Day 87

we continued to shoot around camp today. some of my kid's counselors told me that their campers had been excitedly talking about starwood dv and what they've been doing and learning so far. good times.

after teaching and shooting around with them, i had some time off. i got the kayak and, accompanied by a friend, set off to see what was around the other point i had stopped at on a previous adventure. after paddling and visiting the purple starfish along the rocks beneath the rope swing, we made one turn and then, this time, one more right turn around the final outstretching point. finally. just to the right, around the small cove of smashing water and rocks, the water straightened out into a long path. i would say this looked like a huge river, but that would be ridiculous because no river can exist in a channel of ocean water.

i have a very hard time conceding that the straight between our shore and the nearby salt spring island can be entirely called 'the ocean.' isaac and i had a long talk about this. regardless, i can't approve that ocean water in a narrowed path between islands is entitled for the all-encompassing title of 'ocean'.

is it even possible?

Day 75

today was sunny with a high of seventy five. tonight was the concert. there's a really hyper eight grade kid here who's been acting up all week. his counselor wearily told me about the camper so before the concert i was trying talking to him. he wasn't really interested in being calm at all. a little later he came up to the booth right before the show and i showed him how to do 'rock show lights' and he started to calm down and go with the flow and lights and music. this was fun, but sadly in the end he started flipping wrong switches on purpose and wouldn't help follow the script so i had to kick him out of the booth.

before all this, i took advantage of some time off. moments for breaks come and go and when you see one, you gotta grabbit. i took a kayak and, with proper permissions, paddled all the way down to the right of the beach towards the distant point. everything, the mountains and waterfront and distant mainland mountains and shoreline, look familiar from the qwanoes vantage now and i'd been dying to see what new body of water or island or mountain was around this point. along the way i found the infamous rope swing that dangles from a tree that hangs over a coral reef drop off. dozens of purple starfish clung to the rocks of the shore and then, a few yards out, the ocean floor drops.

with the dock barely visible, i rounded the final corner of the point to find another point. sad. i wasn't too far from paddling to nearby saltspring island at this point, but am saving that adventure for an entire day off. laying down in the kayak and looking upsidedown behind at the flipped water and mountain horizon is really trippy. mountains and clouds become part of the deep and the sloshing ocean surface transforms into a ceiling, evolving and reflecting an untouched atmosphere.

tomorrow is the last full day of this week. all my starwood dv kids are coming back to rap up their projects and i'll be up all night compiling and mastering and burning them. this has been another good week.

Day 51

this is the second full day of camp. warm, sunny, blue heat beat down from the skies and rolled down the tips and tops of the mountain trees. more energy was reawakened inside the mass of junior highers campers by the time late afternoon had come.

we met for our starwood dv club again today. everyone was a little more open and they didn't seem as nervous as they had yesterday. one girl, who is probably only twelve or thirteen, impressed me. they were all excited to get their hands on the cameras and load the mini dv tapes in themselves, but she was really pumped. i explained the rule of thirds to them today and she practiced and asked to check to make sure she was getting it right. they were all getting the hang of it. as we walked around to shoot, she told me how she was supposed to be in a coca cola commercial when she was younger until they decided to go with animation and how her mom was a model and all sorts of stuff that outlined this personality that, i can imagine, could grow to accomplish good things with a camera. some of the boys were working and thinking at the same time and reiterating and double-checking shot techniques.

i had a little time off before dinner so adam, an australian counselor, and i took the kayaks out. we paddled to the point to the far left of the beach and removed some large debris left from floating logs as we traveled to the point at the far right of the beach's viewpoint. the sun beamed across the sky and over light white mountains and we occasionally stopped dipping the paddles to lean back in our kayaks and float and look at everything and then would slowly began to paddle underneath and around the hanging trees next to the waves and rocks. a chill, relaxed process. it was the perfect break and after we had visited the aqua park and had gone off the blob, we headed back. dinner, and now q-town. i'm really liking doing lights and powerpoint.

all this as given a pretty solid measure of momentum. this has been day 51 on the island.