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 64

today is sunday. i wouldn't really know what day it was if it wasn't for the little day-title bar on this computer, but i think i miss going to church. there isn't much reason to keep a personal calendar here. this is only the first full day of the third week of camp and you could tell me that it was thursday or monday and i really wouldn't have a solid reason for disbelief. my computer would let me know i guess. even though its their first day, the campers are really intense about getting on camera. this week the kids have started learning our names so we're not just called 'cameraman.' nice.

since there has been a new flood of freshly-trained counselors, i didn't have to run the basketball courts this morning because some jobs were shifted. the other video guys had already started the shooting with the two cameras so they gave me the morning off. no camera, no computer, and no kids.

i took a kayak into the warming ocean. i ate an orange and floated farther than a shout from shore and bobbed in the gentle waves. the mainland mountains were clearly visible under the cloudless blue sky. a curious seal popped his head nearby. i floated for a little while and paddled back to the land and the dock.

i work too. i realize i tend to write about side adventures and such but somedays i can't imagine the result of logging the regular daily shootings and editing or capturing or whatever else. the breaks are valuable too.

whoa. i just found a site where you can listen to live shows from different musicians. i'm checking it out and so far so good. here.

Day 48

the staff team woke up early and all of us climbed the mountain in a long line. after we had all finally piled on the top of the mossy rock, we prayed for the summer and lifted kite-shaped papers with hand-printed names of the campers coming this summer. this meeting lasted only a fraction of the length of the journey up, but it was good. instead of going back down the path with everyone else, adam, paul, and i scampered down the rocky ledge and circled the lower circumference, all the while quoting into the wild, until our risky detour finally met with the rest of the trail.

after lunch, paul and i joined a trip to nearby nanaimo to make a final stab at a longstanding purchase. since this was the last day off for the summer, everyone had headed into nearby towns to get final living supplies and whatever else. early in the journey, i found a ten dollar black and pinstripe fedora. just like in florida during spring break, the people i was with gave strong approval, saying something about musicians and fedoras, and i liked the hat myself, so i bought it.

one pursuit still remained stronger than the need for toothpaste and contact solution. we decided to get those things later and we parted with the rest of the group. we walked a very long way and asked directions several times before we finally made it to the desired music store. the last cajon was on sale. it was kind of awkward to carry as we hoofed back to the mall along the gravelly highway shoulder, but we made it. life hasn't been the same since.


just a note- so far, i've chosen to rely mostly on side adventures as the inspirations for stories and thoughts instead of this continual daily camp life of work and preparation. i've done this partly because these tangents have been exciting for me, but mostly because i wanted the posts that will now begin with the first of camps tomorrow to try to display a fresh, yet well-oriented, picture of the camp itself, my little role in the inner-workings, and the ways that God will be moving. hopefully now, the structure, characters, and setting have been established just enough to secure some interest in the overall purpose for my time on this island. i might start to throw in some more camp language as well, awkward as it still is may be for me, as the schedules and routines change once again in final alignment for the realization of their collective purpose.


ready...
set..

Day 25

wednesdays have evolved into an overall derailing of any sort of consistent schedule. morning staff meetings take up just enough time to put a decent gash between starting work after breakfast and going to lunch a few hours later, so i wasn't surprised when i didn't make it to my office at all during the first half of the day because of working on the music video shoot. i'm a guitar player in the background for part of it which is kinda exciting.

our three-man jam crew watched the 'before the music dies' documentary after dinner and were immediately inspired to play and such. dave matthews and elvis costello touched on how personal relevance in music is the heart of the purest form of its creating. we couldn't help but agree because in a society of economy-men and superficial appeals, so many performer-turned-superstars have grow into public figures of recognition and are not so much relevant and inspired hitchhikers of imagination who seek to be fueled by creativity and experience.

then tonight, i unexpectedly ran into the painter who's been around for the week. i finished the rest of my midnight snack as he told me about how he got married and such when he was thirty. he actually told me a lot about his life and his family, but i was drawn in during the point he talked about the 'fading of the ideal' in the lives he's seen with an abundance of money and security that still lack any good measure of authenticity and happiness. 'society,' i silently coughed in my head. i was getting an interview on the spot without even having to ask, let alone get a camera for. this was unplugged.

i could understand strands of applicable sense as he talked about how the day after getting married, he felt chills thinking about the other girls he had dated and with whom he would have had to spend forever with if he hadn't ended up where he had. he said its better to want what you don't have than to have what you don't want. fortunately for him, he had what he wanted, and it helped me understand something i want.

i'm not suddenly in love or anything or even trying to be inversely specific about anything, but i needed to knead this out before any application had dried up or blown away in the cool and blustery mountain air.

finally, i've decided today to try to go the entire summer without a haircut or shave. i'm already well into a beard and mini dreads have started showing up in freshly towel-dried hair, so we'll see.  haha why not.

Day 18

tragedy. the footage from yesterday isn't capturing on the computer via the firewire. i'm not sure how this is going to turn out; i've been working on it for several hours in between things today, but i'm going to be really salty if the lack of audio doesn't get balanced with the footage and then captured to the computer. we'll see.

today began as another work day, but the head photographer asked if i would be his assistant to help with some shots needed for a slideshow/video thing for a future presentation. i left the office for the afternoon and went with to the top of the mountain in the rain and then across the water on the ferry to operate the reflector circle, held under the models' faces, for the lighting of several portrait-style pictures. good times.

its gotten cold and blustery suddenly tonight and we've been too tired to jam, so we raided the kitchen for rice krispie treats and have chilled around the staff lounge and listened to music all night. it's awesome to get new stuff from new zealand and canada and the places in between.

finally, this mountain-top pose picture at the beginning of the post, taken by dave, is going to be used for part of a logo for the camp's summer leadership program. i was told today and, even though its kinda random, its kinda cool that a good thing came out of messing around with our cameras.

there's never really been a dull moment.

Day 13

this week has gone by fast, both for myself and the other staff it seems. i've been continuing to collect and edit several activity videos in preparation for this summer's use. for the first time, however, i have grown slightly discouraged with the matter of my office.

it is one of the farther ones from the main area and is at the foot of a mountain, which is nice and good, but it is also built inside a large, white tent where all the summer rallies and such will be held, meaning there's really no fresh air to supplement the dormant scent of new wood or no way to coax anymore light through the single window of my loft.

after dinner tim and i climbed this mountain next to the office. we sat upon the peak and constructed a small rock alter at the toppermost of the poppermost and observed the distant mainland mountains and talked about camp and life and such. this was suddenly interrupted by subtle, yet defined and consistent, twig-snapping and leaf-crunching in the lower area where we had come up. the padded steps grew steady and we crouched down to see if we could spot whatever was moving slowly closer.

the sun was starting to fall behind the tree line under our peak's perch and a cool dusk rose from the water below. i imagined a cougar pouncing from the shadows and onto my back or suddenly latching to the side of my neck as we looked down into the darkening forest. we began our decent that would inevitably lead us past the source of the prowling. before getting too far we both paused and counted to three and then shouted. i blew some shrill notes in my harmonica for good measure. then we sprinted down the rest of mountain, stopping only a few short times to observe fresh paw prints in moist earth as (imaginary?) cougars stared with yellow eyes from every windblown bush below and creaking limb above.