Listening this evening to a solitary soul with a bugle horn across the water in the park play taps took me back to the summer I was 8. We lived in Boston. My mother took my sister with her to the English Virgin Islands. They stayed for whatever brief period of weeks it took to establish residency and then get a divorce. I was shipped off ( by rail ) to an 8 week summer camp for boys on a lake in the wilds of Vermont. I absolutely loved ever minute of it. I did 2 summers. It changed my life.
I was very much an urban kid my first nights in the woods on a lake. As exciting and enticing all of nature was, the dark and spooky silent nights with 3 other nature virgin tent mates whispered at some nagging insecurities: the absolute lack of light and sound.
The buglers many daily wake up, meal time, and bed time announcements were just one more new experience. Invitations to routine.
The nightly ghosts of unarticulated over sensitized apprehension remained. Then one night all the resistance to being seduced by Mother Nature went up in smoke. For the first time I really listened to the marshal lullaby singing out of the horn. The soulful notes and I became one with the beckoning forests.
Wake up revelry at dawn found my mind purified of any remaining negative urban vibes.
Ode To Summer Camps
May 08, 2018