Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Dummers Beach Journal....Part Three

A couple of nights ago we had our first fun weather event. After a gorgeous sunny day of 86 and a nice night around the campfire we got all snuggled in our amazing RV for the night. Earlier, on a whim, Pam had decided to put the 4 inflatable rafts we had been using in the huge storage bay under the RV instead of leaving them on the ground as we had done all week. In literary circles this plot device is called foreshadowing!!

Around 1:45 in the wee hours Pam and I became vaguely aware of a whistling noise from out side. Since we run the overhead fan all night and it makes such a horrendous racket we weren’t entirely certain what it was until we felt the RV start to rock gently from side to side. We quickly opened the shades to our bedroom window that faces the lake. Everything was awash in moonlight with only a few dark clouds off in the distance obscuring the view of Tumbledown. But the boats on the lake were all bobbing up and down wildly. The trees were bent over and small pieces of camp debris was flying through the air. We looked out the back window just about the time that our neighbors were evacuating their daughters from their freestanding tent in favor of the pop up camper. If Pam had left the rafts out in this mess we would have had to drive to Weld to find them! Pam walked down the hallway (yes..we have a HALLWAY in this beast!!) to check on the kids and to reassure them that ,in fact, this was NOT the end of the world. Kaitlin was enjoying the righteous sleep of the just, totally oblivious to the gale-force madness outside. Patrick was newly awake, not quite alert enough to understand what was happening but aware that his bed was rocking a pretty cool rhyme. Who knows, maybe it will inspire a composition that wins him some fabulous scholarship to graduate school.

Actually this is the sort of thing that I enjoy about camp in Maine. There’s a certain amount of fiction at play in Maine, an element of danger, a sense that all is not quite safe here. Anything might happen. Nothing is guaranteed. The uncertainty is visceral. It’s the thing that makes camp unique, the possibility of nature blowing a gasket. When I’m here, no matter how beautiful the weather is I always have one eye on the horizon with a mixture of dread and excitement.

Today I play golf. Then the afternoon on the beach. Then a lobster-roll dinner celebrating Pam’s 4-?? Birthday. I still feel awful, but its vacation so you have to plow through. I read my e-mails last night and discovered that there is a world of grief awaiting my return to Richmond. I will try to cast that depressing thought out of my mind for the next 5 days. In literary circles, that’s called denial.

No comments:

Post a Comment