MaineCourse

Duck Walk

“Look outside!” Matt yelled.

Matt and Chris had finished mowing our lawn, and had not quite finished arguing about a party they were or were not going to, about dinner they would or would not have with us, when Chris’s cell phone rang. I don’t know why Matt answered it, but he did, and he was hollering from the porch. Susan looked though the kitchen window while Diane and I hurried out and looked up. Hot air balloons? Hawks? Ultra lights? Raining parts of a commercial airliner? I didn’t see a thing.

“What, where, Matt?” I yelled back.

“On the ground.”

And then we looked down. Padding towards us from the backyard near Mary Dill’s house were fourteen baby ducks.

I immediately assumed they came, parentless, from the wetlands behind
Bob and Joy’s house. After a quick call to Karen, Chris’s mom who works for Audubon, I called Joy to tell her we would be herding the flock back to their home, and hopefully to mom and dad duck.

Take the: photo tour

And the short movie:
Mp4 ( 3mb - won't play in older browsers so you may want to download it first).


Drop by in a day or so because this story is not quite finished.

Changing Course

This is short, but one of my favorite stories. It would have little impact if it were told by a Mr. Peepers kind of guy.

Noland’s size and deep voice gives weight to his stories. And when he talks he looks me dead in the eyes. He has often complained about “Mr. America,” the not quite husband of his wife’s cousin who wears “cheaters” (sunglasses) indoors. “I was on the road for years. If I can see the eyes, I can size a guy up in a few minutes.”

“ After the war, I hauled beef for Sullivan’s in Boston. Eight cows each cut into four parts, each piece weighing about two hundred fifty pounds. I’d drive them to Essem’s where they make ‘em into hot dogs and hamburgers. Since Essem’s was union and I wasn’t, I’d unload them without help. Those bastards wouldn’t lift a finger.”

Noland extended his right arm and then bent it, like on the Arm and Hammer box. “You put the leg right here in the crook and swing the beef up onto your shoulder.”

“One day I’m on route 114 driving back from Salem. I pass the new stadium being built in Lawrence. There was this crane with the name, Shaugnessey’s, written right across the boom. I looked up and thought, I lift more weight in a day than that goddamn things does in a week. I turned around, drove back to Sullivan’s, and gave my notice.”

Tidbits

Breaking camp, last day.

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Flo in her apartment listening to Peter Rodd describe how Emma was thrown from her mount during today's horse show.

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More photos from that fateful moving day. Out of the old and into the new - Concord Park

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Susan has been working hours and hours cleaning Flo's old apartment preparing it to be sold. Next Sunday Matthew and friends will spend the day rolling on fresh coats of paint. Here, she has transformed the old refrigerator into a new one.

Life's Lessons

Maybe he’s looking into the not too distant future, but today Noland talked about his friend Frank who died while Noland was visiting him in the hospital. We were sitting at his dining room table watching The Price Is Right, and a guy in uniform had just won “The Showcase” worth about twenty-five thousand dollars.

“Frank had emphysema and his breathing sounded like someone was squeezing his vocal cords. Loud and high pitched. The doc walked into his room with a needle this size.”

Noland held his forefingers about eight inches apart.

“And that was the end of him. My grandmother was the same.”

I somehow missed how he tied Frank to his grandmother, with “the same.” I may have been watching the winner who was hugging his new car and saluting the audience. After Noland’s mother died when he was a baby he was raised by his grandmother and a very cruel father.

“She suffered like Frank. One day she asked me for apple juice and ice cream. I went out to the nurses desk, repeated her request and came back with ice cream and juice. I gave her ten or twelve small spoonfuls of ice cream and enough apple juice to wet her lips. She smiled, closed her eyes and that was that.”

“That was that? Jesus, Nol, give me a warning. I didn’t know she was going to end up dead. From ice cream to, "That was that”?

“That’s life, I could take it.”

“I know that’s life and I know you could take it, but all of your stories end like that. The boom drops. Don’t you have any boring stories?”

He doesn’t. They all finish with someone dead, beat-up, or fired. They're short and they hit hard.

This one too, which I’ve been holding back because it’s Noland’s other side. Peter had already guessed there was more to Noland than met the blog’s eye.

“My son, Danny, was about sixteen when he asked me if he could have a motorcycle. He was with his buddy, John. I said, 'I’ve taken care of you all these years and I want you alive. You have an accident on a motorcycle and the party is over.’ He turned around and left. A few minutes go by and I was about to walk back in the house, and I see John laughing. I asked him what was funny and he pointed down the street. There was Danny on the back of his friend Jim’s motorcycle. I got in my Olds and chased them down. Cut them off. I got out of my car, opened the back door, picked Danny off the bike and threw him into the back seat.”

Noland uses his hands when he talks, and his motions, like his words, are short, economical. He moved his hands as if he throwing a bale of hay.

“I said to Jim, ‘If I ever see him on the back of your bike again, I’ll do the same to you.’ I drove Danny home and pushed him through the front door. I put the hassock up on the divan, took the pictures off the walls and cleared the rest of the room. I said, ‘You’re going to learn who runs this house.’ I punched him again and again. I knocked him down and then I picked him up and threw him against the wall. His head hit the wall and he slumped to the floor. I thought, I hope he doesn’t get up. He didn’t. Years later he told me he remembered that day. He said, ‘Dad, I couldn’t get up.’ I told him It was a good thing."

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Susan treated us to dinner last night at Daniela's Cantina, and in spite of the cold weather, we drove to Erickson's for dessert. Shinydome will appreciate this most - she had wintergreen chip in a cone. Yes, ice cream with foreign bodies.

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Starry Starry Night

The cabin porch was saved from destruction by a combination of luck and a skinny, but resilient limb that caught the crushing force of a falling tree . Adam and I spent two hours surgically removing it, section by section, and then finally swinging what was left, still clinging to its upright half, away from the roof. From that tree we crafted a bench on which to sit in front of the fire and enough firewood to reload the porch area for Ed’s next winter trip. Or our own next Grok Hill visit, whichever comes first.

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Yesterday at the lumberyard.

I walked in, picked up gate latches and hinges, and then shuffled to the desk to order the stock I needed to build a custom door in the back of an attached garage in Carlisle.




I was helped by Betty, who is small, probably in her forties, and has zero distinguishing features other than her voice. She sounds like Betty Boop -- high-pitched and childlike. Betty stopped me somewhere between my ordering plywood and primed pine to complain about this wet weather breeding mosquitoes. I told her I had been camping in New Hampshire, and indeed they were ferocious. To which she said, “Tell me something. I talked to my ophthalmologist, and he said it was the light and not my eyes. Can you really see more stars if you get away from city?”

I thought to myself, you can see more stars if you leave The Home, but I said, “Of course. The further from the city, the more stars. Try Montana.”

I left, walked to the yard, loaded my truck, and on the way out I stopped to talk to George (known as Georgia - why, I don’t know). Georgia is a gentle-hearted guy with nothing but distinguishing features - from the creases in his face deep enough to plant potatoes, to ears like airplane landing flaps. Georgia retired years ago, but couldn’t tolerate doing nothing, and he’s now back making sure the lumber on your truck matches what’s on your slip.

“Georgia, I won’t mention any names, but someone inside asked me if you can see more stars the further you get from the city. Can you imagine that?”

Georgia reached up and pulled the bill of his Red Sox hat away from his face, thought for a moment, and replied, “You know, at my house in Littleton, there are so many trees I can’t hardly see any. But if you go to the Walmart in Hudson, New Hampshire, the sky is covered with them.”

Grok Hill Journal - Last Entry

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Page Two

Photo Gallery

Breakfast

Matt and Hil frying the bacon.

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Items that need to be claimed:

Take a Hike for Humanity T-shirt
One pair of boxer shorts with footballs
An American Eagle T-shirt with paint stains
Faded yellow and blue swimming trunks
Net bag with insect repellent
Yellow flashlight
One pair of white socks


Full gallery of photos tomorrow.

Brew Pub

Dinner Sunday afternoon on our way home.
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I’ll add content later (and maybe Adam will too) when I have time to post more than a solitary photo. However, in short, if we reflect back to collective concerns about this trip, and read the comments on Fireworks; I have to say the voice of reason was right on. And why wouldn’t he be? He’s the closest in age to Matt and his friends. Here are his two comments: “Let them go have fun. They'll be fine without chaperones. This should probably be the least of your worries about your children” and “You old folks are too far removed from the issue. They'll be fine”

They were more than fine. Every parent should have the pleasure of taking this group somewhere like into the woods, or to a vacation house in New Hampshire, or on a weekend trip to Bermuda, or to the south of France, or wherever they want to go.

Camp Gilsum

Cort and Chris

Kathy, Cel, Cort and Chris

See, there is this tradition invented many years by my brother Peter. It requires boiling water, wash cloths, Dr. Bronners Pure Castile Soap and very willing participants.


More pics to come.

Chris Grosjean

Baseballl fans on a sunny Friday afternoon.
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Chris Grosjean in motion.
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New Digs

Flo's new front door.

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Inside her apartment.

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Celebrating Susan's arrival - ice cream at Erickson's.

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Daughterhood

Chris Rad

It is very strange being a parentless person.  I don’t think it stops being strange.  I’ve been one for almost 20 years now and there are still tugs here and there that surprise me.  Not the horrible gut wrenching abandonment tugs that they used to be, but tugs none-the-less. The strangest thing of all is that my husband has been in my life almost longer than my parents were.  Of all the holidays one reckons with when people disappear, I’ve always found the toughest to be Mother’s Day.  I remember when I wished it off the calendar, even when I became a mother.  To be sure it gets easier with time.  Still, it’s strange to not be somebody’s daughter on that particular, totally Hallmark oriented day.  Father’s Day doesn’t affect me quite as much.  It tugs, but I don’t miss my father in the same way as I miss my mother.  His death, for many reasons, brought as much relief as it did grief.   I think of him most during baseball season.  I see him in my daughter’s eyes...we all have the same shape and color eyes.  I have his sense of humor, which was his biggest strength.  My father had three daughters and at some point we were all Daddy’s little girl ‘come caretakers.  But I came across this poem and it touched me so much I thought of him like I haven’t thought of him in years.  I share this with all daughters who were lucky enough at some time to have been, however briefly, a Daddy’s girl.  And for those who grew up to love baseball because of it.

First Lesson
-Philip Booth, from Lifelines

Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
gently, and I will hold you.  Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls.  A dead-man’s-float
is face down.  You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea.  Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

This and That

Noland described the ship ( he called it a wagon) he was on and I found this photo. Given the wonders of the internet, I assumed I'd find his ship's roster, but haven't yet.

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Specifications:
Displacement 6,873 t.(lt) 14,837 t.(fl)
Length 455'
Beam 62'
Speed 19 kts.
Complement 56 Officers 480 Enlisted
Troop Accommodations 86 Officers 1,475 Enlisted
Cargo Capacity 150,000 cu. ft, 2,900 tons
Boats 2 LCM, 12 LCVP, 3 LCPU
Armament 1 5"/38 dual-purpose gun mount, 4 twin 40mm gun mounts, 10 single 20mm gun mounts
Propulsion 1 Westinghouse geared turbine, 2 Combustion Engineering header-type boilers, 1 propeller, Design shaft horsepower 8,500

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Today is moving day. Flo’s new home will in Concord Park, an assisted living complex in West Concord. Susan, with sewing machine and more energy than all of us, is in her car speeding northeast to help with sundry details like cleaning and selling Flo’s condo.

The camping group is now at twelve teens, three cars, and two adults. Today, I’ll call the Littels and the Prestons (two of the nearby landowners) and tell them what to expect, which is maybe three hours of play at Spoon’s Pond. The remainder of our camping trip will be at Ed’s place, isolated from all but Adam and me. Karen, Chris’s mom, after spending eighteen hours chaperoning an all night cancer walk fund raiser with most of these same students, has been totally converted. She thinks it’ll be “So much fun.” My fear now, as late as it is in the spring, it’ll be so much liquid refreshment for sucking insects.

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The Dance

My Mother would always put
fresh flowers
on my desk.
The tired mornings,
the literary struggles,
all would be encouraged
by the tulips,
lilies,
orchids,
sunflowers,
that sat in a pool of liquidly love,
which my Mother placed
so lovingly,
by my side.

To her,
it was an act of Motherhood.
To me,
it was an act of divinity,
a demonstration,
that growth was all around.

Written by a friend’s eleven year old daughter.

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Chris's daughter, Caroline, from the back.

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Thanks for the flower comment, Kathy.

Fan Club

“Come on dooooowwnn!”

“Noland, we missed Bob yesterday. Two days in a row would have been too much.”

At eleven every morning, Noland watches The Price is Right and I listen, but it feels as if we both watch. I’ve been working in his condo for two weeks and we have our routine. Later in the day we’ll “watch” Dr Phil, which is much harder to listen to without peeking at the sobbing, soap opera characters. “Jack, are you ready to make a serious commitment to Amy ? Are you ready to give up your affairs?” Dr. Phil asked. “I’m seventy-five percent ready Phil,” Jack replied in a southern drawl.

“Noland, did he just say, seventy-five percent? Amy won’t settle for seventy-five, she wants a hundred. What an idiot.”

“What’s the next item up for bid”? Bob Barker’s voice has changed little in all those years. He has, but not his voice.

“Bob the Barker, that’s my man,” Noland replied.

Loretta, Noland’s wife, is on the condominium board and I’ve known her for two years. She hired me to maintain the outside of their nine buildings. And, it took those two years before Noland, as suspicious a man as you’ll ever meet (reminds me of my sister), told Loretta, “Get Mike in here and see if he wants to remodel the kitchen.” The kitchen was the beginning, but they also wanted the foyer and dining room floors tiled, a new bathroom, and white, chair rail height wainscoting in all three rooms.

“And your bid is...?” Bob’s voice is one of many familiar, comfortable sounds in their condo. When Bob is not hollering in the background we listen to a local radio station that plays the love songs of Nat King Cole, Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, the list goes on. Lots of Moonriver and I left My Heart In San Francisco . Noland frequently sings along. He carries a tune not much better than I, and when he’s singing alone in his chair, about to fall asleep with his head on his chest, I see the man whose life is mostly behind him.

I know much about that life because the story teller follows me around his condo. When I tiled his entryway, he sat down three feet from me, cane in hand, and told WWII stories. Many. I’ve also heard about his two sons, his three wives, his jobs, his abusive father, his mother who died when he was a year and half, his brother Fred, married to the “witch,” his grandparents, and many tales of Loretta’s family. The stories continue until I leave at five.

As an insurance salesman, and a successful one (“I thought if I could sell a policy a week, I could make a living, but I sold one a day”), he has perfected a riveting style. Elmore Leonard admonishes in his rules of writing “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Noland speaks as Leonard writes - in driving, declarative sentences. Reminds me of a bloody hamburger fresh off the grill with no ketchup or mustard. “When we got to Okinawa the bodies of our soldiers were so thick, we couldn’t climb over them. Not until the bulldozers plowed them into burning piles were we able to land more men.” I’m a faithful NPR listener, but with Noland trailing me with his chair, I leave my pocket radio in my truck.

When I tiled the dining room floor, he talked to me from his recliner. When it was time to hang the wall cabinets in the kitchen, he walked to the dining room table, flipped one chair so it was facing me, not the table, and sat down as a judge might before a defendant. I value his stories and he loves teling them, but I know he’s also watching every level mark, every nail nailed, every tile set, and every glop of grout forced into those tile joints.

I labored two days installing the wall cabinets, which were full height, stopping an inch from the ceiling. I was now finally ready to nail up the crown molding. With Bob Barker, Bing Crosby and Noland as entertainment, my work had progressed tidily in stages. I finished the foyer before his brother Fred’s visit, the dining room floor before Easter, the kitchen floor before Loretta’s aunt came for Sunday dinner, and now the upper cabinets were in place in time for the arrival of Loretta’s cousin and her “deadbeat’ husband. I’d chopped the work into pieces to accomodate Noland’s health problems. Fifty-one years of smoking and diabetes has left him sometimes gasping, and mostly house bound.

Climbing onto my short step stool, nail gun in hand, Noland began telling me about his ten days in the brig for stealing Hershey Bars. He was a gunner’s mate on an amphibious assault ship which carried those landing craft depicted in movies like Saving Private Ryan.I think he said his carried ten.

“The galley served an ice cream sized scoop of rice with crumbled crackers they called sauce.” Noland is a big man, maybe three hundred pounds and he had difficulty making a small circle with his index fingers and thumbs to show how insignificant the portion was. “I was always hungry and one day I’m lying in my bunk, when I look over at the empty bed next to mine and I see a box of Hershey Bars. Nickel bars. I climbed over and began filling my pockets, and mind you, I have five thousand dollars in a money belt wrapped around my waist. A lieutenant walked in and caught me. Hauled me down before the captain of the ship. Gave me ten days in the brig with food and water. The lieutenant wanted to send me to Leavenworth.”

“For stealing chocolate bars?”

“You know what food and water means? For every meal you get water and two slices of bread. Every third day they give you one regular meal, and then back to bread and water. When the ship passes the 180th meridian, they unlock our cell doors. Remember, we were sailing to Iwo Jima, and if we took a fish (torpedo), there would be nobody running down to let us out of the brig.”

“Okay, Noland, you have to quit distracting me for a minute. Some of this work actually requires thought. I’d say fire away with boring stories but you don’t have any.”

I turned back to my crown molding. For the short run of cabinets over the stove, the piece I cut fit perfectly. I would finish this stage today. I held my nail gun in place and fired. Bang, then Fsssssssssst the sound of air leaking around a nail puncture in a bike tire. I knew what I had done. The first nail driven from my gun went through the mahogany hue of the crown molding, through the sand textured white ceiling and through the coppery colored, cold water feed to the upstairs bathroom. That copper pipe is the same diameter as a dime, and I hit it dead center. The sound, Fsssssssst, was soon accompanied by water dripping through the cabinet top.

I ran to the basement to shut off the water, but as I climbed the steps I moaned, the water lines couldn’t be over THERE, with the lone cabinet easily removed from the wall. It had to be HERE, above the microwave with the outlet and the metal duct work, and screwed so perfectly to the other cabinet that contained Noland’s medicines. It took three hours to put these up, it would take about that much time to get back to the moment before I pulled the trigger.

“Noland, I screwed up.” I explained why I’d jumped off my ladder and down the basement stairs. “I hate to say it, but it’ll take me a while to repair that leaking pipe.”

“You do whatever you have to do.”

I cut the ceiling open and peered in over the top of the cabinets. There was the copper pipe, the nail hole and what looked like enough space to work in without removing the microwave and the oak cabinets. It would be risky using my torch in such a small, confined area, and Noland, sitting on his chair, advised aganist it. However, I forged ahead and had the pipe repaired before I went home for lunch. I came back rested and ready to finish the crown molding. I walked past the TV and caught the day’s sob story - a father unloved by his foul-mouthed teenage daugthers and a wife who takes their side. Dr. Phil: “Jeremy, don’t throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for. You’ve got three beautiful daughters who aren’t drinkin’ and drugin’ and a wife who loves you.”

“Yeah, Jeremy, you fool,” I said loud enough for Noland to hear. “They ain’t drinkin’ and they ain’t drugin’, they’re just sassin’ you. Be a man, stay home.”

And there I sat with my buddy Noland, one more member of his audience.

Tulip

I picked this tulip from a busy area next to the garage. Normally the three flowers I planted get trampled before they have a chance to bloom. I wasn’t able to reproduce it in these photos, but it has a perfect shape, and according to Diane, smells like a lemon.




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Ancestors

Photos of relatives yet to be identified sent to me by Susan of Torroemore. .

Too High

Siding Dwight Schirmer's (of the infamous pokergroup) house. Dwight is utterly fearless of heights. I usually work with people far more timid than I of walking on narrow planks at back breaking heights, but not Dwight. Set it up, and out he goes.

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Stucco is falling off the chimneys at Applewood, and instead of re-stuccoing, they’ve been framing them in with plywood and adding a copper cap to keep the rain at bay. This is my second, and at about forty feet off the ground, hopefully my last. My staging is set on the deck Mark Queijo and I worked on.

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Dan and Jim

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War planners

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Alice Hanway O'Connell

Alice Hanway O'Connell, my mother's grandmother. Born 1861 and died in about 1945.

Generation Gap

The back of Robby's cell phone fell off and he taped it back on. How many adults could still use it?

More skateboarding pics taken by Chris Grosjean and Robby Nadler.

Tiger Hunt

Shinydome

Thursday morning Barb Westman stopped by on her way to the Humane Society to show us a kitten that had shown up on her doorstep. Seems that someone who didn't want it had abandoned it nearby. This happens occasionally (both cats and dogs). It was a cute little guy, probably about six weeks old, but she already had two cats and a dog and did not want to increase her "zoo".

As you may know, I put grape jelly as well as sugar water feeders on our deck to attract and feed the Orioles, but at night I bring them in so as not to attract raccoons. Thursday night about 9:30. I went out on the deck to bring them in when I heard "meowing" and other rustling sounds down below. When I looked over the railing I saw several more kittens. I went in, got a flashlight, and went down to investigate. What a surprise. There were at least a half dozen little kittens running all over. I went back inside and called Barb and asked her to come over and help me corral the little guys. (I knew it would be a mistake to involve Susan. She loves baby animals especially kittens, but she hates cats. She would want to keep them.)

Barb came over and for the next hour and a half we chased the kittens around the house, under the front door "bridge", up and down the hill, and in the woods trying to catch them. It was almost impossible. We had trouble seeing them in the dark and the beam of a flashlight would scare them into running away to get away from it. We caught three which she took to her boathouse where she fed them. Meanwhile I continued to hunt for the others. I got one more and then learned that the mother cat was also present and was trying to round up her family.

Barb returned with some cat food and the idea that we might have better success tempting them with food rather than chasing them with flashlights. (She had learned how hungry the first three captured kittens were.) So we set up some food on paper plates on the pavers in front of the garage and waited. Before long we had two more kittens and the mother cat in custody. We took them to the boathouse to join the others. We now had the mother and her six babies in a safe place for the night. They obviously had been in the woods for a couple of days. They were very hungry and ate like pigs. The kittens were very thin but seemed in good shape.

Friday morning, I packed them all in the big dog kennel that belonged to Monaghan and took them to the Humane Society facility in Buffalo to join the seventh kitten that was already there.

It is hard to imagine that someone could be so cruel leaving baby kittens in the woods, but when you see the headlines and pictures of the prisoners tortured by our soldiers in Iraq, you realize that cruelty exists everywhere - even at Lake Sylvia.

Emmet Leroy O'Connell

Father of Helen Virgina and husband of Helen Josephine O'Connell.

Gritty McDuffs

This is it for me, the last camping story.

Our first stop after leaving Acton is always Portland, Maine. Besides being a town with good food, it breaks up the long drive. Two hours to Portland, three hours to Greenville, an hour or so to our campsite.

As we drove along the waterfront, Adam and I bantered briefly about where to eat. Portland is a college town, and restaurants abound, with one on every corner, and some streets having nothing but. I thought we should stay away from the micro brews, not because the food that accompanies their copper-kettle-created creations isn’t good, but because only two of us were over sixteen.

We circled the crowded streets before we gave up our search for a cheap meter, and pulled into a parking garage. Matt spied the going rate - one dollar for the first two hours. We laughed. A fee we could afford. We parked, walked out of the garage, and Robby, glancing across the street, said “How can we not eat at a place called Gritty McDuffs?”



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Robby has always reminded me of Travis. They are both understated, smart, and have a sense of humor that appeals to maybe six people in the country. Fortunately, Diane and I are two of those six. I remember Travis and I were looking for lunch one day, and though he wasn’t wild about sushi, we had to stop when he saw the name of the restaurant - Fugakyu.

And that was it, no debates, no hesitation, we walked into Gritty’s, a micro brew, and sat down at a picnic-style table next to one with all women.

I got a quick glimpse before I sat, back to the gigglers, and assumed college age.

Trying to get a conversation going, and wanting to acknowledge how fond I was of the sounds that accompany Matt’s collective group, I said “Those people sound like your friends.”

“What, my friends sound like a bunch of drunk thirty year olds?”

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Guess what? Ice out on Moosehead lake - May 1st.

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The Storm

Part Three by Adam Kibbe

Den Mothers

Instant incandescence. Backlighting tent fabric, even the seams almost too bright to see. One Mississippi, two Mississippi……….. 5 was the shortest I counted, thankfully, but the ensuing thunder seemed to drive in the insubstantial nylon with its forceful, rumbling roar of sheer violence, as if it were right outside. Long wait for the next flash, but it always came. If one were cowering under one’s sleeping bag with eyes screwed tightly shut, maybe the lightning would’ve had the glow of a bug light Michael describes. I wouldn’t know -- beside him in the intervals of dark, I lay awake with eyes wide open, almost unblinking, awaiting the next. Atomic explosions, is what occurred to me.

My mind flirted with the status of the boys out on the point, as I lay still, waiting to count. There was no sleeping through that. I figured Mike was awake – had to be. But much as I liked the idea of all-night chats in the darkness, the few time we shared tents, he seemed pretty committed to sleep, and it’s never happened. I respect his space and quiet, and knowing I probably wouldn’t sleep much anyway, I usually on these trips will let him crawl in first and myself hang out by the fire enough time to give him a head start on slumber before I crawl in after him. Aware that I snore, I wouldn’t dream of dreaming until I hear his own, softer snores.

The boys had to be terrified -- adolescent insouciance must’ve long since evaporated in the face of that fury, I imagined (though I hadn’t even thought of how much more exposed they were out on the point, as we ourselves were mostly untroubled by wind where we were). I could just imagine Robby facing down the storm, machete in hand, Matt and Daryl’s pellet guns trained on the ceiling.

Earlier that night, when I’d first noticed the flashes, but before the rumbles started sounding impressive, I’d gone outside to get a better look -- I love thunderstorms. Even when it seems they might at any instant kill me. I can be afraid, when it gets that close, but it still feels like a truth about our existence is being discussed, and I want to bear witness. And it’s not about our human insignificance – that’s too insignificant for such a dialogue. More, it’s just that the processes that have shaped our planet -- indeed, the universe – operate on scales so vast as to be inaccessible until these modicums of power, mere hints of the scope, offer glimpses of the ever vaster powers of which they are but ripples. Besides, it’s beautiful.

I’d gone out in my socks, partially to rescue anything that might need rescuing, as it was occasionally raining. This included my camera, left in presumed shelter on the picnic table; shelter I no longer trusted as the storm picked up momentum. It also turned out to include Michael’s camera, left for some reason on the ground just outside the vestibule of our tent. Within seconds, though, my feet were soaked, even though I’d quickly ducked under the tarp. So I threw two plate holders down on the ground and stood on those to watch the show.

Across Spencer Bay, the lightning was periodically backlighting the distant hills. Wide, sweeping glows of light would cover much of the horizon, followed many, many seconds later by muffled, almost subsonic grumbles. And they also silhouetted what from my vantage appeared as one very small, isolated tent. But it looked to be in good shape, and I gave it no more thought than wondering after the mental states of its occupants. After awhile the cold plates and chill breeze drove me back to our own tent, where I sought sleep, assuming (surprisingly correctly) that my socks would dry on my feet.

Why had we not examined more the job the boys had done of situating the tent on the point? We saw them carry it out there fully assembled, like a six-legged mobile home, and it wouldn’t have taken Sherlock Holmes (or even Watson) to deduce they had not adequately secured the fly with cords & stakes, much less the tent itself (the latter a step I often skip myself). Partly it is that they exude such confidence in themselves. Indeed, their fire out on the point was a raging bonfire, while the more needed and purposeful one lamely guttering within the partial shelter of our tarped base camp had never hit its own stride. You’d think we were by mistake trying to burn a gas fire, concrete fake log insert for all the enthusiasm our fire seemed for being a fire. Much smoke, no heat, and without constant and vigorous fanning and blowing, no flame. The boys had just gotten it done.

So it wasn’t mere complacency. And the false security of truck and tarps let us drift a bit, knowing that alternatives were near at hand. But the question still bears pondering. Post facto, we’d reasoned (rationalized?) that some lessons are only learned through doing or not doing oneself. Had we cautioned them against camping on the point, in the calm of the first night, we would’ve seemed merely feeble old farts, our “advice” but the timidness of age. And had we offered tips on proper tentcraft, we’d have been met with protestations to not treat them like kids. Or so we assumed. Even after the collapse of their tent, when they re-established “home” the next day, we just watched to see what they would do. (This is, I might add, after Mike and I had re-erected it, after recovering it and laying it and all their gear out to dry while they sought in naps the sleep they’d failed to find the night before).

He’d have to say, but I think that besides just attempting to share the locale and approximate experience of our yearly camping ritual -- something his son only knows intellectually -- Mike also hoped to teach, if only indirectly, some of the generous, cooperative interactions of the adult group. I know I did.

Mostly we were all together. The boys only disappeared to be just by themselves a few times each day. But we were not necessarily always interacting. And they contributed mightily to setting up camp and hacking apart firewood. But their domestic habits were otherwise nonexistent -- Pepsi bottles with three sips in them left scattered everywhere one looked, dishes from meals abandoned, random gear four sheets to the wind. Lecturing and cajoling, though, were not personas Mike or I wanted to adopt, so we left things until we ourselves could no longer bear the chaos, and cleaned up.

The boys handled their allotted meal responsibilities with aplomb (except for dishes) and were attentive on our daily treks (okay, drives). No complaints. But we did feel a bit like den mothers, something on which we actually commented as the two of us sat about the table one evening (probably cleaning up).

And den mothers don’t teach tentcraft, or double-check tent rigging. Den mothers don’t exude backwoods lore and lead memorable expeditions. We played barely passable Frisbee, went on walks, chauffeured bumper-riding youth about logging roads, and shopped. Perhaps had the canoeing trip model prevailed, we might have been other than den mothers, and that might have altered something. What, exactly, I’m not sure. It was an odd trip. Good, but not, perhaps, what we set out to share with them.

None of this coursed through my brain as I lay in the dark counting down to thunder. I should have been thinking about the tent’s condition, and thus that of the boys inside. Instead, I was projecting/empathizing, assuming they were as snug as I was, with only a few milligrams of adrenaline difference in appreciation of the storm. I also assumed Michael was asleep, and was equally wrong on that count, too. And outside, the storm assumed nothing. FLASH!!! One denmother, two denmothers, three…………………




The working fire, before the storm.


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The Storm

Chapter Two by Michael Miller

No Guardian Angel

Adam listened to the thunder for two hours before the rumble shook me out of my slumber. I didn’t tell him I was awake, I never do. Sleep on the ground is precious and sometimes rare, and all I wanted was to go back. I feared that Adam, a notorious non-sleeper in the wild, might be looking for company. But I was more concerned about Matt, Daryl and Robby. I thought I had anticipated every possible disaster, from pellet wounds to thin ice, but thunderstorms? We never have them in the fall and this one scared me. One thousand and one, one thousand and two, I began counting, not knowing that beside me, Adam was doing the same. We were both hoping the storm was blowing out, not in.

Inside our flimsy walls, the lightning flashes were brilliant and yellow, as though someone were flipping a bug light on and off. I worried about the boys in their tent on the treeless point overlooking Moosehead Lake. They were the highest thing around, heck, they were the only thing around. A blue tent with a metal frame.

Groggy, and disoriented, I couldn’t decide if they were in danger. Our tent would flash yellow and I’d think, of course they are! A month ago I read about Boy Scouts hit by lightning on a mountain. After the following thunder clap, I’d think, chill! In southern Indiana, my father and I would leave our house to be closer to those storms. Often lightning hit the metal rod on the roof, and once I saw ball lightning shoot from the family room fireplace. Another flash, and I’d think - but men are much more likely to die from lightning strikes than women, because they fish and play golf. It’s the metal in their hands. Jumbled, disparate thoughts prevented me from getting my rational mind around the problem. So I fell asleep.

I woke awake again to more thunder, but to a whiter, steadier light - Daryl’s flashlight

I unzipped the sleeping bag, and in my underwear I crawled out of the tent to see Daryl, his dark hair wet, fumbling with the door to my truck.

“Hey,” Daryl said.

“What happened?”

I was happy to see at least one boy back; I assumed the other two were still alive.

“The wind was awful. It flattened the tent on my side and I got soaked. I already changed my clothes. Matt wanted to me to stay, maybe to hold the tent up. I think he’s angry I left.”

Daryl opened the passenger door as thunder pealed overhead.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m sleeping in the truck.”

“Without a sleeping bag?”

“Mine is soaking wet; I’ll be all right.”

“I have another bag. I use it to sleep on. I’ll get it for you.” At two thirty in the morning, I was happy to construct any kind of sentences, even short ones.

I crawled back into my tent for the extra bag, expecting to see Adam sitting up, ready for a night’s dialogue on the physics of thunderstorms, but he hadn’t moved. Jazzed, I wouldn’t have minded the company. I crawled back out into the rain, handed the bag to Daryl who had reclined the seat as far back as it would go. As he snuggled into the bag, I looked out to the point, and sure enough with each lightning flash, I could see the outline of the tent.

I know, I should have walked down and brought Matt and Robby back, but instead, I convinced myself the storm was abating and sneaked back into my tent, and again fell asleep. This time, it wasn’t light or thunder that awakened me, but the sound of voices.

I looked at Adam, nothing, checked the time - 4 AM - and again crawled through the door of our tent. Matt was pulling the tailgate down , and Robby stood beside him.

“I’m glad to see you off the point.”

“You wouldn’t believe the wind.” Robby exclaimed.

“Dad, I woke up and looked for the door. It was over my head!”

Now, there is an image. The wind trying to roll the boys out onto the lake. Adam and I had pitched our tent next to a stand of trees, and we felt the rain, heard the thunder, but were mostly shielded from the wind. Exposed on the point, the blue tent fought the wind and lost.

“The tent is flat on the ground with our stuff in it. We put rocks on it to hold it there.” They dropped the tailgate of the truck and with dry bags, climbed inside. The truck bed is short and the floor is ribbed. With their knees pulled to their chests and no pads underneath, they couldn’t be comfortable, but I was relieved they were inside and safe. I closed the tailgate, snapped the window shut and for the last time slipped into my own bag.




The morning after.

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The remains of the day. Sorting through soggy bags, pads, etc.
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The Storm

Chapter One by Adam Kibbe

The Last Word

The two men stood erect in a civilian approximation of the military “at ease”, the tension most apparent in the set of their faces about their eyes, and in the drawn lines of their lips. Their handcuffed wrists dangled before them, their fingertips resting on the table, a much-needed third point of support. All senses save direct sight were focused on the figure before them – their eyes stared forward, blankly, into the recent past that had brought them here.

The judge looked down on the two figures with an expression usually reserved for material found unexpectedly on the bottom of one’s shoes. He’d held his disdainful gaze on them for long moments now, since the closing statements and resultant hubbub had ceased to echo in the now hushed room. When he spoke, he did not turn his attention to the person he addressed, but continued to pin the two men in place with his piercing glare. “Madam foreman, has the jury reached their verdict?”

Rising from her chair, the foreman glanced down, quite unnecessarily, at the paper in her hands. Despite the voir dire efforts of the lawyer for the two men, a freak statistical anomaly had generated a jury of twelve women and two men, and random chance had relegated the two men to the positions of alternates. If this were a hardship, they did not show it – the jury had only deliberated long enough for appearances, to fend off any appeals for a mistrial, so the alternates’ equally anomalous irrelevancy had not been theirs to bear for long. Besides, as they would now find out, they would not have sullied the unanimity. Theirs, and the eyes of the other 11 impaneled mothers, swung up to lock on the standing figure of the foreman, finally leaving the two men to stand now fully alone, even their lawyer absent, having been expelled after his closing argument, for the fracas ensuing after he, too, essentially made the prosecution’s case.

“On the charge of reckless endangerment of minors entrusted into their supervision, how do you find?” intoned the judge, the question mark all but unvoiced.

“Guilty!” came back the reply, with none of the dramatic pause of TV courtrooms. The word came out unrushed, but still with an undisguised enthusiasm.

“And on the charge of failing to come adequately to the aid of persons in need, in times of severe natural disaster, how do you find?”

“Damn guilty!” blurted the foreman, now appearing to be caught up in the release of the anger that had been (mostly) held in check throughout.

The judge swiveled to give her a warning, but only the admonishing tilt of his head and the formality of his words connoted censure. Above the rims of his glasses, dangling at the end of his nose, the twinkle in his eyes wordlessly communicated his approval.

“And on the charge of being too irresponsible to let live, how say you?”

“Oh yeah……..” she breathed. “Way guilty there, too!” “Your honor,” she hastened to add.


To be continued ...........





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May Day

I told Chris I would take credit for these inspired photographs, but after reading the last few comments, I’ve decided discretion is the better part of plagiarism. The extreme close-ups of Matt and friends were taken by Matt, holding the camera at arm’s length, but after that, I think it’s only obvious who wasn’t the photographer. Although I do know Chris and Robby worked the action shots. Also, Chris is responsible for most of the image titles.

Campers

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Spring

Chris, Courtney and other would be campers in the background.


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