Another Camp Out in the books and I didn't take a single photograph. This one was taken by my dear little friend Lauren Smith. What kind of a chronicler am I? Boswell would not approve. (Can you imagine a contemporary Boswell, smart phone in hand, snapping selfies with Dr. Johnson in some London haunt?)
On Friday, the valley was so smokey from the nearby fires, I feared this would go down as the Camp Out in Hell. It was dense. Ah, but we were granted a reprieve. By the time I walked up to the house on Friday night (actually, Saturday morning) I could see the Milky Way. The rest of the weekend was gloriously sunny, blue and beautiful; the weather gods were good.
Sequoia and I cooked soup and bread on Friday night for our arriving guests. Our guests cooked for us all day long on Saturday and Sunday. That does not seem like a fair trade. They fed a whole lot of meat to a whole lot of people, more people than they anticipated I'm sure. I feel guilty that they worked so hard for so many hours only to see the fruits of their labor devoured in minutes. In the future, I must do a better job of organizing menus and assigning tasks so the burden is more evenly distributed. Next year, we're going to fire up the pizza oven again and let the barbecue chefs take it easy.
James Dean staged a performance by his two bands on Saturday night, quite the extravaganza with electric music and black lights. He laid out heart and soul and I'm grateful to him for such a beautiful contribution.
If the Colestin Camp Out was my child, it would be be graduating high school and heading off to college this year. At the first camp out 19 years ago, Ruthe confided in me that she was pregnant. That little sprout became our Lauren, who is heading off to Oregon State University. Lewis McBennet (formerly Claire), couldn't be with us this weekend, but his mother was also pregnant at the first camp out and he's off to the University of Oregon in a couple of weeks. Cat and Dutch's beautiful Sierra also graduated high school this summer and has started her journey into the grown up world. What a privilege and a joy to watch these beautiful young women leave the nest.
It feels like the end of an era, campers. The years just flow by like a broken down dam. We watch our children grow into adults, disconcerted when they reflect our weakness back at us, gratified when they mirror our strengths, delighted when they develop their own, unique talents and traits. We are alarmed to learn that they also have their own unique destinies, which are outside of our control If we're lucky, we are allowed to watch them grow into their power as our own power wanes. They become stronger and smarter as I get slower and stupider. It's a long process of letting go, giving over, and it's not easy. If we are very lucky, we live long enough to learn that getting old is a stone cold bitch, but it beats the alternative.
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