Segowea '99

September 3rd, 1999-Friday

The drive was the same as every other year; it took an hour, we went around the “family camp curve,” a big downward sloping hill with a view of the surrounding countryside that had changed from farms to golf courses over the years, through the little towns in Connecticut and to the Massachusetts border. We crossed the border several times as the road wove back and forth from one state to the other, but only the last crossing is marked with a small sign only visible to those who know of its existence. Finally, we made it all the way up into the curvy tree-lined roads of the more isolated parts of the Berkshire Mountains. We drove past all of the familiar landmarks, Bish-Bash Falls and the telltale weathered, white-topped wooden poles on the side of the road that serve as guardrails in the upper Berkshires, and saw the sign. “Welcome to Camp Wa Wa Segowea!”

We turned right, onto the ravine-packed dirt road and drove down to the camp, being greeted first by the sight of Lake Segowea glinting out of the trees on the left, and then by the large rock where my brothers and I were still let off so we could race down to the bottom of the hill. I loved that rock; it was so big, so tall, 15 feet at least. When I was little, I had dreamed that I would be up there someday, a faceless young woman, with my trademark long hair and a flowing white dress, both blowing in the wind. It was impossible, of course, it would be extremely difficult to get up to the rock, and my white dress would not have been white had I managed to get on the rock, but that didn’t occur to me until I was older, and contemplated the actual climbing of the rock.

For years, we were the first family to arrive at Segowea. Until I was 12, my father was the family camp director. I would race to a cabin with my older brother, Wes, while my oldest brother, Marshall, went to another, and we would all search all of the drawers and cabinets and underneath the beds to see what people had left. We never found much, but it was the concept that we might find something valuable that guaranteed our doing it every year. We no longer did it, realizing the unlikelihood of finding anything that we would want, as well as the fact that we were no longer the first family there. I admit, not being the first family there was what kept us away, we would have kept doing it if we had been able to without anyone knowing about it.

We didn’t race to the cabins this year, but picked up a sleeping bag and a suitcase each, and headed towards the last cabin: Yukon. Each family got a wooden cabin, with three or four broken bunk beds, and sometimes a regular bed. The mattresses were filthy; we slept on them on our own sleeping bags and pillows. The supports on the beds were gone; you picked the least broken ones to sleep on. It was a scary thrill to sleep on the top bunk, never knowing if you would roll off, fall through, or somehow manage to stay on it. When I was old enough to finally be allowed to sleep on the top bunk, I found that I woke up in the same position I fell asleep in, too scared to roll over at all, clutching Chimp, my stuffed chimpanzee that I’d had since my fifth birthday. Each cabin had eight screen windows, most ripped, with shutters on the outside, also mostly broken. My dad and the boys went to get the rest of our stuff from the cars while my mom and I went outside to close the shutters in an effort for privacy and less bug bites. In order to close them, you had to lift the edge of the shutter, watch for the hinged 2 x 4 to swing out, and let the whole contraption fall. Most of the 2 x 4’s were no longer hinged; I found that out the hard way as mom and I took different shutters, and the 2 x 4 from my shutter fell on my chest, and it HURT. My mom laughed for a while, and then helped me out with the rest of the shutters.

After everything from the car was in the cabin, we all went down to the lodge to talk to all of the people who we had known our whole lives, people who had been coming to camp for longer than we had, families with kids around our ages, families we had grown up with at camp and outside of camp. I was waiting especially for the H___'s: Bruce and Ingrid, and their kids Aaron and Ashley. Aaron was 16, and Ashley and I were 14. Ashley and I were camp friends, we didn’t see each other the rest of the year, but we always hung out together for the entire weekend. Finally, the H____’s blue station wagon pulled up, and five people got out. I groaned when I saw Sean again. He had come with Aaron the year before and had been so annoying. And he was here again.

The Hearts games at night were Legendary. All of the younger kids wanted to play, all of the adults wanted to keep the younger kids out, and the insults flew around the circular table next to the fire. Some of the most evil, and funniest, comments I have ever heard in my life came from the Bruce and Ingrid, my father, and the neophyte with a law degree, Lance. I sat next to my dad, and Ashley, Sean and Aaron crowded around Bruce and Ingrid, all four of us hoping to be allowed to play a hand or two when someone took a snack break. The game was great to watch, even if you never got to play. Cancellation was brutal; two decks meant two Jacks to go after, and two Queens to look out for, plus double the amount of hearts, and a good chance of being screwed by whichever heartless player passed to you that hand; loyalties didn’t exist. The best part about Hearts was that the winners, and often the losers, were reported to the entire camp the next morning, so everybody knew when you ended the game at 2:34 AM with a whopping 134 points.

That night, Sean wasn’t overly annoying; he was actually funny. He was the same, the Polish jokes, the sex jokes; he really hadn’t changed at all, but I guess I had started to appreciate his humor. There were a bunch of girly-girls that had come that year and banded together; they were quickly nicknamed the “giggling blondes.” One of them who had been hanging around the Hearts table staked her claim on Sean by the end of the night. I laughed it off, wondering why anyone would want Sean; Aaron was smarter and more athletic, and much better looking, even Ashley admitted that. Sean and I ended the night on good terms, having finally come to a mutual respect for each other, both of us realizing that the other was pretty cool after all.

September 4th, 1999-Saturday

“TEN MINUTES TO BREAKFAST!!!!” I rolled over, waiting for approximately eight and a half more minutes to go by before I had to get out of my warm cosy bed, put on a sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and sandals, and stumble across the lawn to breakfast.

After breakfast came the volleyball game, a milder version of the prickly Hearts game that everyone could play. We argued about the boundaries, ran after the ball before it rolled into the water (which it inevitably did), yelled demeaning things at the other team, and had a great time. I had made the JV team for my high school, and so I had been practicing for the past two or three weeks. My newfound skills were obvious to those who hadn’t played since the game a year ago, and I garnered respect from all the guys who assumed that girls couldn’t play as well as they could when I spiked the ball past Josh N____, an athletic 28 year old who was 6 foot 3. After the game, on the way in to lunch, I heard Sean say “Hey!” from somewhere behind me. I knew Aaron was standing directly behind me, so I assumed Sean was talking to him, and thought nothing of it. Then I heard it again, accompanied by a tap on my arm. “Hey!” I turned around to see Sean standing right behind me. “That blonde girl’s wasting her time.” I turned around quickly, so he couldn’t see the shock on my face, and walked quickly to the dining room. I hadn’t been able to say anything, though I don’t know what I would have said. I was completely taken aback, I had never thought of Sean as anything but Aaron’s friend, but there he was, telling me that he liked me. The scariest part was that I knew that I liked him, too.

After lunch, Aaron, Sean, Ashley and I all decided that we were going to solve a mystery. We decided to find out where the little stream on the left side of the lake went; no one had ever made it past the beaver dams. Sean and Aaron took separate canoes while Ash and I took two of the new kayaks. They weren’t real kayaks; they were funyaks, little hard plastic boats in bright colors. I thought they looked more like floating crayons, but I figured I would give it a try anyway. I had learned how to row a rowboat by myself when I was five. At eight, I learned how to steer a canoe, with someone providing the muscle in the back. At nine, I learned to combine the two skills and row a canoe by myself. At thirteen, I had learned how to sail a one-person sailboat. I figured a kayak would be a new challenge, although we only had canoe paddles, so it really wasn’t that different. We paddled over to the left of the lake, through the water lilies, trying not to tangle our paddles in the lily pads while still keeping some forward motion. It is illegal to pick water lilies in Massachusetts, so I made a point to pick one in full bloom as I went by them. I did this every year, just because. We went over the fallen down bridge, and through the shallows, trying not to scrape out the bottoms of the boats or hit the sides of the narrow passage. We made it to the beaver dams; it was hell getting through them. We had to get out in our bare feet, and run across the side of the dam dragging our boats and praying that the beavers, notoriously vicious when their home is threatened, would not attack us. We put our boats back in the water as soon as possible, and followed the extremely narrow stream along to a little pool, just big enough to hold our four boats. We were so disappointed that there was nothing magical at the end of the stream, and that it had ended less than a quarter of a mile away from the lake. Ashley had to go to the bathroom, so she pulled her funyak onto the bank and ran into the woods while we waited for her. She came back really fast, and Sean yelled out “What the fuck, do you have a cock or something? No way you pissed that fast!” We ignored it as it was a typical Sean comment, and made our way back to camp.

We were pretty tired after that, and we all went off to do our own thing. I joined my mom on the porch lodge, which overlooked the lake. The older women at the camp come every year with plenty of knitting to keep them busy, while the younger women brought books. My mom was not a knitter, and so she was always out there with a book, reading or chatting. I came up with The Great Gatsby, and sat down next to her on the wicker bench that seated two people, and I leaned my head on her shoulder as I read.

That night at Hearts, Aaron, Sean, Ashley and I all hung out by the table again, hoping to play. The players were notorious for taking many late night snacks on Saturday and Sunday nights, especially going after whatever desserts the chef had made that day. It is customary for the oldest child to play for their parent during a snack break, and those players without kids tend to rely on the younger kids, which Ashley and I were. Glenn N____, whose family we had known forever, decided to take a break and as a joke, he decided that Ashley and I could play together, as a team effort. We pulled up and extra chair, and did as best we could. Soon after, Luke N____, Glenn’s 19-year-old son, left for a snack break, handing his cards to Ashley, while I kept Glenn’s. We had liked the idea of playing together, so we continued doing it, showing each other our cards for the best possible playing. We did it blatantly, and no one accused us of cheating (we still weren’t winning), although we received a nickname that stayed with us: the braintrust. Lance explained what it meant to us, but we didn’t care or really understand, although we knew it was demeaning in some way. Eventually, Ashley and I shifted around the table, so we couldn’t continue showing each other our cards, although we still did okay. Neither of us won or lost, we were both somewhere in the middle. Bruce ended the game with 112 points, while my dad won with only 34 points, barely edging out Ingrid and her 39 points.

September 5th, 1999-Sunday

After breakfast, I was sitting on the porch, sketching the lake, when a commotion started down at the lake. There was a legend involving a snapping turtle here at Segowea, but we had all thought that the turtle wasn’t real, just a fictitious element in a story from long ago. I went down to see what it was all about, and I was informed that the snapping turtle from the legend had made an appearance in the middle of the lake; some kids in canoes had seen him. My dad, Bruce, and Lance went out in rowboats and metal garbage cans to try to catch him; they didn’t want anyone to go swimming in the lake with the snapping turtle there.

They were out there for an hour or so, but didn’t catch him. We all thought the snapping turtle had gone away to wherever he had come from, so we tried to stop thinking about the fact that there was a three and a half feet long snapping turtle in the lake, when he resurfaced near the metal H dock (shaped, of course, like an F). All of the adults ran out there as Ingrid, showing the most courage she’s probably ever possessed, held out a fish on a pole, right in front of the turtle. He took a big bite out of the fish, and then he was gone before any of the men came with garbage cans. He disappeared completely, and we never saw him again, but could forever say that we had seen the legendary Segowea snapping turtle, and had half a fish to prove it.

Later that afternoon, a big group of people went down to the swimming dock, which had a diving board, a middle tower (5-10 feet above the water line), and a high tower (10-15 feet above the water line), for Tweet-and-Snork. It is an official Segowea game that is played every year on Sunday afternoon. My dad stood to the right of the high tower with a soft volleyball while the first set of three teenagers climbed to the starting positions: Aaron on the middle tower, Danny (the chef’s 18-year-old son) on the diving board, and Sean on the high tower. My dad made sure all three were ready, then threw the ball out in front of the middle tower. Aaron jumped off, caught the ball, and threw it, mid-air, to Danny on the diving board. Danny jumped off, also caught the ball with some difficulty and threw it towards the high tower. Sean jumped off, but Danny had thrown the ball too low, and Sean couldn’t catch it. Sean swam to the ball and tossed it to my dad, who asked if the next three were ready: me on the middle tower, Lauren (Danny’s 15-year-old sister) on the diving board, and Ashley on the high tower. My dad threw the ball, and I jumped and caught it and threw it down to Lauren, who missed it completely. She wasn’t very athletic, but Ashley and I needed a third as the boys always kept their set of three. A few of the younger kids created sets and went up there, with one of us filling in when they couldn’t find a third. The younger kids were never able to complete the game; even the teenagers rarely could. Occasionally, Lauren and Danny managed to both catch the ball and throw it up in a manner that Sean and Ashley, respectively, were able to catch the ball. Even fewer times, Ashley and Sean were able to not only catch the ball, but also to toss it to my dad to complete the game. He never dropped the ball, as he didn’t have to jump off the dock at any point.

After playing Tweet-and-Snork for a couple of hours, the four of us, Sean Aaron, Ashley and I, decided to take out sailboats. Aaron and Sean took one, while Ashley and I took another. They were Sailfish, one-person sailboats, but it was theoretically possible to put two people in it, though it was a little cramped. Ashley and I had just learned how to sail the year before, so we weren’t very good at it. Ashley took the boom, while I took the rudder, and we made it out to the middle of the lake with only a little bit of wind. I kept turning the rudder to try to catch some wind, and since I wasn’t holding the string on the boom, I forgot to watch out for it and thus got whacked a few times as the boom swung from side to side. Ashley never warned me when it was coming, but always laughed when I got hit. We finally caught a big gust of wind, and completely lost control. The boat was going so fast and Ashley was letting the sail fill completely up, barely holding the string at all; we almost tipped over, screaming bloody murder as the sailboat sped along at a 45-degree angle. We made a combined effort and managed to pull the sail in, and turn the boat away from the wind so we slowed down to a do-able speed. After being hit by the boom a few more times as we tried to get moderate wind, I decided to climb on the fore of the boat, and hung on as Ashley controlled both the boom and the rudder. The wind had died down, so Ashley kept turning, trying to find a little bit of wind. She finally found some, and did a quick u-turn that sent me flying overboard. I swam back to the boat and climbed in, taking back my post at the rudder, and being more vigilant about the boom.

Soon after, the wind had almost completely died down, and Sean and Aaron headed back; we followed about two minutes later. We were fine most of the way, using the rudder as a makeshift paddle, when all of a sudden we got a burst of wind. Sean and Aaron were tying up their boat, and we were headed straight for them. I weighed my choices: 1. turn out of the way and probably take a half hour to paddle back over to the dock where the boats were tied up, or 2. go straight for Sean and Aaron’s boat, with Sean still on it. I opted for choice two, and we went straight into them. They apparently hadn’t noticed us coming straight for them because they didn’t yell at us until after we hit them. “What the fuck are you doing?!” “What the hell is wrong with you two?!” I told them Ashley had the boom and I had the rudder, and I couldn’t see where I was going because the sail had blocked my vision. It was a complete lie, of course, but they didn’t realize that. They just assumed we were both really stupid. I never told them it was just me, and that I had run into them semi-on purpose.

That night, after it had gotten dark, the whole camp started bringing marshmallows, sticks, flashlights, cups, matches, and “bug juice” out to the campsite behind the cabins. The bonfire was lit, and all the little kids started roasting marshmallows in the fire and drinking bug juice. Ashley and I handed out marshmallows, occasionally stopping to help one of the kids roast a marshmallow or put out a flaming marshmallow, and to eat one that had been offered to us. When there were no more marshmallows, the storytelling began. Some of the little kids had skits or jokes, 13-year-old Richard L____ told one of his usual weird stories that had no connection to anything, and one of the parents told the same backwards joke that he told every year. I tried to get my five-year-old brother, Adam, to tell a story, but he adamantly refused, and kept eating his very burned marshmallows. Finally, a few of the older kids and parents stood up at the very end when the littlest ones had gone to bed, and told scary stories. Ashley and I watched, but never participated, nor did Aaron or Sean. Therefore, I was very surprised when Aaron stood up, right in front of the giggling blondes, and began to speak. “There was a man who lived by himself in the woods at Segowea. He was a retired scientist, who had worked in the field of crossbreeding. Although he was retired, he still occasionally worked on something. He had never been allowed to crossbreed a fox and a wolf in the lab, so he decided that Segowea was the perfect place; no one would know about it other than him. He had been warned by other scientists that the two species were too volatile to be mixed together…” “What’s volatile?” one of the giggling blondes interrupted. “It means unpredictable, unstable.” “Wait, I’m confused!” another one of them added. “It means that if a fox and a wolf are mixed, the result would be something more terrifying than either fox or wolf, something much bigger, and fiercer, and really, really dangerous and scary, okay?” Aaron said, in impatience. “Yeah, keep going” the first answered, oblivious to his annoyance. Aaron continued, “The scientist first built a cage, to keep it in safely, and then he mixed the fox and wolf and created a baby folx. He kept it in the cage at all times, but it grew bigger and bigger, until it was over twice the size of a normal wolf. One day, he came back from walking in the woods to find that the cage had been ripped apart, and the folx was gone. A few weeks later, the scientist’s sister came to visit him. She walked in, and found a body ripped to bloody shreds on the floor, with no sign of the attacker, just a huge cage, open. The police verified that it was the scientist, but could not understand how he had been killed. The thing that attacked him was something that didn’t, something that couldn’t, exist. No one had ever found the folx, but it is said that he still roams Segowea today, only moving under the cover of night, in the woods.”

A few more stories were told, but the giggling blondes barely paid any attention to them, they were so scared. All of a sudden, a rock rolled down the hill, right onto the ground next to the fire. Everyone was silent for half a second, and then the giggling blondes started screaming in terror. No one knew what had happened, why the rock had fallen, right at that moment, and rolled over to the campsite. We all looked around, and no one was missing…except Sean. He had slipped out during Aaron’s story. I understood right away where the rock came from, as did Ashley, but we didn’t say anything, we just smiled and laughed to ourselves. Aaron was still sitting there a few minutes later, when we all heard rustlings in the woods, no more than 15 feet away, in the direction of one of the less-used paths that led to the bonfire. Aaron went to investigate, and never came back. Lance followed, and didn’t come back either. The bonfire ended then, the giggling blondes too scared to let anything else happen. They left first, running with their flashlights, tripping over tree roots and rocks as they tried to get back to the lit area of camp as fast as possible. We heard screams from the end of the path, quick roars, then female screams, then male ones. By the time Ashley and I got there, there was no one there.

Later at the Hearts game, Sean and Aaron walked in a little late, after the game had been going on for about 15 minutes. We all watched as they walked in and sat down near the table, but not right next to it, laughing, but obviously in some pain as well. Bruce called them over and asked what had happened to them. We all knew that they had planned the whole thing, from the rock, to the disappearances, to scaring the giggling blondes at the end. It turned out that they had scared the girls as they had intended, but then when the girls realized everything, they had turned on Sean and Aaron and beaten them up with flashlights. The entire table was laughing hysterically at them, having been beaten up by a group of 12-15 year old girly-girls, although Bob Geisel, the camp director, thought they should be punished for rolling the rock down the hill. They said that the rock had been an accident; they were just trying to make noise when it dislodged and went rolling down. We all knew they were lying, but after my dad took Bob aside and told him to forget about it, he let it slide.

The game went on as usual, with the parents stopping pretty often for snack breaks. Richard tried to play every year, but was not allowed to very often, as he had no parent or family friend in the game. However, someone gave him a break, and he sat down next to Bruce, for a hand or two. Between rounds, Bruce stood up and quickly motioned for me to come with him to the kitchen. I was confused but I followed him, saying that I was going to get a quick snack between rounds. Bruce turned around once we got into the kitchen and said “Listen, you gotta help me out here, I really need you for this.” I was even more confused, but then he continued. “You see, I’m sitting next to Richard, and well, he smells really bad!” Luke N____ walked up at that point, eating a piece of cake. Bruce glanced over, then continued with Luke still standing there. “I mean, really, really bad, like old shoes. I don’t think he’s taken a shower all weekend, and I know he was wearing that shirt yesterday.” By now, Luke and I were laughing pretty hard, and Bruce always loved an audience, so he kept going. “Think about it, he played two games of volleyball, soccer, god knows what else he did in his free time, and now he smells like shit! So here’s what you gotta do. You gotta sniff a few times or something, then ask if someone farted, say that something smells awful, something like that.” Bruce went on and on for a while, while Luke and I were in hysterics. I walked out, unable to keep a straight face.

I sat back down at my spot, right next to Sean, who looked at me strangely. “You, um, seem to be walking a bit funny. And you can’t stop smiling. Neither can Bruce. So, what exactly went on back there?” I realized what he was saying and told him to fuck off, I had just gotten a piece of cake, and Bruce had told me a joke while I was in there. Sean turned around towards the kitchen, right as Luke came out. Luke has an abnormal walk, probably a result of a sports injury from long ago. “Hey Luke!” Sean yelled. “You’re walking kinda funny there! What happened back there?” Luke just started laughing, and I rolled my eyes and gave Sean a little shove. I still couldn’t stop smiling, it was all I could do not to laugh; I couldn’t say anything about the smell, I knew I would have cracked up if I had tried. Bruce kept looking at me, but I was rendered incapable of completing my mission.

Aaron got up after the next round to get a snack, and as he had no replacement, he told the dealer not to deal him in that round. To fill in the space, Richard moved over one seat, right next to Ingrid, and his chair next to Bruce was removed from the table. The cards were dealt, and we all picked them up and started to decide what cards to pass to the person on the right. All of a sudden, Ingrid made a face and said, “what is that smell? It smells like something died in here! It’s horrible!” As soon as she said the word smell, Bruce, Luke and I burst out laughing, and Richard piped up “it’s probably me. I haven’t taken a shower this weekend.” Ingrid slowly turned and looked at him in disgust as Bruce composed himself enough to say, “Say, Richard, weren’t you wearing that shirt yesterday, too?” “Yeah, I should probably change it, huh?” “Yeah, that would be good. Why don’t you take a shower while you’re at it?” Bruce said. Richard left the table, apparently unfazed by what had just happened, although he didn’t return to the game that night.

September 6th, 1999-Monday

I always hated Monday morning at camp. We got up for a last breakfast, and then had to close up camp for the winter. The men put all the shutters on the windows of the lodge while the women created a chain to get all of the mattresses out of the cabins and into the mattress storage room at the top of a narrow flight of stairs in the lodge. The teenage boys and a few of the younger men took apart the H dock, carrying the six-foot sections into the rec room of the lodge. The two floating docks near the swimming dock, and the slippery log, were rowed in to shore. The slippery log was an ancient tree trunk that had been soaked to a slippery finish; it rotated in the water when you tried to pull yourself up on it or walk across it. It was waterlogged with the lake water from the past half-century, and it was heavy. It usually took about ten men using leverage tactics to get it a few yards off the shore. It never made it further than that. The women always watched and laughed as the men tried to get the log out, struggling and cursing and sweating.

When the last of the lifejackets and paddles and boats had been brought into their winter homes in the rec room, everyone was free to go home. Everyone packed up their things and put them into their cars. Some of the women would raid the kitchen for any food that could be brought home with them. My mom took 9 gallons of milk home that year, as well as two platters of coffeecake. I was putting the milk in the car as Bruce came up to me to tell me that they were all leaving. I gave him a big hug, then followed him over to Ingrid’s station wagon. I gave Ingrid a hug, then said goodbye to Ashley and Aaron. Sean wasn’t there yet; he was still bringing the last load from the cabin. I was nervous to say goodbye to him; we had flirted and hung out all weekend, and I was crazy about him. I didn’t know if he would hug me, perhaps kiss me for the first time in my life, try to get my number, or what he would do. I was hoping all three, but I seriously doubted all but the last one.

I went into the kitchen, got the coffeecake, and put it in my mom’s car. He was there by the time I walked back over to the station wagon. I said goodbye to Ashley again, as she stepped into the back of the car, then turned towards Sean. He was as nervous as I was, and we both only managed goodbye before Bruce told him to get in the car, they were all ready to go. He got in the car, and they drove off, with me waving goodbye. I didn’t know if I would ever see Sean again. I doubted it.

I kept to myself while we finished packing my mom’s car, and she and Adam followed the station wagon up the camp road, only two minutes later. I walked around camp with my dad one last time, then my older brothers and I got in my dad’s car, and we drove slowly up the camp road, waving goodbye to the lodge, goodbye to the lake, goodbye to camp, goodbye to whomever was in the car in front of us. I left that year in both ecstasy and agony; I was in love, but had a broken heart. I was sad over leaving camp; I always was, but I was even sadder that Sean and I had been separated. I didn’t cry on the way home, and even made it long enough to put my bags in the house and tell my mom that I was going for a walk before the tears started flowing, soaking my cheeks with the pain of youth, the pain of growing up, and the pain of being in love for the very first time.