We forget...sometimes, and need to be awakened by those who've not yet learned to focus on grown-up stuff - the stuff that seems to overtake our lives as we age...the stuff that takes up the room where magic once resided, or so it sometimes seems.
Joan and I drove up to camp with the grandkids yesterday; pulling the trailer with our Chevy Tracker in order to grab another load of logs...logs for the fires of the winter of 2008-09. But it was more of an adventure than a work trip - a "field trip" that Lorelei had been asking for the last few visits; "Can we go to camp today?"
And so off we went, packing up the bare minimum and taking off, listening the whole way to Lorelei's never-ending chatter, which brings constant smiles to Joan and I. Aydan would pipe in every once in a while with a toddler scream or blabber...and when Lorelei would squeeze her doll in just the right spot, it would cry or say "da-da". The radio never came on - the entertainment sat in the back seats. And then the songs started - initiated not by Joan or I, but by Lorelei - first came "Mary Had a Little Lamb"; and then one we all joined in to sing together; "Old McDonald Had A Farm", where we went through the names and sounds of every farm animal we could think of (...with a moo moo here...)...while Aydan fell asleep. How it brought back childhood memories from my own past...driving to Sacandaga River in a car filled with a family of seven...all singing, or searching for the next Beatle...or China...rides that seemed so very long - rides that go by so quickly now, unless a child is there with you to point out what we no longer see - extending the ride - extending time...
That is the way it works, you know...stretching time or doing away with it altogether, comes down to the way we interact with each moment of our lives - the more in touch we are with the moment at hand, the longer that moment seems to last. A child doesn't hang on to yesterday or place all their hope in tomorrow, the way so many adults come to live their lives - young children see what "is" - right now...and as a result, time becomes irrelevant, or so it seems.
...And as we made it to the top of Bleecker Mountain, and took the right onto Lily Lake Road...and the pavement gave way to dirt and gravel, we watched for and found the giant "pink" rock (a rock at the end of an isolated driveway that gets a new coat of paint every other year) and then the yellow rock (another giant rock that identified another driveway) - landmarks that tell us...we were getting close.
When we got to the end of Goat Farm Road, we came to a stop, so Grammy could get out and lower the chain, which allows us to proceed down the "Little" road to our cabin - our final destination.
As we approached the final turn before arriving at our cabin, I pushed the shift forward on the floor of the Tracker, putting it into four-wheel-drive, getting ready to climb the extremely steep hill up to the cabin. But as I turned into the driveway, I stopped and asked everyone to wait just a minute so I could disconnect the trailer and push it off to the side. After the trailer was parked, we were off - "Hang on!", I said and up the hill we climbed - all the way up, past the old outhouse and up to the generator shack, where we came to a stop...and then backed down to the cabin steps.
Aydan woke up during the ride on the bumpy climb - the last leg of our journey, and we all piled out of the Tracker with "Camp" enthusiasm! We were here - the "here" that is far away from the mundane and ordinary...the place where the unexpected is the norm...the place where magic lives behind every tree and under every rock. The place where water is everywhere in endless forms - the stream, the lake, and the magical puddles in the gravel road.
After a quick lunch, Lorelei and I headed down the hill together with a jug to be filled at the spring - the place where we get our drinking water. It's a pretty long walk to the spring and it's made longer because of the giant puddles that reside in a part of the road, around the bend, which is always filled with what cannot be passed - salamanders (actually red spotted newts). These are the same ones I loved as a child - it's just that here, I get to see them in both of their stages at the same time. You see, these newts have two stages of life - a juvenile terrestrial stage, where they live on land (they are bright orangey-red in this "red eft" stage); and a more olive-green adult stage where they live and reproduce in water (usually ponds). In this giant puddle, we always find the "in-between" ones - those that are going through their physical changes - changes in colors, from orange to green, and the flattening of their tails in order to help propel them through the water.
...I didn't want to stop at the puddle yet - my adult mind still wanting to control our steps, and we pushed on past the puddles (walking in the grass on the side of the road, in order to keep our sneakers dry) taking a left off the road and getting our water from the spring - another adventure in itself...water coming out of a pipe that sticks out of the side of a leaf-covered hill, and the rushing stream from Kari's Creek another twenty-five feet below us...
But on the way back to the cabin, we stopped for quite a while at the giant puddles! I caught one of the newts and handed it to Lorelei. She held it with a bit of uneasiness, this being the first time in a while - another reintroduction to the realm of the unknown, where one wants to experience it, yet is still a bit uneasy because our mind cannot predict what's to come. But, after a time she came to "love" the experience. She placed the newt back into the water and it swam away. With my hands in the water, I herded a second newt towards Lorelei's waiting hands at one end of the giant puddle and she was able to grab it and lift it out of the water. She was so proud of herself and said, "I got it all by myself!"
Once again, she gently held and manipulated the little salamander - flipping it from one side to the other, examining its color and the endless spots; this one being a bit greener than the last. Finally, she let that one go as well...giving it a touch on its tail after releasing it into the water, which sent it wriggling off into the deepest part of the puddle, seeking shelter beneath a water-logged leaf at the bottom.
Back to the cabin we began walking and there on the road was Joan and Aydan, who had walked to meet us. Lorelei burst out with the story she had just experienced, calling out to Grammy - telling of the salamanders in the puddle, and most of all, of how she got one "all by herself!"
And as we got to our driveway, we heard a car coming - it was our neighbor Andy. And we spent the next half-hour down by the lake catching up a bit. I sat on Andy's row boat, while Lorelei and Aydan climbed all over the overturned boat...and in the background the wind whispered...it was time for naps. We said our goodbyes and headed back up to the cabin.
Lorelei started her nap in the downstairs bedroom, but then, after going potty...switched to one of the twin beds in the little upstairs bedroom. I went upstairs and laid down in the other twin bed on the other side of the room and watched as she calmed down, which took a long time, and then the final turn-over...and she was gone...into a deep sleep - a wonder-filled camp sleep...and downstairs I went to find Joan putting Aydan down (he had fallen asleep in her arms as she rocked him in one of the old recliners)...and then there was silence...
While the kids slept, I went about my work, transporting logs from a staging point at the top of the hill behind the cabin, the culmination of my work two days earlier, down to the bottom of the hill where the trailer was parked. Endless trips up and down the hill carrying a log in each arm or on shoulders each trip down, while panting on each return trip back up the hill.
I had the trailer all loaded and was able to cool down before we heard Aydan, who woke up first from his nap. I went upstairs and sat on the bed across from Lorelei, who woke as I sat down. I asked her if she had a good nap, and she said "yes" - and even better, she woke up in a good mood - a camp mood (sometimes she can be a bit grouchy after her afternoon naps)...and downstairs we went to continue our adventure!
She wanted to go back to the puddles in the road - to show Grammy the salamanders that lived there and so, Grammy and Lorelei headed out the door and down the hill, while Aydan and I watched. Aydan and I played on the porch - stacking blocks, as Joan and Lorelei's voices faded...as they rounded the corner down the road...
When they returned, Lorelei had to tell me all about their adventure - again the highlight being the salamanders she had caught and held and examined..."all by herself!" And she wanted to take me back to the puddles with her...and at first, I thought enough is enough - we'd spent enough time with the salamanders and the puddles, but then I said, "What - are you crazy - don't pass up this opportunity to experience one more time, the magic that is shared when a four year old finds and learns to become a part of a new world!" And so, out the door we headed - down the steps and down the hill; down the road and 'round the corner to the puddles that held that day's magic for anyone who would dip their hands in to feel and hold and experience what costs nothing...but a bit of time.
What a trip it was - this trip to heaven with little hands and minds who feel and see what we so often miss.
And now, it's time to tend to some grown-up work...but in the back of my mind I hope to remember, that it's the child within that makes every moment, one filled with potential. If we look upon the task at hand with the eyes of our child - the one who knows that it is a moment that has never been and one that will never be available again (each and every moment is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity), we see what we've not seen before...and we enter a place called heaven where time slows to a crawl and everything is new, which is of course the reality we too often forget as we go through today, the same things we went through yesterday...as time races by...and so it goes.
Find a four year old and follow her around for an afternoon - to find what has been left behind in favor of grown-up paradigms, masks, roles, worries and anxieties...and find that reality is not what we've constructed in our mind - it's waiting to be lived; waiting to be discovered as we become parts of our world, rather than pretending to be apart from it - sheltering ourselves from all that might be...perhaps, maybe...
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