The Ride Home from Camp

"Do you think he'll be able to see out the back?" I asked as Carol and I stuffed the last of the bedding into Doug's van.

"That's what mirrors are for." Carol huffed as she squeezed in one more pillow.

The back of Doug's van was full of musical instruments, extra bedding for campers who forgot their own, coolers, now empty of yogurt, half and half and juice, damp camping gear, dirty clothes, folding stools, and other odds and ends left after a rainy June week of running a music camp.

Carol and I walked slowly back to the kitchen and main hall, weary after 6 days of late nights and early mornings. The last sweep, literally, was under way, then we would have a quick board meeting and photo and be on the road home.

"Who's gonna take the lost and found box?" Chris asked.

"I think there's room in the van." I said recklessly. Since I was the person with the master email list on my computer, people were most likely to be in touch with me about their missing treasures.

Too weary to do much more than set a date for a phone check in, and to sit in a line of rocking chairs, bleary eyed, for a board photo, we then hugged one another and headed back to the parking lot.

The lost and found did indeed fit into the back of the van, but not in its box, There just wasn't room for something that big, so I used a grocery bag. Then Doug and I climbed in front and we headed out.

We didn't talk much at first. We'd been checking in all week, about housing, workshop spaces, concert set up, rain locations, scholarship workers, camp volunteers, bathroom cleanliness and more. We didn't have the heart to listen to music either, having had such a grand week of it. Car talk was on the radio, reminding us that we were heading back into the world on a Saturday.  Time had bent and stretched so much over the past week that we were grateful of the reminder.

Eventually we started remembering moments, the thunderstorm when Stephanie was playing that wild Quebecois tune in concert, the ridiculous incident of the wheelbarrow, the great porch session with the young folks, the Dobro/Pipe duo we'd witnessed the afternoon before,

We traveled slowly. Doug isn't a fast driver anyway, something I appreciate, and on this ride he knew that his judgement was somewhat impaired.  As he put it "I got nine hours of sleep . . . over the past two nights."  We missed the turn in Hinesburg and instead of heading for the Williston entrance to Interstate 89, we wandered into Williston suburbia.

Then we started seeing yard sale signs.   We missed the turn for the first one, but caught the next one. We wandered into a neighborhood and prowled through books, dishes, bicycle trainers, bureaus, video recorders and more, grateful that the van was too full to purchase much.  We were definitely not at our most savvy on this jaunt.

As we meandered through huge houses on small lots on artfully curving streets, we debated going back to the first yard sale, the one we'd missed.

"No." Doug said. "Men don't back track to yard sales."

But when we popped back out on the main road, we were south of that first yard sale, so we made the turn and shopped some more. We chatted with the sellers at this one. Doug pointed out that there were a lot of heart shaped items for sale, and asked if this was significant. When Bill, a neighbor came by with a bushel basket to sell, I made decorating recommendations. Doug asked about a bicycle, and bought a colander, I bought some dishes, which made it difficult for me to find a place to put my feet when we got back on the road.

Then we started seeing signs for the airport, which meant we weren't where we really wanted to be. It didn't matter though. We were mellow, I had a neat butter keeper, and Doug had a new colander. We turned right, then right again, and lo and behold, we came to an entrance to I 89. I'm not sure I was with it enough to even notice when we got on the interstate, but there we were.

The conversation came and went. What did we plan to do with the week, once we had caught up on sleep and laundry? What were we going to do without music in our lives 24/7? Should we go to the Waterbury Flea Market?   Now and then we would gleefully remind each other of our great butter keeper and colander purchases.  Did I say we were sleep deprived?.

As we neared Montpelier, we remembered more serious, wonderful things, how we had worked as a team with some of our best musical friends, how Todd's energy had propelled him as head dish washer for every meal, how Carol had kept us all relatively level headed in meetings, and had run the camp store profitably, and how Chris had hopped in to rearrange housing, and deal with many small fires as they came up. How Doug himself had managed a group of teen scholarship workers , lightly harnessing his willing workers, managing complaints of campers with polite humor, how I'd churned out coffee and breakfast each day.

We had done something remarkable, and as we hauled coolers, bedding, clothing, camping gear, musical instruments and the lost and found into my house, we smiled at one another in dazed euphoria.

We had done a fine, complicated and intense work together, and we were still friends.