landing one (with help) that was even bigger than the deer he shot last November.

Francis, who will be a seventh-grader in the fall, said he and his father Ron were staying at a resort in Seward, Alaska, and fished about an hour out of Resurrection Bay. On the first morning, as the captain began to give anglers instructions, a fish took the cut mackerel he let sink to the bottom.

The captain handed the rod to Francis, who began trying to reel in the monstrous fish.

“After about 10 minutes of trying to reel it up, I couldn’t do it,” he said. “My back starting hurting a lot.”

The boat’s crew pitched in and hand-lined the fish toward the boat.

“The captain had a deck hand pull it in a foot at a time,” he said. “It took all three of them to pull it up out of the water.”

And when they did, everyone seemed impressed.

“You could sit a basketball right down in its mouth,” Francis said. “They said, ‘Pretty nice fish you’ve got there.'”

After arriving back at the dock, Francis found out how “nice” his fish was: The halibut measured 74 inches long and weighed 228 pounds. It was caught on 80-pound test line.

Francis said the largest fish he’d ever caught before the halibut had likely been an 18-inch bass.

“Usually the average is about 20 pounds, and 50 pounds is considered a big halibut,” said Francis, who admitted to doing a bit of research before he and his dad headed out on the boat.

The Alaska record is a 459-pounder landed on 130-pound test line in 1996.

While well short of that, Francis’ halibut was still impressive. And when he and his dad headed ashore to filet the fish at the dockside fish houses that are provided, they found they had a bit of a problem.

“It was so big you couldn’t take it into the fish house,” he said. “The counters weren’t big enough.”

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.