Archive for August 27th, 2013

HITTING ROUGH PATCHES, AND FINDING SMOOTH WATER LATER….

August 27, 2013

“Hey, Rick, good to see you!”

I was at the reunion celebrating 100 years of Camp Pathfinder’s existence, where I learned to canoe trip in the ‘60s, and saw a familiar name tag near me.  I found the face vaguely familiar, as much as a face one hasn’t seen for 46 years can be familiar.

Rick (not his real name) turned and said hi, without nearly the surprise I had.  I told him the college I was fairly certain he had gone to (correct), and reminded him that I stayed at his house on a trip from the camp back to Rochester, New York, to accompany the campers back to the camp in central Ontario the next day.  I even got his street right, remarkable, considering I had not visited Rochester in 45 years.  I then asked what he was doing.

“Teaching math.  And I have authored five textbooks.  Good to see you again after the last reunion.  What do you think of the place?”

I had never been to a reunion.  We had not seen each other in 46 years.  I have taught math, and I certainly can subtract 1967 from 2013.  I haven’t authored much of anything, other than a few articles in several different fields, like neurology, Navy medicine, wilderness.  I certainly haven’t authored any textbooks.

I replied: “The things that changed needed to, and the things that didn’t need to change are the same.”  Rick liked that line, saying that was exactly what he was going to talk about at the “Council Meeting” the next day, where we would all be.  He then saw somebody else and left me, without another word.

I had known Rick really, really well at Pathfinder.  I had worked with him in the camp office, when I wasn’t out canoe tripping, which half the time I was.  I was–in a word–bummed.  I saw him several more times at the reunion, always with a lot of people near him, for he was a prominent person in the camp and a major “player” at the reunion.  I made it a point, however, not to initiate any further conversations.

I’m shy; while at times I can force myself to talk to strangers, if they reply the way Rick did, I shut down.  To an extrovert, that is no big deal; to me, I have put myself on the line and failed badly. I wish I could easily change this behavior, but it has been exceedingly difficult to do so.  I tried to tell myself that probably Rick had a lot of other things on his mind, but I was bummed.  I had no desire then to look for another name tag with a familiar name. Maybe I would the next day. Frankly, I was ready then to leave the reunion.

Instead, later that evening I sat outside the kitchen, away from the many gatherings, next to a couple, enjoying the coolness and the beauty of sunset over Source Lake, which I had not seen for nearly half a century.

“Venus is setting,” I commented, half to the couple, half to the sky.  It is how I start conversations.  If I can teach or get into my comfort zone, I open up.

The woman was interested in my comment, found Venus, and her husband looked, too.  They were from Brooklyn, where seeing stars or planets is often impossible.  Above Venus, I showed them Arcturus; overhead, the Summer Triangle, in the south, Antares.

“Let’s go down on the kitchen dock,” I suggested.  It was a clear, pleasant night.

With the wider view afforded by the dock, I showed them Cygnus the Swan, the Northern Cross, with bright Deneb at one end and dimmer Albireo at the other. With a telescope, I told them Albireo is one of the most beautiful double stars in the sky.

I pointed out the Big Dipper, showing them how it could be used as a clock, running counterclockwise around Polaris every day.  Using the Big Dipper, one can tell time at night, which fascinated them. I showed them Polaris, using my outstretched fists to show our latitude of 45 degrees.  In two minutes, they just had learned how to tell the time and latitude without anything more than their eyes and hands.  That’s heady stuff.

We turned to the south to view Scorpius, the head, Antares, and the tail.  The whole constellation appeared before us, barely clearing the quiet boreal forest across the now lovely, dead calm lake.  I told them how my wife and I once saw Orion rise over a calm lake late one night, perfectly reflected in the water.

It was late, and while the parties were occurring all over the island, I was tired.  As we walked back to where we had been sitting, I mentioned that they could always see the Moon from Brooklyn, and if they started following the Moon’s cycle, they would learn a lot.  The Moon is essential in both the Jewish and Islamic calendars.  If they used the bright stars like Vega, Altair and Deneb like Broadway, Madison Avenue, and Wall Street, they could learn to find their way to the lesser known areas in the sky.  It isn’t difficult, and I suspect perhaps this couple will.  I wrote an astronomy column for a newspaper for two decades without any formal astronomy background.  It takes rocket science to go to the stars, but not to learn them.

I have neither written a textbook, let alone five, nor changed thousands of schoolchildren.  I was not speaking to three hundred people at a reunion; I was only showing the sky to two young adults from Brooklyn.

But that night I like to think I changed a couple of lives. If I didn’t, I certainly changed the course my evening had been taking.  I didn’t whistle when I went to bed, but I felt a lot better about myself.  The reunion would turn out fine, Rick had just been a small rock in the water that my canoe hit.  I was again back on calm water, paddling ahead strongly.

Wilderness and a clear night sky are a wonderful tonic for the blues.

Day trip in Algonquin Park, on Little Island Lake. I camped on this very spot 50 years ago. I am back right.

Back from a paddle around the island….and of course a little more. These red canoes are hand made, still wood and canvas, and weigh about 41 kg (90 lb). On the day trip, I carried it 1400 meters without stopping. To still be able to do that was one of the high points of the trip. My shoulders hurt for several days after.  Notice the red neckerchief. That is the sign of a head man.  I earned that, and I was not the only one at the reunion who wore one.

Loon and chick, Source Lake, Algonquin Park.

Tags:
Posted in GENERAL STUFF, MY WRITING, UNPUBLISHED OUTDOOR WRITING | Leave a Comment »

COMING HOME AT LAST

August 27, 2013

When the plane touched down in Rochester, New York, where I spent my childhood, I expected I would view the city with considerable interest, since I had not been back for 45 years.  I didn’t expect that my immediate view would be blurred, because I was immediately teary-eyed.  That surprised me, for while I certainly cry, I usually have some warning.  I deplaned, telling both the flight attendant and the pilot that this was my first time here in 45 years.  They smiled.  I walked through the airport, far, far different from the last time I had been here, arriving at the rental car counter.  As I was getting checked in, I told the young man it was my first visit here since 1968.

“Welcome home,” he said.

I lost it.  No, it wasn’t just teary-eyed, I started crying, the kind of crying where you simply cannot talk and your face is soaked.  It didn’t last long, but the emotion caught me totally by surprise.  As I write this, I am teary.

I lived in Rochester from shortly after my birth in Berkeley, California, until 1963, when I left, to finish my last three years of high school in Wilmington, Delaware.  Other than working a summer at Eastman Kodak in 1968, where I hardly ever explored, I had not set foot in the city, or even New York, for that matter.  I finished high school in Wilmington, and I had a lot more friends there, but when I returned to Wilmington 42 years later, I did not have those emotions.  I was curious, but I did not cry.

Driving out of town, for that evening, I wanted to see our summer place on the Finger Lakes, I saw names I had not thought about for years–5 and 20 (a well known road my pediatrician told my mother I should play on, which would solve some of her problems), Rush, Henrietta, Conesus, Canandaigua, Lima, Livonia, and Honeoye, the last the lake where we had our cottage.  I was about 6 miles from Honeoye before anything looked familiar.  Even West Lake Road was different.  The numbering system had changed, and only the fact that I went past the cemetery on my right told me I was on the right road.  “California Ranch,” a peninsula, was now “Ranch Road.”  I went by “Poplar Road”, which I remembered immediately as being the last road before the one to our cottage.

Had you asked me any time in the last 40 years where Poplar Road was, I would not have been able to answer.  But I knew it immediately when I saw it.

The cottage was basically the same, but the trees, the new cottages, the whole area was different.  The owner was kind enough to let me in, and I was standing in a room where my feet had trod when I was a young boy, not an old man.

That evening, on the dinner menu, “Texas hot dogs” were advertised.  I hadn’t heard the term in decades.  Rochester is home to red and white hot dogs.  I can still hear the waiters at “Don and Bob’s”, which now exists at Sea Breeze: “Two texas, three white!”  When we left Rochester, that was the end of white hot dogs and Genesee Beer.

The next several days, I visited Cleveland to see my 49th national park, and drove around Lake Ontario to a camp reunion and to visit a good friend in Ottawa. This was a true “Remembrance Trip.” I returned to Rochester from the east, drove down Elmwood Avenue, and again saw street names I hadn’t thought of in decades.  I arrived at 12 Corners, immediately recognized it and the three schools I had attended through the 9th grade.  I was speechless, but I was done with the tears.  I saw the schools, turned down the street I lived on, and saw the house where I grew up.  It looked good.  So did the window from my room.  I looked at the sidewalk and the driveway, where a half century earlier, even almost two-thirds of a century earlier, my feet walked.  It was good.  I needed to see my house.  I was through with the tears now.

I drove to the hotel near the airport, on Chili, which I immediately knew was pronounced CHI lie, not CHILL e, where I was flying out the next day.  I told the counter clerks that it was my first time back in 45 years.  They smiled.  I tried to say that it was the first time I had seen my house and my school in a half century, but I couldn’t speak.

I started to cry.  I absolutely could not get a word out for five minutes.  They smiled and nodded.  I was astounded at my emotions.  For years, I always considered a home town is where somebody currently lives.  That is, after all, literally your home town.

But I had been wrong the whole time.  I have a hometown.  It was so obvious that it perhaps never occurred to me.  It was, and always will be, Rochester, New York.  Had I listened to my heart and eyes, I never would have doubted it.  The brain is smart, but the heart and eyes know things the brain can’t understand.  The mind of the child takes in things that the adult brain simply can’t comprehend.  My heart and eyes knew I was home.

I took the trip, because I wanted to see where I grew up one more time.  I did that.

I just didn’t know that after all these years, I was finally going home, and how important this would be.  I went to school in Rochester for many years.  I learned a great deal in Rochester.  But this beautiful city had one more lesson to teach me, 45 years later.

 

Tags:
Posted in GENERAL STUFF | 1 Comment »