The First Morning of the Season
Our first full day of summer camp was one that felt like it was going to be fantastic, right from the start. The sun began to peek between the leaves as we gathered on the Sun Deck for the first morning blessing of the season, followed by a breakfast in which it was heard far and wide across the Dining Hall that the bacon was some of the finest any of us has ever tasted.
After breakfast, we calmly walked back to the cabins to get into our hiking gear and make absolutely certain we have the four necessities for any hike: the water bottle—filled to the brim—the rain jacket or raincoat, the closed-toe hiking shoes—sneaks or tennis shoes are okay but crocs are a no-go—and finally, the backpack to put it all in for easy access for the treks that lay in wait. Our paths were met with fresh sun-kissed grass as we walked into the Back Field to meet our Mentors and head off on creatively painted and named buses—the “Carriot” and the Space Bus. You’d recognize them anywhere.
It began like any other hike, with all of us as excited as could be, just to see what we could find. The woods out here feel older than most, as if with each footstep as we walked through the dappled lighting from the canopy above, we could feel the history of those who’d walked these paths, thousands of years ago. Our hike leader this morning was Ian, one of our highly admired Senior Mentors, and as he led our group through the woods, out into Upper Bald field, the group changed, just a bit. You could see heads start to turn as eyes and ears perked up towards the open field. There could be a Grand Slaminal out there. “They’re out there,”as we say. Although we didn’t see a black bear, a whitetail deer, a venomous snake, or a turkey, at the moment, Ian asked us to look at the trees for signs of one of those animals. Sure enough, someone spotted the marks—long gashes, dry cracked fissures into the bark of a white pine—that told a story of a long ago visitation of a quite sizable black bear. Now our senses were peaked and ready to find wildlife. Well, more wildlife, since I forgot to mention, we already saw a tiny black salamander—we got to see a salamander’s face!
From Upper Bald, you can begin to see that we still have a journey ahead of us, so once our feet touched the rock, we stopped for a water break and made for the cairns the lead the way down to the trail back into the thick woods. The next bit we call the saddle, the space between the two open spaces of rock, the one waiting ahead aptly named, Lower Bald. Here one Lower bald, it seems as though you’ve stepped directly into a Bob Ross artwork. Lots of happy little trees on the ridge in the distance, an ancient old lifeless but full of character tree in the foreground, with patches of hundreds-of-years-old moss patterned around the frame. It comes as no surprise that we took a moment to chill and take joy in the beauty of everything around us. Though the road only lays a 20-minute hike down from this spot, the atmosphere makes it seem like you’re in the middle of a boundless wilderness. Truly something to behold. When our thirst was quenched and snacks were devoured, we crab-crawled down towards the trail again and found that the most excitement of the morning had yet to come. While we calmly walked down to our bus pickup, our ever-vigilant leader, Ian, spotted one of our Grand Slaminals—a timber rattlesnake! Completely motionless, but aware that we were there, too, we gave it plenty of space and made our way down the trail, thanking it for allowing us the opportunity to experience a moment with a remarkable part of our ecosystem. With huge grins and a memory that will last a lifetime, we met our bus on the lower dirt road and returned to Base Camp to tell the story of our adventure and the thrilling journey of the very first Mentor Hike of the season.
Story by Brandon S. Marshall with photos by Brandon S. Marshall and Samantha Keebler