I sit here typing while half a continent away people have been plunged into a world where basic survival is the only thing that matters. The survivors have had the carpet pulled out from under them. Many of their homes are under water. Gone, just like that. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like. It's like New Orleans has become a set for one of those post-apocalyptic science fiction films, except nobody is acting. It is not a movie. They haven't even begun to tally up the dead. Hard to do that when 80 percent of the city is submerged. Strength be with them.

I was thinking about homes when the new janitor and I set about our task of ripping out a toilet and a septic tank today. There is an employee who lives in one of those old seventies trailers parked on our site. It probably hasn't seen a road in decades, and is hooked into the sewer line like a real house. The only problem is that there's a leak somewhere, which is costing us 1000 gallons of water a day, so we had to get in there and pull everything out. Under one of the beds was the original water tank from back when the trailer was mobile. As I fiddled around trying to hook up the water lines in a way that would drain it, I wondered if the water inside had been there since the seventies. It sure smelled like it. We managed to get a bit of it on the carpet, making the whole trailer smell like chemicals mixed with the vague odor of septic tank (we poured a couple of gallons of bleach into it before we even got started). Then I imagined a whole city drowned underneath water even more toxic than this. I'm sure a lot of the homes there were even more meager and depressing than this trailer, but they were homes nonetheless, full of keepsakes and irreplaceable belongings. The soundbites on the radio today were mostly of people saying things like, "I didn't have much, but I wish I still had it." I wish they still did too. It's hard to think about mundane things right now.

Today was a departure from my normal work schedule. I went to a bland, brick building in San Jose, along with twenty or so other people and spent the day learning the ins and outs of supervising weekend work crews from a woman who could have been a stand-up comedian so I can be an official supervisor this season. I will probably end up supervising the cleaning crew at the site every other Sunday, with the new janitor handling it when I'm not there. We have to go through all of this official training because the work crew people are inmates. They are given a choice of jail time or paying their way into a work program like this one. We've all seen the people in orange vests picking up trash alongside the freeways. Well, some of them luck out and don't have to face the terror of knowing that the people driving by them at high rates of speed might just be drunk like they were when they got caught. Okay, that's not quite fair. I'm sure some of them got busted for reasons other than D.U.I. Anyway, I'll be there, working overtime, supervising a bunch of people who are actually paying to work. Life is funny sometimes. For me, not for them.

It's hot and the crickets are chirping. Willow was grouchy this evening so I took her out to look at the stars. It calmed her down. It's funny how objects trillions of miles away sometimes have to be called upon to help get the kids to bed.

R.I.P. Denis D'Amour. When you create something, part of you lives on after you're gone.

As I write this, a city I've never visited lies partially submerged in a brackish mixture of seawater, chemicals, and waste. The media is using words like, "nightmare," to describe the situation. It's really hard to wrap my mind around the reality of the calamity. Outside my window I see calm darkness. I know an earthquake could strike without warning at any moment, but I accept that. All Californians do. I'm not sure where I'm going with this post, but wherever one chooses to live, there seems to be a trade off. A gamble, if you will. The winning streak never goes on forever. I hope that when the waters recede, there will prove to be fewer casualties (human and otherwise) than the talking heads are predicting. Life is hard enough without having a 100 plus mile-an-hour monkey wrench come crashing down on us. Of course, when these things happen, people prove their resiliency. We bounce back. Maybe those who no longer seem to live, those who merely exist in some twilight of their own making, will find that they are truly alive after all. Maybe some good will come of this for them. As for the rest, my thoughts are with them.

Our own lives are a bit more mundane. The boys started school today. It's almost like summer never was. The Dickens gets to go to her new preschool this week too. Jen took her down to check out the campus today. She's really excited about it. At work, I'm continuing to help get our our site ready for outdoor school. They're going to tear down one of the buildings this Autumn to make way for the new lodge. This means shuffling rooms for the staff and students. I am one of the shufflers, dragging everything from wastebaskets to ceiling tiles from one place to another. It's peaceful this week, with no band camps or symphony camps or any other sort of camp cluttering up the place. There are just a few of us on site. As much as I like working with the kids, this is kind of nice in its own way. I'd better enjoy it while I can...

We took all of the kids plus a friend of the boys to the San Francisco Zoo today, where we met up with this family (who nicely got us in for free), bringing the total number of kids up to eight. We then spent several hours trying to keep all of the kids in sight. This proved nearly impossible, but after all was said and done we hadn't actually lost any of them, so I guess we did something right. The city was nicely foggy, like it almost always is, and the zoo wasn't too crowded. For the most part, the kids had a great time, running and giggling and gaping at the animals. I think I liked the insect zoo best - especially the drawers of arachnid specimens. Remind me to look up Malaysian Forest Scorpions. The damn things are nearly a foot long! There was an immense tailless whipscorpion too, and a tank full of skin beetles busily skeletonizing a rat carcass. The boys were pretty excited by the room as well. At the end of the day, well after the Three Kid Circus crew had left, we rode the little steam train and dragged the protesting girls off to the van, where they promptly fell asleep.

I've got to say, even though I know zoos are at the forefront of many conservation battles, it's still sad to see a lot of the animals behind bars, especially the lions, who just looked defeated and out of their element. A cage, no matter how gilded, is always a cage. It made me think of the movie, Instinct, with Anthony Hopkins (I can't remember who directed it), which had some interesting insight into the nature of captivity.

We didn't really get an opportunity to engage in conversation with our new acquaintances either. We were all too busy keeping the group together. We forgot to put sunscreen on the kids too, so Willow has a bit of a sunburn. So do I.

On a somewhat less serious note, we noticed that Prairie Dogs meditate and Meerkats sometimes faint.

Right now, the kids are resisting sleep on the eve of their first day of school. It's a lot warmer here than it was up in the city. Crickets are singing in the other room. The Floating World is playing in the background, part of an ongoing subscription series of cds released each month on the full moon. An aptly named band too, full of echoey flute. Quite lovely, actually. Released by the good folks at Dark Holler.

It has been hard to get up in the morning every day this week. I've been stubbornly staying up too late in order to do things like have actual, uninterrupted conversations with Jen and well... watch episodes of Six Feet Under. We went to a small get-together up in the hills too, and stayed late enough that the girls both went to sleep there. I was tired enough a couple of mornings ago that I went to work with my shirt on inside out and didn't notice for about 45 minutes. Nobody said anything either. Maybe it wasn't obvious enough.

This morning when I got to work I was greeted by the pungent smell of sewage. It turns out that sometime between when I left yesterday and when I arrived this morning, some meddling soul discovered the control valves for the leach field (our septic system - basically pipes with holes buried under the dirt in a gravel bed so bacteria can break down the waste - sort of an aquifer from hell, really) and shut off the flow. The result was that sewage was finding its way to the surface and forming puddles on the field. Nothing a bit of caution tape and some lime couldn't fix once the valve had been returned to its proper position, but a bit of a nuisance. Don't teenagers have anything better to do with their time than mess with forces they don't understand? Apparently not. They still can't recycle either. I've probably rescued a hundred cans and bottles from the band camp's trash each day this week so far. As I was doing this today, I got to thinking about how plastic bottles are a petroleum product. Petroleum will not be with us forever. People have a knack for using and disposing of things as if there is an endless supply. Everything is created out of sight and mind, and disposed of the same way. We can be so disconnected from this process sometimes. Maybe distracted is a better word, especially when talking about teenagers. Hormones dictate that plastic bottles are not important. One cannot breed with plastic bottles. It's a shame though that the biological impulse to further our species is so narrow in scope. Recycling plastic does indeed have a connection to this goal. We are so dependant on plastic now that I'm sure everything would collapse if it all disappeared tomorrow. How's that for a meandering ramble?

After work, I took the girls to get ice cream while Jen took the boys to get school clothes. The Dickens threw a minor fit when I got her ice cream in a cup instead of a cone, so I got her a cone to put on top. She ate exactly none of it. Willow didn't eat her cone either. I had three cones. On the way home, as we passed behind the grocery store, we stopped so the girls could shout into the ventilation tube leading into some unknown part of the building. They started by shouting, "hello," but quickly moved on to such colorful phrases as, "crocodile butt!" Then, in unison, they both shouted, "butt, butt, butt, butttt!" Willow, after a moment of thought, giggled and yelled, "tinky butt!" (that's, "stinky butt"). I can just picture some hapless grocery store employee back in the storeroom questioning his or her sanity as tiny, disembodied voices babble on in profane glee about general olfactory qualities of posteriors.

That's all for now. Goodnight.

Oh, and check out Pandora. Interesting.

On October 13th, don't forget to celebrate Peel Day, perhaps by playing some music for your neighbors... I think I'll have to get out all of my "Peel Sessions" records and tapes and have a marathon.

Yep. I spent the day filling in for the janitor. While cleaning toilets, I kept having this strange compulsion to march, which I blame on the fact that high school marching band members were practicing their drumming on the field nearby. Unfortunately, it is impossible to do these two things at once, both physically and psychologically.

Later, after spending a good chunk of the money we got for the van on food at Trader Joe's, we came home to find a new snake on the doorstep. It was in the cage that I'd transferred the Bullfrog tadpoles from. I'd left the cage outside because it belongs to the school, and I have yet to return it. Being a procrastinator, I haven't gotten around to actually putting it in my car or anything. Good thing too. After going inside and checking the messages, we, as I suspected, found out that K had gotten a call from her old neighbors about a snake in their yard. She'd gone to check it out and found a California Kingsnake, not her sister's python like she had been expecting. I suspect this particular Kingsnake, native though it is, probably escaped from somebody's house. Some kid probably caught it, and being inexperienced, put it in an improperly secured cage. It would be unusual to find a wild snake that far into suburbia on its own. Unusual, but not impossible, of course. Anyway, I'm going to let it go up in the hills.

Life's little surprises...

Today I got paid for hanging out at a barbeque. Okay, I actually had to drive various barbeque-related items over to the hostel adjacent to our site, and I had to light the grille. Poor me. I also got to eat barbequed veggie burgers and help myself to soda and cookies. Poor, poor me. I am so overworked.

This was the first time I'd been inside the hostel. I've been walking past it for years, but have never before had a reason to go inside. It has a beautiful, log-cabin exterior, and as my co-worker said, "it's kind of like visiting grandma's house." It really takes you back in time. In the trees, a pair of ravens held a long-winded conversation. On the ground, some doofus blocked me in with his SUV. When I asked him to move, he drove to the other end of the parking lot and blocked in the lady who runs the hostel. She called him all sorts of unpleasant names, but not to his face since by that time he was off galavanting around out of earshot. If people still rode horses instead of these steel monsters this sort of thing would never happen.

Then I spent the afternoon being a janitor because the real janitor had hurt his foot. Perhaps he hurt it kicking members of the band camp who don't seem to get the concept of recycling.

After I got home, we went to the park for a birthday celebration for Jen's stepdad. The kids had fun. The cake had inches of frosting. The sunlight slanted through the trees. Night fell. Home again, home again. I don't think the coffee will help much tonight.

This may look like a ghost wearing a lampshade, but it's actually Willow bouncing on the couch, something she does incessantly, giggling all the while.

(Short break while we scramble around trying to find all of the various paperwork and keys for the van so one of the 7 million people who responded within 20 minutes or so to the ad Jen just posted on Craigslist can buy it when he gets here)

I'm tired this week. We've still been staying up too late watching Six Feet Under. I participated in another rehearsal on Saturday, and worked half a day on Sunday, moving shade structures and lugging stuff around. When I got home, Jen went to her friend's birthday party and I hung out with Willow, who stayed up until eleven or so. The weekend passed like a half-seen insect darting past a porchlight.

Today, before we got down to the business of sorting out the summer camp stuff from the outdoor school stuff, the facilities manager took me up to the old Pick estate, which is where our school got it's name. It's been fifty years since the old geologist Vernon Pick occupied it, although I hear tell that the government had some secret doings on the site afterwards. Sounds like a tall-tale, and maybe it is, but it does lend the site a certain mystique. Mysterious past or not, I really love poking around inside dilapidated buildings. The estate is up on a hillside, with stone courtyards and stairways, now overgrown with juniper bushes and littered with leaves. Most of the original stonework is under a healthy layer of duff now, so one can only imagine what it must have looked like when it was in use for something other than a place for park rangers to dump broken or unneeded stuff. The roofs are bowed under half a century of pine needles, and the windows gape blackly. Inside is a darkened jumble of shattered glass, broken wood, and other unidentifiable detritus. Somewhere out back there is a bomb shelter, which is apparently walled off inside, hiding deeper and darker recesses. Lovely. I bet it's full of bats too. I'll have to hike up there with a camera sometime. Trees hide many details. Stone and rotted wood peeks out here and there. Beautiful.

(Oh, and by the way, a guy just stopped by and handed us $500 for our old van. He's picking it up tomorrow. I get to park in the driveway again! We can buy groceries too!)

We also stopped by the water tank, which is fed by a well. The pump was off, indicating that for once it was full. We climbed up on to to see for ourselves. I don't get to do that when I hike up there with kids, so I enjoyed the view from the top for the first time. The tank is important to us because it's where we get all of our water. We share it with the hostel and the ranger station, but their total use amounts to around 15%.
The rest of the day was less interesting, with more cleaning and lugging and sorting. Oh, and helping campers from previous weeks sort through mountains of lost and found items. After some fruitful searching, one mom bought five of our little fundraising packets (for the construction of a new lodge and general site overhaul) for $200. It's great to be appreciated. I'm proud to be a part of something that has this kind of grass roots support (okay, so it also has non-grass roots support, but the little individual gestures are more pure somehow).

Tomorrow is the last day of summer camp for the season. Time to put away all of the craft supplies, sunscreen, and pool equipment. Time to gear up for the Fall.
Tonight it doesn't feel like summer. The fog drifted in before eight, smothering the rising moon as it cleared the trees. Bats flitted here and there, decimating the insect population as they went. The last campfire and barbeque went well. It seems so out of time somehow - the families sitting together on the concrete steps of the amphitheatre, the camp songs, silly skits, and raffle. Like a slice of childhood. Of course, many of the items that get raffled off to unsuspecting campers look like they have been sitting in somebody's garage since my childhood. Well, except maybe for the baby shower sign recently uprooted from the side of the road leading up to camp. People are always forgetting to take their signs down. Have an event at the park? Put up lots of signs so your guests can find the way. Afterwards, conveniently forget about your damn signs. When Jen and I got married nearby, you'd better believe that we remembered to take the signs down. Maybe some sixth sense was telling me that if we left them up they'd end up in a summer camp raffle.

The last couple of days have started out with fog and overcast skies, but by noon the grey blanket has been drawn back, revealing the stark, warm blue of August. It still seems a few degrees cooler than last week though, which makes me happy.

I did some teamwork challenge exercises with my group yesterday, which is always interesting with seven year olds. After one particular challenge, during which the kids were supposed to work as a team to get everybody across some "hot lava" on a Tarzan-style swinging rope, I had a group meeting so the kids could air their grievances. More than half of the kids had complaints, such as, "he pushed me," and, "they weren't letting me help," and, "people were cutting in line!" After everybody had gotten a chance to talk, I asked if anybody was willing to fess up to these crimes. The ensuing silence was the quietest I had gotten the group to be all week.
It's the same thing with most adults too. People are always quick to complain, but it's always much harder to look at our own behavior. In the hope that the next generation will be braver at self evaluation than the current one, I have been trying to emphasize solutions over griping with the kids who enter my circle of influence. Solutions often start with some serious self evaluation. Complaining is so easy. Solutions are sometimes impossible.

Speaking of self evaluation, we finished season two of Six Feet Under. Three more to go.

The little guy in the top picture caused a lot of consternation today when it had the bad judgement to hang out near the door to the girl's shower room. It now resides in the grassy area past the pool.

Finally! A cloudy day! A few errant raindrops even found their way down far enough to mar the dust on my windshield while I was driving to work this morning. At around 11 am, the wind picked up too, which can be a scary thing if you're underneath a bunch of trees bone-dry from lack of rain. Sure enough, we could hear loud cracking and snapping underneath the roar of the wind. Up the hill, I could see large branches plummeting down. I think one of them knocked over a small Tan Oak tree as it fell. I was too busy to look closely. The kids, mostly 7 year olds, were all looking around them in wonder at the sudden snowfall of leaves, making it harder to get them out of the forest quickly. Get them out quickly I did though. Later, I found out that another group had actually been struck a glancing blow from a large branch. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt.

It never really did get hot today. I took the three older kids and one of their friends on a hike after dinner, leaving poor Willow behind. It's just too hard to watch both The Dickens and Willow around Poison Oak and other wilderness pitfalls. The other kids had fun though, although I had to carry The Dickens for a large portion of the hike. The boys spent a lot of time pretending to see various animals in the bushes. All we actually saw were a few rodents, some lizards, and a large piece of Rattlesnake skin. Nice hike though. The smell of sage is quite strong up there - much more than it is at work. I love it.

The summer is whipping by so fast that the imminent collision with autumn is likely to result in property damage. In less than a month, G, M, and I, with a little help from some friends, are set to participate in a music festival in Seattle. We managed to rehearse yesterday, which will be helpful. After rehearsal, we went on a mission to Rhythm Fusion in Santa Cruz. I had hoped to buy some more nose flutes, since I keep breaking mine. No luck. I was also on the lookout for jaw harps, since I'm also quite adept at breaking them and I'm down to my last one. They had some expensive ones and some cheap ones. I bought a cheap one. In fact, it was a Snoopy jaw harp. It's actually quite rugged, and looks like it can withstand quite a beating. Lastly, both G and I bought soolings, which are a type of Indonesian wind instrument - basically, a long section of bamboo with finger holes and a tricky little mouthpiece. Very relaxing tone though. We got the big ones, around three feet long. As we walked down the street with them, a guy wished us good luck at the gig he must have thought we were walking to. I guess it's not too odd to see guys with long hair carting around strange instruments on the streets of Santa Cruz. Most of them are downtown, playing them, with hats, baskets, or instrument cases placed hopefully nearby. Busking is alive and well here. I hope they all walked to their favorite spots, because if they drove they'd have to earn a lot of money to break even.

I've always said that we'll never really run out of oil, because nobody will be able to afford the last barrel. Hell, most of us probably won't be able to afford gas decades before it comes to that. Part of me hopes that gas goes up to five dollars a gallon so all of the large, gas-guzzling vehicles will be forced to gather dust and bird poop in their driveways. We really do need to find alternatives, don't we? Drilling in Alaska doesn't count. It's like adding another tablespoonful of broth to the soup that is supposed to feed your family for the next generation or two. And, I might add, a dearly bought spoonful of broth indeed. Let's hear it for hybrids, bio-diesel, and this new innovation called walking.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the final week of summer camp for this year. Today, realizing that I hadn't taken any pictures in awhile, I took out the Trans Pecos Ratsnake and let him climb the big, messy palm tree in our yard. He sure has grown. When we got him, he was not much bigger than a pencil.

If you're sitting there saying to yourself, "well, I could really watch some cool scandinavian folk music videos right about now," then you are in luck. Just follow this link.

I took the boys to see A Midsummer Night's Dream last night. It took place in the cafeteria at the old location of Lexy's old school. Lexy, ever the dramatist, shuffled along quietly lamenting, "so many memories, so many memories..."

The cast of the play ranged in age from 6 to 19, and included a couple of good violinists and a gymnast (in the role of Puck). A girl that was in the Nature's Drama camp I taught back in June had a small role as Cobweb, which was how I found out about this performance in the first place. I found it inspiring that there are still kids this age who spend their summers doing this kind of thing. It makes me want to reinvestigate Shakespeare as well. Not sure if that will actually happen, but we'll see.

At the first intermission (the play was about two and a half hours long, with two intermissions) both Lexy and Nate fessed up that they had no idea what was going on. Nate claimed to really enjoy it, but looked crestfallen when he found out that there were two more acts to go. At that point, I explained the story to them a little and told them to watch what the actors were doing. Actions speak louder than words, I guess. By the end of it all, they were having a great time.

I got to sleep in today as well, since Jen needed me to watch the kids so she could go to a dentist appointment. When I finally got to work, it was to discover that one of the big, walk-in freezers behind the dining hall had failed. I helped schlep all of the food over to the other freezer. Unfortunately, the dead freezer was the one with the ice cream. Fortunately, we had milkshakes instead of cones today, mixing the half melted glop with milk.

Next week it's back to doing the summer camp thing. There's actually a cool breeze coming through the window right now. Wonder of wonders!

The Dickens is currently sitting in the bathroom refusing to have her butt wiped. By me, anyway. "I WANT MAMA! YOU GO WAY"

My work day was less strenuous today, but somehow I feel more tired. I think I should start going to sleep earlier than midnight. Oh well, at least I got to spend the morning driving around in the school's air-conditioned van doing errands instead of weed whacking. The rest of the day was given over to helping the janitor cope with the onslaught of the two summer camp groups. Most of the symphony people don't seem to get the concept of recycling, so I'm constantly having to fish around in the trash to rescue bottles and cans. There's always all sorts of other nastiness in the garbage as well. You see people in a much different light after a few days of sifting through their trash. I have to admit that I lost interest in working around 2 PM today. Too hot. Send me on more errands in the van!

We have another large spider living with us. This time it's a Wolf spider, courtesy of Jen's friend K, who is sort of a clearing house for critters. This one was found underneath a desk at a business that her husband's cleaning company was cleaning. It's kind of cute. Willow, who went with me to get it, was really excited about it. Since she was so interested, I got out the other spiders too. She softly petted the Tucson Blonde tarantula, and exclaimed in wonder at the sight of the Costa Rican Zebra tarantula. After a moment, she toddled over and got her Dora the Explorer doll, telling it, "look Dowa! See spider!" Dora didn't seem impressed. But then again what does she know?

Another day of manual labor. I got to use one of those giant, gas-powered weed whackers today, which worked much better than the little electrical one that up to this point was the only weed whacker I had ever whacked weeds with. Almost a tongue twister, that. Anyway, I mowed down all the star thistle in the garden, which would have been quite dangerous if I hadn't been wearing a large, orange pair of chaps and goggles. Imagine thistle heads propelled into the air faster than bullets. As it was, I managed to cover myself in plant juice. I have to admit, it's kind of fun using a weed whacker. It sure does scare the local rodents though.

Afterwards, not feeling quite manly enough, I busted up some wooden pallets with a sledgehammer so that future campfires will have kindling. I stopped when I broke the sledgehammer. It's stupid to do this kind of labor in August. I had to keep raiding the ice machine in the dining hall, my plant- spattered appearance earning dubious looks from the violinists practicing nearby.

When I got home I actually had the place to myself, which is weird. Jen and the kids are off visiting friends on the other side of the hill, where she informs me it's 20 degrees cooler. They should be back soon though. I love having time to myself occasionally, but I miss them. I spent a productive afternoon watching the second season of Six Feet Under on DVD, thanks to Jen's sister who keeps sending such things our way. I glanced at the site when I was looking for the URL to link to, and I think I read a spoiler. You have been warned. Do not follow the link. Ha ha.

When I'm teaching outdoor school or leading a summer camp group, the school/camp site seems relatively small. There are miles of trails branching off from the site in all directions, many of which leave the average 5th or 6th grader gasping for breath. My office is indeed the trails and the trees. Of course, as you can see, our home office could also be classified as wilderness.

This week, however, I find my perceptions turned on their heads. I'm basically working as an assistant to the facilities manager - the guy in charge of making sure everything is working and put away properly. My main task, as I think I've mentioned already, is to make sure the symphony camp and the day camp aren't intruding on each other's territory. Easier said than done. Today there were little clusters of musicians around every corner, dragging chairs from the dining hall so they wouldn't have to sit their musical butts down on the lawn or in the dirt. Imagine, if you will, a large orchestra fractured into little sections and scattered about. Imagine the din as each little cluster of people practices different bits of music, completely independant of what other sections are practicing. After awhile I decided that they should collectively be called "cacophony camp." It actually has a nice ring to it too.

Oops. Went off on a tangent there. What I set out to say is that one's perception of distance increases when one has to carry bulky things like old TVs, rickety tables, food, and large piles of milk crates all over the place. I did some sweeping and whatnot as well. A lot of the kids who were at camp during previous weeks kept asking my why I couldn't take then down to the pond. Some of them were curious about how much I was getting paid for what they obviously perceived as an odious job. Sometimes I find it hard myself not to perceive this type of work as somehow beneath me. I think because of this it is important that I do this type of work when the opportunity presents itself. It actually can be pretty mentally, as well as physically, demanding sometimes. It definitely causes me to look at my work environment in a different way.

For instance, out behind the nature lab there are more fleas per square foot than I've ever seen before. I'm not sure if they had recently jumped ship off a dead or dying animal, or whether they were in town for the flea market, or what, but they sure liked it when stopped to contemplate all of the broken aquariums littering the area. Very itchy. I never would have known this little secret if I'd been off doing summer camp stuff.

I brought home the Bullfrog tadpoles that we caught last week too. I'm not sure what we'll end up doing with them, but the kids were pretty excited. Willow just laughed and laughed and kept grabbing my hand and pushing it into the water so she could watch all the frenzied activity as the tadpoles (and one small frog) rushed to get out of the way. Maybe I'll call the Youth Science Institute and see if they want them. The last thing we need around here is more pets.

We shared our site with another summer camp group last week. It made things kind of crowded, with nearly 300 kids all coming and going. It was a good program though. Apparently the kids were all children of migrant workers - not the kind of people who usually get the opportunity to go to camp during the summer.

This Saturday, I got the opportunity to get some overtime pay by cleaning up the site for the symphony camp that is going to be there until next Friday or so. One of the biggest messes I had to clean up was left behind by the migrant camp leaders. Apparently, they left a box of miscellaneous stuff behind - folders, rosters, craft supplies, posters explaining about the hazards of Poison Oak, Black Widows, and venomous snakes, and a number of bag lunches. Perhaps somebody should have made a poster explaining the hazards of leaving bag lunches outside over night, but then again they weren't the ones who had to clean up the mess. As anybody who has ever spent any time outside camping will tell you, there are animals out in them thar woods who love bag lunches more than campers do. I'm guessing it was Raccoons. The bag lunches, of course, were all torn open and scattered all over the place.

That wasn't the most noxious mess though. The refrigerator in the staff room gets that prize. The staff room changes location from week to week, based on what other camps are sharing the site. The staff room we use during the school year is currently full of cubbies for campers to put their belongings in. We had been using the rooms reserved for the classroom teachers during the year, but the other camp took it over last week, so now we're in the room used by the teenaged "cabin leaders" during the school year. Confused yet? Anyway, somebody brought the refrigerator from the old staff room to the new and didn't plug it back in. It sat in there like that for a week until we carefully put it outside, deftly avoiding the brownish liquid dripping from the bottom of the door. This weekend, feeling brave and looking for something to do, I opened it and, waving the suddenly appearing cloud of flies away, cleaned it out. Most of it went into the compost pile. I feel that I really earned my overtime pay. It makes me think about all of the people out there (including myself at times) who just figure that somebody else will come along and take care of things.

"Hey, don't worry, Bob, the trash fairies will clean that big ol' mess up for you overnight. Hell, they'll even brush your teeth for you if you forget. Take it easy. Relax. Responsibility is for suckers."

At home, it's quiet, except for the constant hum of the fans.

Afternoons at camp bring lots of free choice for the campers. Come to think of it, they bring lots of free choice for the staff as well. We basically just write down what we want to do and somebody eventually transfers it to a big dry-erase message board. Kids read the board and choose whatever they want. Whether or not they'll miss a chance to buy ice cream is usually a big factor in deciding what to do. Ice cream is important. Visiting the swimming pool is important too. I think some kids probably just eat ice cream and lie around the swimming pool. How decadant.

Nine kids and two counselors opted to go on a hike with me today. I decided to take them down a trail that I had never followed to the end before. It passes a huge landslide area that was closed off for most of the winter due to the possiblility of another such event occurring, so I didn't have a chance to hike it during the winter. Anyway, we made it to the end where we found a nice fixer-upper (see photo) and a cold, clear creek. One of the counselors found a Pacific Giant Salamander under a nearby log. That's always nice. We also saw lots of perfect little spider webs glittering in the sun. I pointed one particularly nice one out to the group. One of the boys looked at it with the appropriate reverence, making me feel like I was instilling in him some much needed reverence for the natural world.

At least I did until he looked at me and said, "it looks kinda like the Death Star."

I took a little hike during my break at work today, with the intention of taking photos. I ended up not taking any. I watched a Dragonfly alternating between gliding and darting after insects above my head for awhile, enjoying the way the sunlight made its wings glitter. Much too quick and small to take a picture of, of course. That's why I'm typing this here. There's more than one way to take a picture.

The rest of my time at work involved water. In the morning, we hiked up the same creek I've been taking kids to for the last three weeks or so. In the afternoon, we did some more pond cleaning. Afterwards I hosed myself down (the pond is sort of smelly) and jumped in the pool. I even managed to get soaked again during one of the skits we performed for the campers and their parents. My only consolation is that I also soaked the front row.

It was kind of a long day, but then again it's the sort of job where one doesn't mind long hours. Half of the staff is still there, taking the kids on a night hike and then camping out with them on the field. I'm on Friday duty this week, which means I'll be getting to work just as the staff who camped out are preparing to leave. I think I prefer camping out, because as I've mentioned before I love being able to look up at the night sky as I fall asleep. I also love having my Fridays free. I can't have that schedule every week though.

Remember to only put recyclable materials in the containers. If you don't, somebody has to go through the extra effort to sort it.

So the monitor (computer, not lizard - the lizard is fine) died and was resurrected. Jen noted that it was probably a sign that she was spending too much time on the computer. This is probably the case for both of us. It's not like we don't stuff plenty of other things into our days though.

For instance, today I took my group of campers to the makeshift archery range that we've set up in the lower field. Most of the kids had a great time shooting at the targets. Especially the Barney one. A couple of the girls decided that their time would be better spent braiding my hair, and then putting it into a bun, which I let them do only because otherwise they would have been bored waiting for all of the budding archers to finish up. I sometimes leave work with my hair done up in some crazy fashion. It's easy to forget about if I don't happen to pass a mirror. After archery, we hiked to the creek and around the pond. Later, after lunch, we went down to the high ropes course so kids could climb trees and inch their way across cables and logs 35 feet above the forest floor. The reward at the end of this is the zip slide, a cable-guided plummet through the trees. Most of the kids did fine. A few had to be coaxed across. A couple didn't make it. It sometimes takes time for these kids to realize that they really haven't failed at anything. The terrified kids are performing acts of courage, while the others are merely having a good time. Trying to do something that scares you, no matter the outcome, can only end in personal success.

At home, it is hot and sticky. Crickets are chirping. Coincidentally, I'm listening to a band called Bug Guts, who angrily sing about the state of our world. Sort of like a musical version of Earth First! Sing loud!

Todays pictures are of a Hazelnut tree, still managing to catch some sun under the towering Redwoods, and an Anise Swallowtail butterfly with the duckweed covered pond in the background. I almost stepped on a Garter snake while inching forward to get this shot. I think it was the same snake I caught yesterday, but couldn't really tell because it slid over a Poison Oak festooned drop off towards the pond. Speaking of Poison Oak, I seem to have it again. I've got itchy spots all over my knees and arms. It's not summer without it.

As I walked home from the grocery store a few minutes ago, I saw a guy cleaning the graffitti off the back entrance. I thought about asking him to follow me home so he could clean up all of the new graffitti Willow has bestowed upon every surface she can reach. Here's a picture of the artist herself.

Today might have been a few degrees cooler than yesterday. We did another pond cleanup during the afternoon, during which I caught some tadpoles and a small Garter snake. I spend an additional, completely useless, amount of time trying to net some adult Bullfrogs, which will allow themselves to be lifted slowly out of the water on a net, but then fling themselves into the water like olympic divers immediately afterwards. It was fun to try though, and it captivated the kids.

One of the other instructors saw a large Rattlesnake nearby, but it was gone by the time I went to look for it.

We have a new van, a Nissan Quest. I'll let Jen take over this part of the story on her blog. It is really nice to not have to rely on that old piece of crap we were driving.

Well, I'd better go read some Harry Potter to the boys now. The natives, as always, are getting restless. Time to go calm them down so they can get some rest.