Warmer, drier (low 40s)I wandered down to Uncle Toby’s at the end of my work day, and holy smokes, the roof is gone! I don’t just mean the shakes; they also took off the boards. It’s great—from Raker you can see right down in there. It’s amazing how much is happening to that building.
It’s also amazing how much of a mother hen I’ve become about it all. I didn’t go to camp here as a kid, and I don’t work here every summer, but the meaning of this place is beginning to sink in. I don’t know why, but I’ve been finding reasons to stroll by Uncle Toby’s every afternoon after work. I tell myself it’s for purely constructive purposes (i.e. to see how they’re doing the construction), but I’m finding more and more that it has something to do with making sure they’re doing right by my building. My building? I don’t own the place. No one owns the place. I don’t even really enjoy watching skits performed in the building. But it’s come to mean something to me over the years, and when I walk down there, I see all these construction people who have no idea what the building means, who don’t start every little project by looking around wistfully.
I found out tonight that Slanty was built in 1947. I guess we celebrated its 60th anniversary by putting a ceiling in.
I’ve taken out five spindly green spiders tonight. It seems they moved in over the weekend. Hmph.
1 comment:
Every time they start revamping a building at camp, I get all excited and nervous inside. Excited because every building there could use a revamp, and nervous because I just know that they're gonna mess it up somehow! I know logically that they're professional construction workers who know what they're doing, but I feel the same way you do. They don't know the significance of all of this place. They don't look around wistfully and think to themselves, "This is where this happened, this is where that happened. This is what this building means."
Camp tends to tunnel its way into your heart when you're not looking, and then you don't realize it until it far too late.
Ah, now you've gotten me all camp-mushy before I've got to go to class!
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