Camp Life

by Lucinda Maison

  “Now?” she asked.

  “Now,” he confirmed, and both of them jumped in, muddy water splashing up to Jim’s knees and mid-thigh on Corinne.

  “Eeeewwww!” she squealed, as the cold mud pushed between her toes. Jim laughed and started stomping around like he was in a vat of grapes in an old Lucy show. Corinne giggled and followed him, gingerly at first, then picking up speed.

  “What are we doing?” she gasped, laughing and trying to keep her balance.

  “Making bricks, of course,” Jim replied, industriously squishing his way around the pit. “Adobe bricks.”

  “And you couldn’t just go to Home Depot, why?”

  “Home Depot doesn’t have adobe bricks. Besides, this is more fun.”

  She had to agree. After more stomping, she asked him what he planned to do with the bricks.

  “We’re going to build an oven…a wood-fired oven for baking bread, pizza, stuff like that. We had one in our backyard when I was growing up. My mom made the best bread…So I thought it would be fun to have at camp.”

  Before she could respond, a voice at the edge of the pit demanded “Loo-ceee! You have some ‘splaining to do!”

  Cal looked up and laughed, spotting Patrick and 3 others gathered around. Sean gazed longingly at the mud, while Dara and Caroline shook their heads, bemused. Toby ran up and joined them, followed closely by Jake and Jim.

  Sean couldn’t stand it any longer. “Can I get in, too?” he asked eagerly.

  Cal made a show of counting heads. “We can’t fit everyone, but we can take turns. I’ll hop out and add some straw, and you guys keep mixing.

  Sean crowed happily, sat down and yanked off his shoes before jumping into the middle of the pit.

  “I can see where this is going,” Corinne commented dryly. “I am outta here!” She stepped carefully out of the hole, legs covered in near perfect knee high stockings of mud. “Go ahead, girls,” she called out to Dara and Caroline across the pit. “It’s a mud bath beauty treatment, Texas-style.”

  Both girls stepped back, and the boys pushed forward. “Ill have a go!” Jim called out. He cast off his flip-flops and jumped in beside Sean. Cal sprinkled handfuls of straw into the mix, and the boys stomped and hopped and squished.

  Corinne rolled her eyes, grabbed the hose, and began scraping at the mud on her shins.

  “What are we doing, anyway?” asked Sean breathlessly, jumping as high as he could and coming down again with a soft splat.

  “Making an oven, of course!” Corinne answered before Cal could open his mouth. Pink skin was showing through in spots, and she rubbed more vigorously.

  Cal snorted, then pointed at the wooden forms Dara and Caroline were using as seats. We put the adobe in the forms and let them set up, then use the bricks to build an outdoor oven. I don’t know if it will be done before this camp session is over. I hope so. You won’t believe the way the bread tastes.”

  “Better than that cornbread?” Jake asked, disbelieving. He had special memories of the cornbread.

  “Different,” Cal replied diplomatically.

  Jim hopped out of the pit, claiming “Enough fun for me,” and Jake climbed in. Patrick stood by the girls, smirking at this brother, who had a gob of mud stuck to one eyebrow and a generous blob in his hair.

  Jim dragged a small log over to Corinne and motioned to her to sit down. “Ill hold the hose, you scrub,” he instructed. She sat down gratefully and began scraping again, while Jim let the water trickle over her legs.

  “I think we need more power.” He looked up at Patrick. “Would you mind opening up the spigot a bit?”

  “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a fireman!” Patrick replied, but he walked over and turned up the hose.

  Cal let out a quick bark of laughter. “Isn’t Dr. McCoy before your time?”

  Sean answered for his brother. “Did I mention he’s a Star Trek geek, too? Not Star Wars, Star Trek!”

  “Me, too!” grinned Cal.

  Corinne glanced surreptitiously at Jim through her lashes. His streaky brown-blonde head was bent over her feet as he squirted water at a stubborn patch of mud. She forgot the shin she was working on, finding an odd pleasure in watching him. Jim glanced up, caught her staring, and suddenly noticed that her eyes were the same color as the ocean off Isla Mujeres.Corinne turned a little red, then her expression changed to one of surprise and she leaped up from the log. Jim fell back, not certain what happened, then noticed he had allowed the hose to trail up from her feet into her lap. He threw the hose down and grabbed Corinne by her elbows.

  “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to…that is, I wasn’t paying attention…I’m really sorry!” he managed, feeling like a right idiot.

  Corinne nodded, no longer feeling the clammy shorts, her attention distracted by his hands on her arms. “It’s OK…it’s, it’s just water,” she stammered.

  “I promise if you sit down again, I’ll finish the job properly without getting more than your legs and feet wet,” he said, recovering himself. She nodded again and he lowered her to the log, releasing her arms and picking up the hose again. Corinne began to smile. This is a good day! she thought.

  “That is looking just perfect!” Cal called out, gesturing at the mud. Jake hopped out and stood by Jim, waiting for the hose. Sean climbed out, too, his attention on Jake’s face instead of his own mud-soaked body. Jake was wearing a big, easy grin and Sean barely recognized him. Was that all it took to change him into a human being, a little mud stomping? he wondered. He swung his head around to Patrick to see if he had noticed, too.

  Patrick appeared to be entertaining Dara and Caroline with the crew of the Enterprise. Sean heard snatches of what sounded like Scotty and Captain Kirk arguing about the warp core.

  Patrick sensed his twin’s eyes on him and looked across the pit. Sean jerked his head in Jake’s direction, and Patrick turned his attention to Jake. He watched Jake for a few seconds, then looked back at Sean. An eyebrow rose steeply and Sean saw him mouth one word, “Fascinating”.

  Sean bobbed his head in agreement. Impatiently waiting for the hose, he gave Jim a friendly tap on the shoulder. “I think she’s clean, man,” he commented, looking at Corinne’s shiny pink legs and feet.

  “Oh, right…I’ll…I’ll get your shoes…Don’t move,” Jim said, moving off to search for them.

  Jake and Sean stared after Jim, then both focused on Corinne, still sitting on the log. A dull red crept up her neck and cheeks. “What?’ she blustered.

  They shrugged, with identical “I’m not going there” expressions. Ignoring Corinne, Jake picked up the hose and aimed a stream at his muddy legs. He glanced briefly at Sean. “You’re going to need more than this hose,” he noted.

  Sean felt a slow trickle of mud running down his face. He leaned forward and a large glob fell out of his hair onto his foot with a wet splat. “Uh-huh” he agreed. “Maybe I’ll get the worst parts off now, then hit the shower.”

  Jake finished up and handed the hose silently to Sean.

  “Are you sure none of you want a turn?” Cal asked Patrick and the girls. All three nodded. “OK. I’m going to fill the forms with this batch, then I’ll probably do another tomorrow. I’m guessing it will take three or four batches to get enough bricks.”

  Sean looked at the forms laid out, waiting to be filled with mud. “Do you need help? I’m still dirty,” he gestured at his filthy clothes.

  “Thanks a lot, but no, I can take it from here. If any of you have time tomorrow and want to do it again, you’re more than welcome to come back.”

  There was a battered wheelbarrow near the pit, and Cal moved it closer before grabbing a shovel and beginning to fill it with mud from the pit. Sean wandered back toward his cabin, Dara and Caroline headed for the lodge, and Corinne struggled to get her wet feet into her Converse. Jim sat down on the log to work on his own legs, and Jake watched Cal with interest.

  He moved mud repeatedly from the pit to the wheelbarrow in smoot
h motions. In no time, the wheelbarrow was full. Cal stepped out of the pit and wheeled the heavy load over to the forms.

  Jim got up and retrieved his flipflops, gave his feet a final squirt, then turned off the hose. “Sure you don’t want some help with that?” he called out.

  “Nah, I got it. This part goes pretty fast. Thanks, though.” Cal hefted a good size shovelful and dumped it into one of the forms. A couple more and the form was full. He shook the form to settle the mud, used a 2x4 to level it off, then started on the next form.

  As Patrick, Jim, and Corinne began to walk away, Cal called out “Hey, if you want some more fun tomorrow, I’ll probably get started around 9 o’clock.”

  “Count me in,” Corinne responded.

  “Me, too,” said Jim.

  “Why not?” Patrick chimed in. “I do a sweet Lucy impression.”

  “That I’d like to hear,” Cal said dryly. Rocky trotted up to him, deciding it was now safe to venture near the pit “How about you, Rock? We could do a little Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and put your paw prints in adobe instead of cement.”

  Rocky shook his head, ears flapping together slowly at first, building to a staccato rush of sound like a prop plane starting up.

  “I guess that’s a No.”

  Chapter 17

  Strange Magic

  Toby looked down at his duffle bag, trying to decide whether or not he should bring his pecan wand to the Magic class that afternoon. No, he thought, I’ll check out the class first. I can always bring it next time, if I need it. Zipping up his duffle, he headed out the door.

  Dara caught up with him just as he was about to go into the lodge. “Phew, made it!” she gasped. “I started off with swimming this morning, then watched Cal make adobe bricks, hiked with Caroline, her brother, and one of the counselors, Lauren, had a picnic lunch by this stream and there were these really strange looking round seed pod things, came back and took a quick shower so I could make it here,” she finished, taking a big gulp of air.

  Toby tried to follow all of it, but got stuck on adobe bricks. “Adobe bricks?” he questioned.

  “Yeah, he’s making an oven,” Dara explained

  Toby continued to stare at her, then finally said “An oven.”

  “Oh, I guess it does sound funny. Cal said if you bake bread and stuff in an oven made out of adobe, it tastes really good. Sooo, he’s making bricks and then he’s going to build an oven.”

  He tried to picture what this oven might look like, but all he could think of was his mom’s sleek stainless steel model. It made pretty good bread, he thought.

  They went inside and saw about a dozen kids scattered around the tables. There were short stacks of blank paper and cups of pencils. Ron was there, his head bent close to Noreen’s to hear what she said. He nodded once and checked his watch.

  “OK, let’s get started,” he called out briskly. “This session is called ‘Real World Magic’. As someone already explained, we’re not going to teach you how to do magic tricks.” He paused and scanned each face in the room. “The purpose of this session is to introduce you to a…a method for getting what you want in life. Arthur C. Clarke, a great science fiction writer, said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Say you were somehow transported back in time to the year 1450. If you told people about cars, planes, computers, televisions, they would not believe you. Such things would be inconceivable. If you happened to have your iPod and you let someone listen to music, what do you think they’d think?”

  “Magic!” someone called out. “Or a miracle.”

  “And you’d be burned at the stake!” someone else commented.

  “Only if it was country western music,” another boy said, grinning at Ron.

  Ron clutched his chest in mock pain. “That really hurts, man,” he complained, pointedly resettling his Brad Paisley concert ball cap.

  “Let’s define some terms so we’re all talking about the same thing. “Does anyone have a definition for technology?”

  There were some smirks. A girl raised her hand and Ron pointed at her. “It’s computers and stuff. Cell phones, wi-fi…”

  “Electronics are one form of technology,” Ron agreed, “one that a lot of people think of when they hear the word. Here’s another definition.” He picked up a marker and wrote the word “technology” on a flip chart that stood in the front of the room, followed by a definition.

  “The specific methods, materials, and devices used to solve practical problems.” (Free Online Dictionary) Ron read out loud.

  “Does anyone remember how we defined magic, when Noreen was talking after dinner the first night you got here?”

  No one responded and Ron went on. “Any agency that works with wonderful effect.”

  “Wonderful effects,” he repeated. “Miracles. A miracle can mean something supernatural, beyond the laws of nature. Another definition is “any amazing or wonderful occurrence.” (Free Online Dictionary)

  “For our purposes today, technology means the knowledge and methods used to bring something about, magic means something that brings about wonderful effects, and miracle means an amazing and wonderful occurrence.” He turned over a new page on the chart and quickly wrote the shortened definitions.

  “Got it, everybody?” Heads nodded.

  “The first thing we have to start with is You, with a capital ‘Y’. You, with the help of others in your life, can bring about what you want,” he stated. “You put energy in the games you want to play. You direct your mind and your body so they support you in making things happen, in creating magic.”

  Ron walked slowly across the room, turned, and paced back. He was surprised and glad to have spotted Jake sitting next to Jim at the back table. “This may not make much sense to you yet, but stick with me.” he continued. He stopped and spread his hands wide.

  “When you decide on something you truly want and you takes steps to make it happen, something…miraculous occurs, something magical.” He smiled. “Imagine that what you want is to go to Disneyland. You’ve never been, your friends have told you about it, you think your parents should have taken you when you were 5, much less 15. You want this very much and you intend to get it. You dream of it, see yourself walking into the Haunted Mansion, stepping into a boat at Pirates of the Caribbean, screaming down the Splash Mountain chute.”

  There were reminiscent smiles on more than a few faces. “How? How is this going to happen? You ask yourself what you can do. You think about everything that would need to happen in order for you to get to Disneyland and you come up with a plan.”

  Ron gazed down at a boy sitting in front. “What’s something you could do?” he asked.

  “Save your allowance for about 5 years,” the boy responded dryly.

  “Get a job, mow lawns or something,” someone else called out.

  “Earn money, yeah,” Ron agreed. “What about telling your parents what you intend to do? What about telling other people what you want to do?”

  Dara had been listening with a puzzled frown, but she suddenly thought of Shelley. “How about a treasure map?” she offered tentatively.

  Ron pointed at her and clapped his hands once. “Yes, that’s perfect! A treasure map makes your intention more real, and helps others to know it, too. The funny thing is…the magical thing is, that when you intend to have something happen, and you let others know about it, and you start working toward it yourself…things start happening, things fall into place to help you. Great Aunt Susie has a free plane ticket that she won’t be able to use before it expires, and she offers it to you. Out of the blue, your next door neighbor says he’s decided his paint looks pretty shabby and he wonders if you’ll help him paint his house; he figures it would cost him about $2000 to hire the whole thing done, but if you help him, he’ll give you $500. Your dad thought his yearly convention would be in Dallas this year, but it’s been changed to Los Angeles. He’s thinking about combining his business trip with a family vacati
on.”

  “Isn’t that just coincidence? Lucky, good timing, but coincidence?” Toby asked.

  “Just by chance? A happy accident?” Ron suggested. “You could look at it that way. Here’s another way…when you put your intention out there, when you decided to go for it and made plans to help make it happen, you set into motion forces seen and unseen. These forces line up to help you, with things working together in the right direction, pushing you forward. That’s the miraculous part. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. It’s nothing you have to believe in; you can have the experience of it whether you think things can happen that way or not.”

  He had been walking up and down the room, but he stopped in front of Toby and gazed down at him. “The Roman philosopher Seneca said “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”.”

  Ron started across to the other side of the room. “Instead of Disneyland, let’s look at something different. What about love? Money? Friends? Happiness? Helping others? A lot of people share those wants. Anyone here want those things?”

  Everyone nodded. “This is an opportunity for you to examine what you want, to focus on it and think about your intention. Here’s another definition for you,” he said. Turning and picking up the marker again, he wrote “intention: An aim that guides action; an objective.” (Free Online Dictionary)

  Ron paused and smiled. “Grab a piece of paper and a pencil. Start thinking about what you might want and see what comes up for you. When something seems right, write it down. Put into words your intention, your goal. Maybe it’s “I intend to make friends wherever I go.” If that’s what you really want, think about what would need to happen to make that come true.”

  He smiled. “Great Aunt Susie is not going to give you a free ticket for making friends. But you’ve noticed that she has a ton of friends. Sure, she’s a lot older than you, but she always seems to find people to talk with and laugh with wherever she goes. Does anyone know someone like that?”

  Dara raised her hand and Ron called her name. “I have a friend back home,” she shared. “If we’re standing in line at the movies, she talks to the people standing next to us. If we’re watching a swim meet, she jokes around with people sitting in the stands. She just…she somehow just joins in,” she finished.