Last spring I taught my usual seminar at Penn - "Kelly Writers House Fellows" seminar. Twenty-two or so of the best and most creative Penn students take the course, which meets at the Writers House (a little 1851 cottage right in the middle of campus) and features several-day visits by three very eminent writers. For winter-spring 2007 these three were Jamaica Kincaid, Donald Hall and John McPhee. McPhee has written a series of books and long essays about nature, about the landscape, about people living in extreme places, and lots about geology and streams and fish. The Pine Barrens is about that dense, piney, swampy region in south Jersey. Coming into the Country is his masterwork about living life in extremis in Alaska. And the thing about McPhee is that as a writer he really goes to these places and tries as best he can to live them.
My students and I caught this spirit. After an intense discussion about the Alaska book, one of them--a young woman whose style, dress and attitude none of us would have guessed would make her the person to suggest this--shouted out that we really must, as a class, as a group, go camping somewhere together.
For FV'ers such an idea doesn't seem odd. But this was an advanced seminar at a fancy university, and we're reading books and talking about literary art.
Well, three of us in the room knew Frost Valley, as it happens. I, of course; my assistant, Jamie-Lee, who has been to FV a number of times; and Ellie Kane, an advisee of mine whom I introduced to Frost Valley and is now a counselor there, heading, in '08, into her third summer.
So we decided to spend a weekend camping at FV in April. With some help and guidance from Brian Sense, adventure director (now recently departed for Colorado - good luck, Brian!), we got quick instruction in using the gas stoves, gathered our equipment, and hiked the easy hike to Banks Hill. It turned out to be a glorious sunny day and somewhat warm. By nightfall it was getting cold and indeed it went into the 30s overnight. It just happened that that very weekend there was an alumni committee volunteer work weekend, so I arranged visits to our campfire by Milton Pittman, Bill Abbott, and John Giannotti.
My two worlds merged and there really isn't anything that'a greater pleasure for me.
