Friday, July 27, 2012

Camp Deep Creek - July 27 - Week 6

"Yesterday there was lightning. It started a tiny fire.  This big."
Ivory pauses to squeeze her pointer finger and thumb together to show Adam the size of the fire.
"On the other side of the mountain.  And then there was a helicopter that brings fire.  No.  Gets all the water from the pond and takes it to the fire.  ALL the water from the pond (big gesture).  And then the water fills up again."
She pauses for a breath, stabbing at her leftover macaroni and cheese, looking critically across the table at her father.
"But, we didn't see the helicopter land.  Mama really wanted to see it land".
She turns to me: "You REALLY wanted to see it land, didn't you Mama?"

Sometimes the things that don't happen are even more exciting than the things that do.

There was no mention of the life jackets, the canoes, the water bugs with funny flippers, the fish we saw while paddling around the lake or the water snail she proudly carried around for a little while.






Sylvan, I learned, loves to ride around in a canoe.  He sat ever so quietly, every now and then peering over the edge into the water, and made it loudly known, that even though others were ready for the canoeing to end, he was not.  If only he could talk. But then, if he could talk, he would probably be gushing about the helicopter as well.


We did see the helicopter - once, early in the morning - with the water bucket dangling below it.  We heard it put-put-putter in the distance, as we snacked and paddled and ate our lunch and reluctantly, but quickly, left. (The man from the forest service thought it was too much of a liability for us to stay around and watch the water fetching operation.)

A few hours later, the sky turned black and torrent wind and rain and hail battered our little house.  It stopped just as suddenly as it started and the sky turned bright and blue. Ivory rushed out into to the yard to pick up the pieces of ice and pop them in her mouth.



She looks up at me: "Tell me about the lighting, Mama, and how it started a tiny fire."

3 comments:

  1. Heidi,
    If you broke this up into pages, and illustrated it with simple sketches (perhaps colored by Ivory), it would be a wonderful children's book. I would re-read it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks. That is one of our (my) goals this summer. To write a children's book with Ivory and then self publish it for our families for Christmas. I don't know if I will acutaly manage to make it happen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. wow! Lightening and ice in the same day!I love the canoe pics and once again a beautiful time at camp. (We just came home from a week of camp with 85 teenagers whew)!
    Love, Grandma Sherry

    ReplyDelete

Time in Lists

Every morning I make a list of three things that made me happy the day before. A practice I started when life became crazy - and that was a ...