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.
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.
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