Thus ends week eleven

Here I am, sitting in the staff lounge on one of the computers. This is already unusual; the staff lounge is usually overflowing with people waiting to spend hours wasting time on Facebook. Steve's here next to me, but he doesn't really fit in with the usual crowd in here either. Granted, he spends a lot of time in the staff lounge, but he hides in the kitchen and works on his paintings. Tent repair, commisary and dining hall have all gone home and what's left of program leave soon.

What all has happened in the last week? I haven't got a lot of energy right now; it's been hot for the past couple of days, as if the summer is trying to extend itself by raw effort. Wednesday was a real triumph: on Tuesday Brian informed me that my bus tour for Wednesday was canceled and that I would be going on a backcountry tour instead. We began in the buffalo pasture, chasing down the buffalo and taking photos of them for half an hour. Then we made our way to Hunting Lodge and Cimarroncito, where my passengers briefly amused themselves by climbing in the rock gym. Finally we went to Clark's Fork and Pam got the Chase heart brand on her shoe (she also tried to get me the branding girl's number, but I managed to drag her away after minimum embarassment).

That afternoon, Pam, Cameron, Kim and I went out to the waterfalls. Those that have been following closely know that I've already been there once this season, but it was worth another trip. For one thing, the water was warmer, and for another, I had a waterproof camera this time around, meaning bolder pictures of us freezing our tails off. I very skillfully climbed on the rocks all the way around the tiny lake at the top to let Cameron take a picture of the three of us on the other side, then slipped into the water. A good time was had by all.

Closing program this week was a composite of all of the best skits from the summer: the tent city infomercial, Falling Rock, the scout singers, the banana skit. It felt like a good way to close things out, particularly since it took the last shreds of my energy to play the farmer immediately after playing the interpreter. Summer's sun is fading into the dusk and sunset of Fall. It's as apt a metaphore as I am up to for now.

Week ten: entering the homestretch

When I first got my assignment for week ten, I was a little nervous. It wasn't about the group, since I had the Mustangs (11-13 year old girls). They tend to have all of the energy of a younger group and the activities and attention span of an older one. I didn't have a problem with my wingman either; I was working with Morgan, an eighteen year old who seems to have become such by combining the enthusiasm and spirit of two nine year olds. The tricky bit was that we were assigned to two kids: ideally you would have eight to twelve of them - thus giving you a personal connection with all of them but still giving you enough people to play games with. Failing that, a bigger group is better than a smaller one; you don't necessarily learn all of the names, but at least you can play some of the more epic games. With a small group, everything you try to do takes less time than you want or expect it to, and then you find yourself scrambling for new things to keep their attention.

On Monday morning, only one of our girls showed up. It was a mind-blowing development - we've never had a group of one before unless the kid had a severe developmental issue. Fortunately, necessity is the mother of invention and Morgan and I did what we probably should have done in the first place: we combined our group with the Trailblazers. Obviously, dropping a girl into a boy group had a few logistical issues - starting with the overnighter and the infamous "blood talk", but Hope fit right in with the boys. Okay, they wouldn't sit together, but they didn't mind playing together.

I felt a little bad joining the other group, since I have a tendency to take over, but Pam and Emily didn't seem to mind. We switched the all day hike to Crater Lake so that we could spend the night at the Stockade instead of setting up two separate campsites at Hunting Lodge. We had to sleep with Hope in one tower, the girl leaders in the other, the boys under the roof and me in the kitchen, but we got it done and we even managed to have a roaring campfire.

This weekend's adventure was Mt. Capulan, the last volcano in this part of New Mexico. It wasn't really a hike, just a long drive and a stroll around the crater, but it was everything you'd expect a volcano to look like: a perfect cone caved in at the top.

The sad news is that everyone is leaving. There's a lot of hugging going around, but the goodbyes aren't as tearful as you'd normally expect. Maybe we're just tired, or maybe we all expect to see each other again (I know that just about everyone expects me to be back next year). Perhaps it's just that we've had too much joy this year to be sad. Our staff have hiked almost every mountain on the ranch, we've gone to campfires at half of the camps out there. We've bonded at Colfax and the James and over a hundred movies in the staff lounge. We've messed up our lines at opening program, danced at cobbler night, done the tush push at western night, sung "follow me boys" whether we liked it or not, and forgotten what group we even had at closing and gone back to do it all again. And, God willing, most of us will get to do it even more.

Weeks eight and nine: how I learned to be careful what I wished for

I'm sure that you (meaning the five people that I know for sure read this) are wondering why I didn't post a blog for week eight. That's simple enough: I post at the end of every week when I can find the time. Thus the business of week nine left week eight undocumented until now.

I had small fry week eight- probably because I requested it for week seven, but let's not be bitter. I'm not actually all that fond of small fry, for all that it may be one of the greatest things to bring me back here (for those that don't know, I spent my first year out here on dining hall and went to small fry on my days off mostly to visit the cute group leaders that would work there. That was where I discovered my love of children). The kids are still adorable, but there doesn't seem to be any challenge in the program. We watch movies, go to pony rides and, yes, change diapers, and that seems to be about it. The kids absolutely loved me and mostly all I did was lay on the floor and let them pile blocks on me. Oh yeah, and push the swing. Essentially it's like taking a painter who began by painting walls and moved up to murals and then giving him a project where the instructions read "I think beige would be good".

For the lackluster week, the cure is a fantastic weekend. Pam, Kevin and I took a little trip up Rayado Canyon to my favorite camp: Fish Camp. As we walked, old memories didn't so much flood back as trickle, and it seemed to me that my last hike up that particular way had been many years ago. Still, those memories were spot on: there was an amazing lookout point where the trail passed through a hole in the cliff and opened up to a view of the plains on one side and the canyon on the other. It wasn't even spoiled by the fact that Pam went around to the other side to pee off of it. What almost did spoil it was my minor miscalculation on distance; I had Rayado Canyon pegged at around five and a half miles rather than the ten that it was. After dinner (which the staff charitably invited us in for) the three of us headed up to Philips Junction to visit with a friend and gossip around a roaring fire.

After such a boring week, I really wanted something fun. I wanted a big group of kids that liked to play and I even wanted an overnighter. What I got was twenty one sidewinders (ten year old boys). It was just what I had hoped for with the charming Faustian twist of making it exactly what I didn't want. Every group has its challenges; I once read a study that said that when you take the class clown out of any class, someone else will step up to take his place. I've had several groups (about two per summer) that disproved this by being perfect angels across the board, but by and large it's true: every group will have a kid that just wants to drive you up a wall. What the study didn't say was what they did with all of the class clowns that they removed from that class. They sent them to Philmont last week.

Of the twenty-one kids, at least six of them consistently gave us trouble. One child picked fights and absented himself from activities, another simply didn't have the attention span to listen to our instructions, a third waited until our backs were turned to do exactly what we told him not to. Worse, there was nothing to threaten them with: we couldn't withhold activities because most of what we were doing was going on hikes and to museums and we couldn't withhold games because they wouldn't stand still long enough to learn the rules to any game. We were so overworked that when one of the kids stopped showing up on Thursday, we didn't even know which kid it was (I later remembered that little Andrew's grandmother told us that the family was leaving on Tuesday night).

My saving grace this week was Alex, my wingman. I've heard a few people say that his boundless energy and boyish pranks are more than a little irritating, but I don't think I would have survived without him. I sang on the bus until I was hoarse and he would start another song to let me rest, I stopped to do first aid on a splinter or a cut and he organized the group into a line, I got half of the kids cleaning up after lunch at Carson Meadows and he took the other half to fill their water bottles. It was his last week of the summer and he had the worst group of anyone, and the kids never knew his disappointment.

This next week I have the Mustangs- one of my favorite groups- but then again, Sidewinders is one of my favorites as well. I feel like I need a chance to shut down, not to think, not to work, not to engage my brain or body in any way. The group is only one element of it all; hiking with my friends has physically drained me and a surprise visit from a friend this week has emotionally wiped me out. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I need to spend a little time killing goblins and space marines just to reboot my brain.

Week seven: a week of old friends

Life takes some interesting turns sometimes. Of course, some might argue that my life in particular has taken an interesting straightaway by leaving me at Philmont for the last ten years, but this is simply semantic nonsense and means that I have spent too much time reading lately. However you look at it, my plan for the last few weeks had been to go to Fish Camp between weeks six and seven. I abandoned this plan to visit a friend at Head of Dean. I've visited the camp more times than I care to count on back country tours in the Fall season; it has some of the largest ponderosa pines on the ranch, an open field and a decent view of some of the closer mountains in Colorado. To tell the truth, this trip helped me to realize two things: first, that Head of Dean and the trail to it are truly beautiful, and second, that I have spent far too little time alone in recent weeks.

Don't get me wrong, I love being around people. Being around others reminds me what it is to be a human being, something that I wish more people in this world would realize. The problem is that when you spend all of your time around other people you lose touch with your own emotions. You start to think of yourself as a piece of someone else's machine, without an individual identity. People aren't meant to be exclusively alone or entirely part of a group - we live somewhere in between.

The four hours I spent woodcarving at Head of Dean were therefore very therapeutic. I chatted with a few advisers (adult hikers) and the camp staff (who were very friendly, by the way) but there was no sense of obligation to it. At three o'clock I went to leave, my friend still unseen, when, in accordance with Murphy's law, my friend and her crew finally arrived. I stayed and talked with her for about an hour and a half, then regretfully returned to my car and my camp.

The week itself was... interesting. I had the trailblazers (my least favorite group) with Lindsay and Warren (two of my favorite group leaders). Within the first few minutes I renamed a twelve year old "Sarge" since he seemed to want to take command from the beginning. He was actually quite helpful; he ran games for me when I had to deal with issues elsewhere, which was fairly often with twenty four boys. There was also an autistic boy in the group who shifted back and forth between being almost normal and screaming at no one because he was in the back of the line.

Fortunately, the little fellow didn't come along for the all day hike. It started out wonderfully: we made good time for the first two miles, we met the roving prospectors at Cathedral Rock camp and got some impromptu program, and we even made it to Window Rock in reasonable time for lunch (granted, I literally had to push one boy up the mountain, but we made it). Then I joined up with the Silverados to come back down the mountain.

And then the hail started. It was marble sized and covered the ground like snow. It took the better part of an hour to seep through my rain gear and destroy my camera. I was the lucky one; all of our crew gear was soaked through by the time they arrived at Hunting Lodge and a thousand other little things turned heaven on earth into a sodden, frozen hell.

I, on the other hand, went back to California for Kurt and Emily's wedding. It was a bit odd being back; hearing my real name always throws me off a bit. The ceremony was elegant and tasteful, and it gave me the chance to see Justin and Vince - old friends that I miss dearly. The reception was a great chance to catch up though I mostly absented myself from the dance portion of it. I haven't decided if I never learned to dance to hip hop of if I simply can't believe that all it takes is stepping from side to side and vaguely swinging your arms.

I'm afraid all I have to tell of the party are very short stories. Jeff threw up on me from across the table. Val got drunk and insisted that I take her to a bar after the reception, then passed out in the car on the way there (I drove her home and Dana took care of her). Kurt was truly overjoyed to see me there and while I'm honored, he should know by now that when he needs me somewhere, I'm there.

When I returned to the ranch, people acted as if they hadn't seen me in weeks. The Philmont time warp is pretty strong, especially when you miss the Philfiesta. But it wasn't all happy stories when I got there: a camper died on Friday. Obviously the rumor mill is working overtime on this one, but we are sure that it was quick and painless and that there was nothing anyone could do about it. It's been nine years since our last fatality. I'll try to keep you posted.

Week six overflows with adventure

So much has happened in the past week that I'm not certain that I will be able to give each piece its due without forgetting the others. Friday found me, Brenna and Morgan climbing Urraca Mesa. For those unfamiliar with it, Urraca is an almost magical place, forsaken by all but ghosts and people. The top of the mesa appears on maps as a flawless skull, tilted slightly to one side. Philmont legends speak of strange happenings on top, mostly associated with the solitary eye of the skull. Using a detailed map and a GPS unit, we plotted the coordinates of the eye and set out.

The trail itself was hot and dry, but it took us no time at all to reach Urraca camp, the closest camp to the mesa. By now we had gotten used to indifferent or busy backcountry staff acknowledging us and then leaving us alone, but before we had even approached the porch, this staff was calling to us. They offered us a seat and almost begged us to stay for lunch. They teased and played with us as if they had known us for years, though they only vaguely knew us by association. Never have I received such a welcome before, and as we regretfully walked away from the cabin on the way to our goal, we talked about finding the time to come back just to hang out.

The top of the mesa was as advertised and remembered: almost unnaturally quiet, flat and beautiful. Red rocks, green trees and blue skies made the scene look like a child's drawing on a restaurant menu, the colors perfect and unblending. We had lunch just past the weather station, then willfully got lost seeking the eye with its portal to another world. On the way back down we stopped by Inspiration Point; a well named place indeed.

Saturday was the rafting trip, and though I have little to say about it, it was exactly what we needed it to be. We got in boats and floated down a decently choppy river. From time to time we got out of the raft and into the river for a quick swim. The girls flirted with river guides, the boys splashed the girls with their paddles, and as hundreds of gallons of the Rio Grande river flowed past, it carried with it all the tension of the two biggest weeks of the summer.

This week I have eight ropers (8-10 year old girls). They are playful and excitable and their favorite games are mafia and penguin tag. We have one drama queen (of course) who craves attention constantly and doesn't mind slowing the group hikes to get it, but all in all it isn't a bad group. Today we hiked Cathedral Rock, and despite my firm beliefs, we made it to the top in less than two hours (no mean feat, especially for an eight year old). That was when the adventure began. Two of the girls climbed to the top of a large rock to have their lunch and on the way back down, one of them slipped and put her hand down hard on a barrel cactus. As cacti go, the barrel cactus is relatively benign, but its spines are long and hard and they were obviously driven in with some force. I got out the first aid kit, but for most of the spines, the easiest method was simply to grab on hard and pull fast. Of course the girl screamed every time, but these cries simply fell on the backdrop of the rest of her screams, so I carried on.

With only two spines remaining - the deepest two, of course, the tragedy compounded. The second deepest spine broke off in her finger, leaving it too short to grab with my hand. The tweezers handled this, but it took longer and greatened the poor girl's pain. Then, when I pulled out the final spine, it brought with it a small torrent of blood. We cleaned it all up and stopped the bleeding and, as I suspected, the girl stopped crying completely after two minutes. After all that, we simply had to get the exhausted girls off the mountain.


One of the difficulties of keeping a blog is in keeping it honest. It would be easy enough to make up magical adventures and post them as if they were real, but no one would believe them. This is not what I'm referring to. This blog is my way of telling anyone interested what is happening in my life, and I have thus far omitted the most important event of the week. The question is: would it be honest to skip that which embarrasses me? The answer is yes, it is honest because I would not be likely to discuss it anyway. Unfortunately, this particular entry concerns someone who is certainly going to read it, and she should probably know that this is important to me.

An old friend came to visit this week. I'm sure I wasn't the only reason for her coming two thousand miles to the world's largest youth camp, but I can dare to hope that I may have been a factor. When I first saw her standing under an apple tree in East Tent City, I honestly thought that I was hallucinating. When it turned out she was real, I could barely speak. She was exactly as I remembered her, right down to the fact that she always wanted me to tell stories- which, of course, I was utterly incapable of at that moment due to a partially paralyzed brain. Somehow we managed to talk for an hour and a half and I let her go at the entrance to the opening program bowl. The whole time, my pulse was going at marathon speed.

I guess there are some people you never really get over.

Glorious week five

One of the many strange phenomena at Philmont is our bizarre need for time off. Granted, even God needs a day off every once in a while, but there's just something weird about the way people count down to the weekend here. I understand that there are a lot of people out there that will say things like "only four more days" on Monday morning, but the difference is that we genuinely love our jobs. Case in point: My trailblazers this week were amazing. They did as they were told, they positively loved museums and songs and they hiked faster than most staff. We got back to our turnaround a half an hour ahead of schedule. If every group were as good as these boys, or staff would never leave. And still, I am glad the week is over.

It really doesn't make any sense; it's not like I'm taking the time off to rest. A group of us is heading out for Urraca Mesa in about half an hour and tomorrow I'm going whitewater rafting. There's no way I'm going to get another group this well behaved this summer. I think what it comes down to is that we just need time to be that part of ourselves that the kids shouldn't see.

In other news, we hiked Trail Peak last week. It seems I have a regular hiking group now: Jenny and Chris and Pam and Cameron seem to go everywhere with me. Trail Peak stands at 10,200 feet, and the last thousand of that came in over about .7 lateral miles, so the hike was a bit grueling, and of course the peak is well known for not having a view. So why go to this God-forsaken lump in the landscape? In 1942 a B-24 crashed just below the top and remains there in pieces to this day.

We went up the mountain the day after independence day, and I think it put me in a kind of whimsical mood. The tradition on Trail Peak is to urinate off the wing and go home claiming that you peed off an airplane at 10,000 feet, but I abstained. So much of patriotism is pointless bravado these days, and here I was on July fifth in a place where six men died for their country. They had been testing a new kind of radar for the war effort and an equipment malfunction left them flying blind. They weren't killed by the ill will of other men, or in some heroic effort to save lives. They were simply doing a job and something went wrong. It would be easy to make them angry in the mind's eye for the scouts that disrespected their final rest, but the top of the peak is such a peaceful place that it would be hard to put a ghost there. Besides, we wandered about twenty yards from the crash site and found an overlook of a dozen nameless hills and, in the distance, Baldy mountain. I could only hope for such a resting place.

Surviving week four

Perhaps my title for this post is a little over dramatic, but it brings together nicely the two defining aspects of this week. First and foremost is my epic adventure to the top of Baldy Mountain - elevation 12,441 feet. It's difficult to tell how long the hike actually was in distance, partly because the map seems to think that the whole day was around eight miles, and partly because your brain and body wants it to be somewhere around five hundred. To be perfectly honest, I gave up a mile from the summit; I sat down on a fallen log, told my group to go on without me and watched them get out of sight. I had brought along my stunt kite to fly at the top as a kind of victory flag, and I handed it over in defeat, to be flown by my friends in my stead.

Fortunately for me, my ADHD kicked in about fifteen minutes later. I dumped out a nalgene of water to lighten my pack and walked forward a little, thinking to shorten the time before my group picked me up on the way down. I stopped frequently, propping myself up against trees in just the manner that we are forbidden to out here every few feet, thinking that surely this was my final destination. And every time, I coaxed a few more feet out of myself, secure in the knowledge that my group would be along at any moment. When I reached the tree line, I stopped lying to myself: I wanted to reach the top. When I crested the mountain, we realized two things: first, that I still had the kite strings in my pack, and second, I had arrived only fifteen minutes behind the others.

Unfortunately, the second obstacle of this week was that this was our first LDS week. Our schedule was completely turned on its head, and I had a relatively small group with only fifteen kids (Kari's ropers numbered twenty-six). The kids were actually quite well behaved for the most part, but there's just something exhausting about getting hit with that many people. It's like you go to sleep every night and wake up the next day to find yourself just as tired as you were the night before. I arranged to hike Trail Peak today (at a scant 10,000 feet) and decided to put it off until Sunday.

Next week is the second LDS week. The numbers are bigger, but I still have the second smallest group (only seventeen eleven-year-olds). I don't know, maybe management thinks I'm going soft. Then again, when has taking care of eleven year old boys ever been easy?