It's 11:25 PM as I write this, and it's been one of those magical Frost Valley summer nights. First off, it's very cold (likely to be 40 degrees), and, as I've mentioned, all the Wawayanda villages are camping out. With Katy Bowen and Kat Schneider in one car, and Dane Mainella and myself in another, we caravanned over to the East Valley to run Challenge Night for Farm Camp. Stopped at Blue Hill Lodge/Cafe for a dinner, after which I picked up some deli sandwiches for some counselors whom I knew would have sacrificed their own dinners to make sure the kids on the overnights had plenty. I'd bring those back to camp later. Meantime, onward down the East Branch Neversink road toward the Farm. It's paradise there. We arrived, set up for Challenge Night in the new expanded dining hall, and then hung out while the farm campers finished playing games and doing after-dinner chores. I looked around and noticed that a bunch of directors happened to be there too. Kam, Hird Director, had stopped by after making a visit to the PAC/Windsong two-night overnight at Pete's
Pavillion. Dan Weir had stopped by to have some time with Andy, the Farm Camp Director. Quite a convergence of characters, so we took a photo. Then Challenge Night itself: a big success; such enthusiasm. The Simon Says challenge was hilarious. One girl, maybe 9 years old, managed to hold it together completely, never disrupted by my Simon shananigans. She was a winner. The final challenge: sing a sweet beautiful song. Usually this flops somewhere along the way, but all six singers were lyric, enthralling, and really quite moving. Two counselors sang an old-style version of "MM-mm I wanna linger..." Then an ice cream sundae party, and then, with a candle and some other low lights the only lighting in the barn-like dining hall, I told a story to a transfixed audience of goggle-eyed slack-jawed farm campers; they were completely into it. This was an old standby of mine, but not of them had heard it: "J.C. Pony and the Haunted House."
Has Forest got the spirit?
Yeah, man!
Dane and I drove back to camp, seeing a million stars above us and letting the frigid air into the car. Stopped at Big Tree Field to find the counselors who needed the sandwiches. Hung out with them a bit, and ran into Lincoln McLain, the entertaining Adventure Director. By now it's 10:30 PM. Lincoln was there to wait for the arrival, in two FV buses, of the group that represented us at the Prague Youth Festival for the YMCA, led by Vicky Williams, Jeff Daly and Kirsten Williams. They'd been gone three weeks. The buses pulled in and the Praguers barely spilled out - dead tired, feeling like it was 4 AM. Dan Weir showed up as we stood around with an exhausted Daly. Just then Sacky's staff joined us there, standing in front of Margetts Lodge. And just then, too, Lourdes Montoro, our many-year August volunteer, closed up shop on a night when she cooked up her magical chocolate concoctions enough to boost the staff morale several notches. Sacky's staff had won last session's "Project 332" contest: which village raised the most campership money (rather, which village received the most donations in their honor). The winning village staff gets to spend a late evening at Dan Weir's house, where he might barbecue for them, or serve them tons of Chinese food. Several cars awaited Sacky, and they piled in, while the Praguers' buses pulled out, taking those tired souls to (well....)
yurts for their several hours of sleep in the bitter cold, and Lourdes closed up, Lincoln went off to check on Adventurers, the Big Tree Field overnight dwellers went back to their sleeping colleagues - all of which left three stranded Sacky staff needing rides to Dan's. So I obliged by driving them there, although first we had to fetch my car which I'd left part way into the Big Tree Field. Over the years I've tried in this blog to narrate the magic of nights like this. I never feel I quite convey what it's like to be somewhere so remote and at the same time such a nexus of good people doing a lot of things all at once. I like the phrase
leave it all on the field. There's an intensity I feel around me about such nights, as if everyone is trying not to think that there aren't too many more such nights ahead this season. Let's just do all this until we're done.
The annual summer meeting is coming up in a few days. Dave King will be among those honored in the FV Hall of Fame. A number of people who know the above-described intensity will be back in the Valley - folks like Mike Ketcham, Carolyn Shelburne, Barbara Hale, Bob and Kay Hettler, Dave and Shirley King themselves, Ken Hamlin ("Hambone"), Barbara Spitz, Peggy Rub, and others. I wish they would spend a week and re-experience these sorts of nights. It makes one young.
