Summertime done...

..come and gone, my oh my

Summer's over. That means a couple things. One - i'm back from camp. Two - i'm updating my blog. Thinking back to the summer and my lack of blogging, one topic I meant to blog about was the title of my blog and where it came from. I reference it on the left hand column, but it's a long essay, and there's a lot more meaning to it for me.

My camp is divided up into multiple sessions, 3 of them being "senior" sessions. Our camp director begins each of these senior sessions with a reading from the foreword of A Sand County Almanac, which is a discussion of the value of wild things. On the final night of each session we have a "final ceremony". During this final ceremony, staff members share poems or songs, we give out "awards" (ex: Commander Salamander or Helter Skelter in a Summer Shelter or King of the Ant Hill ...thank you nature camp), and our director does another reading. This final reading is parts of Loren Eiseley's "The Bird and Machine". Because she has read it at the end of every senior session, I've heard it more times than I can count. No, that's not true, I can probably count the times. But it's really a wonderful essay if you have not read it.

To me it means more than just what the essay provides. It also means camp, which has been my home for many a summer. And it means an end, the end of a session or the end of a summer. Not a bad end, but a reflective one. How has my summer reflected what is written in this essay? This is often not a hard answer to come by, given life at nature camp.

So that is why... it's life I believe in!

[ ps, that there is a bald eagle! ]

Birthdays

Birthdays here at camp are always fun and momentous occasions. For campers, it's a day of cake and skipping around the room. For us staff members, it's that and more. We generally target something defining of that staff member at that moment in time, be it hedonism or just outright embarrassing them because they do not like to be the center of attention. For my 21st two years ago, we had something equivalent to a toga party.

My 23rd birthday this year was very low key, however, because as Blink 182 says: Nobody likes you when you're 23! For one of our more recent birthdays, I made a rat cake. The recipient of the cake/birthday boy has been chasing down a giant rat that is living in our dark room and has been evading us for some time now. So it was only appropriate that he received a rat cake (red velvet cake covered in gray fondant) along with a rat pinata ..among other things.

Who knows what the next birthday will bring.

Oh wait, that's today.

(happy birthday rachel!!)

Risotto with Toomeric

Today Maddy, from this adventure, came over to make dinner.

We made radioactive risotto.

Check it:

Owen, home for spring break, joined us.

He did not want to be photographed

but was okay with a stick-figure representation.

The fact that i did not draw him with clothes is not entirely inaccurate. His beard of doom is often used to rub against my ears (i shudder at the very thought). Regardless, camp friends time is always a good time. Especially when it keeps me from packing, because i hate packing and i think i pack better at the last minute.

Tomorrow:

Vegas!