I love this. Just love it. We're hiking one cold early September Sunday morning, up Pigeon Brook. I enjoy taking old-time FV'ers up Pigeon. Eight out of ten times these veterans have rarely or even never hiked along this gorgeous, little, digressive, sometimes steep and always, around the next bend, a little surprising in its turns.Such was true of Rick and Phyllis Kaskel. Been in and out of the valley since 1978 and yet had never walked more than a little bit up Pigeon.
It was such fun to be with them - and also Bill Abbott who joined us - that I just had to talk with Rick about his long association with our dialysis program, its meaning and impact on his otherwise straight-ahead ambitious professional medical career (he's a big-timer in pediatric nephrology nationally and internationally--in case you didn't know). That impact is huge, but let me have Rick say it for himself. Please listen by clicking here. If you don't know the history and rationale for our dialysis program, this recording is very much worth a listen.
Earlier I had something to say about Rick's visit during camp this summer.
On the way back we hiked back through Sequoia from above. It was quiet, empty, gorgeous. Just a few weeks earlier, in the heat of the late summer, the platform tents, the meetinghouse (a nicely decorated yurt), and the Sequoia barn (used as a showerhouse) were teeming with activity. The scene we saw: it was as if they had just left that morning. Everything was just as it was, only no counselors and campers.
