Goodnight, Irene

Saturday, the 27th of August, was sunny and humid. Camp was finally over; the last guests had packed up their families and left early, heading back to Connecticut and the Cape to pull in their sailboats, shutter up their beach houses. Irene was coming. We had been watching the radar for days, but it was hard to say what, if anything, would happen when it finally came over us. As a child of the Midwest, I'd seen plenty of tornado weather, but never experienced anything like the slow, oncoming inevitability of a hurricane.
After lunch, we split into groups to start shutting things down. My team was assigned to pull up boats from the lakefront. While a team of dock specialists in wetsuits broke down the docks, we loaded the sailboats onto a trailer and drove them up the hill, to lie safely out of the wind and waves. It was hard work, but we were laughing and happy; there was a sense of camaraderie and definite purpose, unusual for Arcadia.
All through that hot afternoon, I watched the clouds rising up, big thunderheads riding out ahead of the rain. Dinner conversation that night centered on the storm. No authority figure had given any indication of emergency preparations, of where we might go if the conditions were bad. The more cynical staff members speculated that the authority just didn't care. It was all too easy to imagine them leaving us to fend for ourselves in our cabin down by the lake. After all, we'd already put away all the valuable equipment. But I preferred to believe that it wouldn't come to that.
The rain started in the night. When I woke up in the morning I looked out to see curtains of it passing over the far side of the lake, and what I thought was water streaming off the cabin roof turned out to be only the rain.
The power went out at 9 AM, killing all attempts at a productive workday. Little by little, people began filtering into the main lodge where a fire was going. We sat in the dark and played cards by the light of headlamps. The rain was still lashing down, and the trees began to bend in the wind.
The first big branch fell around lunchtime. I was sitting on the porch of the lodge when it came crashing down on the infirmary roof. Others soon joined it. Some people started a game of guessing which branch or tree would fall next, cheering for their candidate when a big gust came through. Gripped by the wind, the trees bent and groaned. It seemed that they could never hold. Finally one fell, taking out the window and a corner of roof on a cabin next to the main lodge. Then another, down in the field by another cabin, and another and another. Limbs and cones littered the ground. An enormous tree fell by the shower house, leaving a hole waist deep in the path. People screamed and rushed out to take pictures of themselves standing in it.
When the wind retreated a little, I took a stroll with some other people to look at the waterfront. Pleasant Lake, usually so murky and placid, was lashing the beach. Two ducks rode the breakers. No matter how hard they paddled, the swell threw them to the shore and back, over and over. When I looked up at the sky, the clouds were scudding by so fast they made you seasick.
Back on the porch, Jess and Will, the most senior counselors, were drinking gin-and-tonics. Very classy. Really, the ideal cocktail for sitting out a natural disaster. Will was anxious because a big triple-trunked tree, leaning directly over the porch, had begun to twist and warp in the wind. He and Jess phoned the camp directors, who were in their own cottages half a away, and received permission to move us to the big house by the road, if it came to that.
The storm howled on, and the world was violent and wild all around us. Then little by little it began to calm, and by suppertime was quite still.
When it got dark we lugged our things up to the loft of the big house for the night, safe from blow-downs and any following winds. It was like a private refugee camp up there, everyone set up on thin bunkbed mattresses, gathering to talk and play games in the light of a storm lantern.
I fell asleep early and missed the winds that came in the night. When I got up, the day was bright and the whole camp was carpeted in pine branches.

Expedition to Mt Washington

I was looking forward to the Washington trip, but I definitely needed some breathing room beforehand. So on my night off, after watching Harry Potter 7/2 in Scarborough (Harry Potter and the Curb Stomp Beatdown!), I drove out to a state park I know in Cape Elizabeth and slipped in to sleep on the beach in the moonlight, which was so incandescently bright that I cast a shadow on the sand. A strong wind came in over the water and the clouds were speckled with stars. When I got up in the morning, my clothes smelled like salt. I had an early breakfast on a wharf-front diner in Portland, and then drove back to pack for Washington.
Three counselors were assigned to this trip: me; a male counselor, P.; and B., my boss, the head of the trips department. On Tuesday morning, we mustered the seven teenage girls, ages 13 -16, an interesting assortment of characters, and hit the road.
It was a beautiful sunny day as we started up the trail. The Mt Washington trip is reserved for the toughest, most experienced hikers at camp, and they were happy to be in the woods again; we set a brisk pace uphill through the forest. At the edge of the alpine zone, everyone was momentarily sobered by this sign:

and I thought again about what it means to lead other people's children into the wilderness. Under the guidance of B., with her military background, the trips counselors in our department took this responsibility very, very seriously. Other camps, as we soon learned, did not. On the 2nd day of our trip we hiked 7 miles across the peaks to the summit of Washington. It was a hot day and we moved at a deliberate pace, pausing often for water breaks. The trails were crowded with other hikers. Finally we were only a mile from the top; the summit was in view. But we stopped: there was a little boy sitting on a rock beside the trail. It was the same boy we had seen earlier, stumbling and pleading for some water and 'just 5 seconds' to rest. His counselor had refused him then, and now apparently she had abandoned him on the trail to catch up later. He had no water left in his bottle. B. snapped into action. She gave the boy some water from her own emergency supply and made plans to have him hike the rest of the way with us. At that point, however, the counselor came back. She was sweaty, angry, and English.
"Don't give him more water, it's his fault he already drank all his and most of mine. Get up Leo, you have to keep going."
B. asked her what trail she was taking; the woman had no idea. She was trying to hike up the scree slope next to the cog railway. We invited her to join us on the trail, but the counselor shook her head.
"Can't. I have to go this way, I've got more kids up there somewhere." She gestured vaguely at the summit and then took off, Leo shuffling in her wake. We never saw them again. Thank God the weather was good, that we didn't experience one of Washington's notorious fogs, the kind that goes down like a curtain over a beautiful day, reducing visibility to 10 feet or less.
The summit of Washington was a surreal tourist parade. After hours of hiking through the rugged mountainscape, we climbed onto this paved plateau, with a cafeteria, a museum, and a gift shop. The summit itself was the traditional pile of rocks topped by a weathered wooden sign – but it was surrounded by the concrete observation deck, and it put me in mind of the monkey island in a zoo. People who had paid to drive up wandered around in sundresses and flipflops. I have never visited a mountain so stripped of its essential mountainness. It was an interesting experience.
There was one thing they couldn't pave down, however: the wind. Washington holds the record for one of the highest recorded surface wind speeds: 231 mph. According to Wikipedia, it blows above hurricane force approximately 110 days out of the year. In February, when I was living east of Washington in Bethel, Me, the windchill one day was approximately -72 F. The gentle zephyr blowing the day we hiked up there was nothing. Just enough to knock you off balance if you stood on the summit too long. Done with the summit, we hiked down to the slopes of Mt Monroe to stay at Lakes of the Clouds, perched on the precipice below Washington. There was a girl's camp group of 40 at Lakes, and a church group of 20, for a total of 70 or so screaming high
school students packed into the hut, utterly shellshocking the few legitimate adult visitors and thru-hikers trying to share the space. Our group was overwhelmed too, so we hiked up to the summit of Monroe after supper to watch the sunset, seeking peace. Up there it was cool and silent. The sun sank into banks of clouds, the mountains rolled away for miles, losing themselves in the blue haze of dusk. Directly below us the eponymous lakes nestled in the rocks reflecting the sky.

Return to Camp: American Summer

"So they filled you in about this camper?" the nurse said. "The sleepwalking? The bedwetting? You know what to do if she gets up in the night?"
"I know," I said. "I'll be in the next bed, so I'll be able to go after her and steer her in the right direction."
"I'm worried," the older nurse interjected. "What if you don't wake up? I think you should take a string and tie one end to your wrist and the other to her arm. Just a little string, you know."
It was 9:30 PM, and I was on night duty at the camp infirmary. The three of us sat on folding chairs in the main office. A single 60-watt bulb hung over a table festooned with paperwork and jars of medicine and bandages. Down the hall I caught a glimpse of a barracks-like room lined with white-sheeted beds. It felt like a scene out of WWII. But instead of soldiers in white, my special assignment tonight was a troubled 10-year old girl. I was to sleep in the bed beside her to prevent her sleepwalking and wetting the bed. She was a sweet little kid, and I felt bad for her. But I was damned if I was going to tether myself to her, like some peasant with his only goat.
"Um, I'm a pretty light sleeper," I said. "I don't think that will be necessary."
The younger nurse gave me an ironic, sympathetic look. "Whatever you think will work. Do you want to get settled now?"
She led me into the barracks room and showed me my cot. My camper was already there, and so were two other girls, one with a fever, the other a vicious lung-rattling cough. I arranged my bed so that it blocked the sleepwalker's; she would have to climb over my bed to escape. She was awake and happy to see me, we chatted about Justin Bieber for a while, and then she went peacefully to sleep
I lay on my cot in the dark, with a little breeze at the curtains and the moonlight seeping in, and wondered, not for the first time, how how how do I end up in these jobs? Why hadn't my survival instinct kicked in that first week, when we all stood up together after supper and rearranged the dining room tables so that the wood grain in every table pointed north?
Well, it was a long night, but the sheets stayed dry. She had a beautiful sleep, much better than me or the cougher. In the morning I got up and poured coffee down my gullet and fidgeted through the traditional outdoor Sunday meeting, a non-denominational cross between Walt Whitman and a Vineyard church service. One of the nonagenarian directors told a rambling story about friendship, and also Albrecht Dürer, and then treated us to a sermon on happiness: "What is Happiness? It is a spring flower. A campfire with friends. A beautiful feeling that brings a smile to God's face." Yup, good old God, up there beaming away. And when Jesus laughs, he laughs kittens.
Finally, after the meeting my day off started, and I fled. Fleeing from camp here is simpler than it was in Russia, because I have a car. With exactly one 24 hour period off a week, though, it's hard to get very far. Fortunately, Portland and the ocean are only 45 minutes away. The boyfriend, unfortunately, is 3 hours away; I've had some lovely 5 AM drives back across the mountains, heavily caffeinated and pedal to the medal before the clock strikes duty time and I turn back into Cinderella.
Things are stressful only when I'm scheduled to work in camp, though. Most days of the week, I have a very cool job: I lead selected girls on hikes and camping trips in the wilderness. Right after breakfast, almost every day, we load up the 12-passenger van with gear and children and hit the road, radio cranked the moment we're out of the driveway. They 're not allowed to have phones, computers, or music at camp, so the radio is a treat. We have road trips, adventures, ice cream, climb mountains, pitch tents, jump off 15 foot cliffs into deep blue swimming holes, and life is good. I have now hiked and camped and driven all over the White Mountains. Next week I'm leading a trip up Mt. Washington. We'll hike for three days and stay in huts along the Appalachian Trail where lovely AMC croo members will cook lovely food for us. If you're imaging my group squatting in some kind of dismal coop, let me disabuse you. This is Lakes of the Clouds, where we'll stay the 2nd night on Washington.
Needless to say, I like this aspect of my job very much. Once again I being paid to hike. The absurdity is free.