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| View from our beach |
Some of the earliest readers of this blog may recall that during my often less than happy youth as a closeted gay teenager one of the bright shining stars of my existence was summers spent at the family home in the Adirondack Mountains or "camp" as local parlance calls such homes. It was a place where I could escape the sometimes "faggot" designation at school where I hated baseball, basket ball and football which were prerequisites to being "normal." At the lake house, I excelled in water skiing, swimming, sailing, boating. Best of all, I was able to recreate myself as something different. I haven't been back in many years partly because it's a long 14 hour car trip from Hampton Roads, Virginia, and because other things always seem to come up. It is definitely a place I want to visit again before I die.
All of that said, life at camp wasn't perfect. After all, I was a gay boy trying to convince myself and everyone else that I wasn't a horrible homosexual - the term gay wasn't used in our parts until later. As a result, there were the pains of unspoken and unrequited love and living one's life like an actor on a stage. But in relative terms I felt safe because I could do all of the things the cool guys did. Something so unlike at home during the school year. Not that summers were all play and no work. With a very short summer season, all of the year's maintenance needed to be done in the summer. Hence, each week my dad left my sisters and I (we were chaperoned by my mother's elderly aunt and uncle) with a detailed list of assigned work: painting, foundation work on the boat house, and on and on.
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| The main house |
What made me think of all of this was a dream I had last night that was so vivid that I could feel myself zig zagging across the boat wake on a slalom ski and carving back and forth throwing up a wall of spray as we always tried to do - one wanted to be visible all the way across the lake. Likewise, I could smell the pine and hemlock scent in the air and even feel the water of the lake on my body. It was so intense and so weird. I'm not sure what prompted it other than my birthday was a little over a week ago and growing up, I always spent my birthday at the lake.
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| Two of my sisters - including my late sister - and a friend circa 1969 |
Much has changed in my life - some for the good and some not - but a part of my heart will always be at the summer camp. Indeed, I want a portion of my ashes scattered there after I die. I do hope I get to visit again and that last night's dream wasn't my last visit.
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| One of my one time best friends who I've lost contact with |
1 comment:
Tonight I attend a monthly dream group, a gathering of rural folk who honor their dreams and the light and shadow play of the inner landscape.
You're already answering some of the questions I would ask if this were my dream, or if we were sitting together round the same table tonight: What does the setting mean to me, what energy does it hold, what does it mean for me to be once again in this space. Others I might ask: What does it mean for me to zig zag. Is this a way of getting through life? How am I moving through my life in zig zag fashion? In what ways am I throwing up walls? In what way am I making myself visible to others? How does this serve me, them? What does the smell of pine mean to me, of hemlock? What associations do i have with these words, these scents? Where do I connect with them in my present life? Where at present do I most feel my body, feel most in my body? In what ways so I carry the feeling of lake water on my skin?
Thank you for sharing the dream, the memories, the questions. Those photos, too.
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