Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Party!

The final performance of the camp was on Saturday night. Hallelujah! The next day, J and I (plus adult volunteers) tore down the whole stage and turned it back into a basketball court. I arrived at one important conclusion: adults are much harder to work with than kids. 1: They have less energy. 2: They think they actually know what they are doing, when they clearly do not. 3: You can't yell at them when they break/screw up/destroy something. If you yell at them, they get offended and go home.

These difficulties aside, we managed to finish tear down in time to go out to another island for an end-of-camp party. We visited the property of Thor, another board member and the teacher of our CPR class. His current residence is an ancient log cabin, complete with shipwreck.The story goes that the owner of the ship wanted a place to moor it, and offered Thor's grandfather (the previous owner of the cabin) an old painting in exchange for the use of his small harbor. Soon thereafter, a storm came in and the ship sank. Thor's grandfather never heard from the owner again, and the wreck has been there ever since.

Thor owns a Newfoundland and a Newfie-Lab mix, the two of which provided us with easygoing companionship for the evening. As the sun was setting, I worked my way toward the other side of the island and was greeted with a spectacular view of Mt. Edgecumbe, the local volcano. This is the mountain that I confused with Mt. St. Helens (circa 1979) when I saw it in posters at the camp.

Thor had a huge pile of wood with 2 full stumps and seemingly endless cedar branches to burn. He informed us that he wanted it all gone by morning. Though clearly an impossible task, the counselors and I gave it our best effort. We ended up stoking a raging bonfire, complete with ritual human sacrifice!!

When the group of camp workers had reached a collectively harmonious level of intoxication (with a few notable outliers), Thor took us back to town with his boat. Thus ended the 2008 Sitka Fine Arts Camp, with most attending in high spirits and noticeably sloshed.

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