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30/08: Bible Camp
We have had a week of dry, after a summer of wet. Now, as August closes the door on summer, our enormous tomato plants, bent in fruit, are just reddening – even as the cool creeps in to rest for the evening. Finally the cellar door is flung open – the dry air meanders in and pulls out wet scent of basement and curls around the stacks of firewood. This spring we heard the sad news that the Wesleyan Bible Camp was closing. It started in the 1890’s with platform tents in open fields. Now, burly maples tower over an odd assortment of little cottages, dorms, a cafeteria and a tabernacle. But, for the last decade the camp has been slowing down, and last year the news spread through the town that the property would be put up for sale. All of the little cottages are owned by families, but the land itself is owned by the church. Members were given two weeks to remove their possessions, and with a few inquiries I was able to acquire some things – one of my favorites is a set of mission oak furniture – painted a light chartreuse-summer green. The back of the big rocker towers over my head – and it dwarfs the girls if they climb into it. I worry about the camp – Bodoni and I walk through every day and play Frisbee, there is no example of great architecture here – but little buildings. Built in a new England vernacular. Small and strong, built, moved, added on to, taken off of – and moved again to be coupled with another structure. There are aluminum sided trailers here – air-streamed and port-holed appearing ready to be launched out to sea, if it weren’t for the plywood additions growing off the back-ends at odd angles, and antennas propped up on the roof.In the great rush before closing, roofs were removed, doors taken off hinges, stoves and windows ripped out – even enormous old enameled sinks. Other cabins stand forgotten. As if people forgot they even existed – peeking through the windows you can see blankets folded on the beds and sheets draped over dishes and chairs, waiting for another summer to come. But a big FOR SALE sign sits at the front of the property, and so do two “NO TRESSPASSING” signs, but Bodoni and I have special dispensation, entering through our gap in the stone wall, we pass no signs. We walk around the property and pull shut the doors the wind or the curious have pulled open, and I wonder what will happen to the little bible camp behind us.
01/08: Little Stinkers –
Our little family had planned a number of adventures for the month of July, activities that did not include “The Dog” and so my Mom and Dad were kind enough to take her. As we spent time on the beaches of Maine, and swatting at mosquitoes at camp in the Adirondacks, the Smell Hound spent time at her own little spa – morning walks with mom, plenty of cheese by-products and plenty of good water to slop in.While the dog was lounging, the wildlife soon caught on to the absence of threat in the back yard. No dog meant free reign to left over cat food and chicken scraps. Arriving home one evening we found ourselves boxed into the back driveway – two skunks by the chickens, and one on the back porch. We soon found that these were adolescent skunks, not yet surly, not yet hardened to the rigors of skunk life. In other terms, slow on the draw. So, after searching through the back barn, looking in a clawfoot bathtubs, behind oak dressers and the ancient rototiller, it occurred to me that I had lent the multiple patched galvanized have-a-heart trap to our friends in town to capture stray cats (this ended up in further destruction of the already delicate trap, and a trip to the hospital for a vicious cat bite – but that is a story for another time). And so I was left to using my wits and an old fishing net I had found in the barn – a fools errand some may say, but Wednesday night I succeeded, one by one, in scooping up two small skunks. Despite what you may have thought all these years, the difficulty is not so much in scooping up an adolescent skunk in a net without being sprayed. No no, it is in remaining unsprayed as you dance around swinging said skunk in a net while your wife swears at you for asking her to close the lid on the garbage pail once skunk is deposited inside, and two little green-peace activists yell from the upstairs bedroom in the fading late their concern for the welfare of the creature.
Ah, nothing beats a darkened drive with your family through the back roads of upstate New York, to covertly drop off a skunk you have captured in a garbage can in the back of your RAV4. Toyota is missing a marketing opportunity here. And so we watched “cutie” disappear into the darkness. I caught one more that night – and one more last night (Otis), with the live trap – not nearly as competitive or sporting, but oddly slightly more smelly.
