The Laborer is Worthy of His Wages

It's started raining in earnest, so we are knee-deep in kitchen helpers. Being in out of the rain at recess is what most of them are after, but there can be more material rewards for helping as well.

Our school uses "chance tickets" as a reward for good behavior. Any staff member can give out these raffle tickets at his or her discretion. The students write their names on the back and enter them to be drawn for prizes.

Becky (our kitchen lead) has very specific ideas about the dispensing of chance tickets. Students are not supposed to ask for them. "I like to surprise you," she tells the new helpers.

I think our differing approaches to the tickets perfectly sums up the difference in our personalities. I feel terrible not giving any tickets to the kids, mostly because each one is turned away at least five times before he or she gets a chance to help. When it's up to me, I carefully dole out five tickets (that's what Bob the custodian gives to his helpers who sweep the cafeteria) to each child.

Becky, on the other hand, has no problem sending kids off with a wave and a "Thank you for your help!" And when she does give out tickets, which is far more often then not, she unfurls an arm's-length strip and hands it over. No need to check if the two helpers got the same amount, just "Here you go!" It's good for me to be around Becky.

When her own kids were little, Becky ran a home day care, so she has a pretty good idea of what makes kids tick. We serve dessert once a month, and we usually have some left over at the end of lunch. On those days we sometimes let our kitchen helpers choose chance tickets or a dessert. Not everyone takes the dessert, but it's so fun to watch the kids' faces who do. The portions are tiny, but that doesn't matter. It's just such a special, insider-y thing to get an extra dessert.

One of my favorite helpers (the one who offered to loan me a book the first time I met her) always turns down the chance tickets, so I was happy that she happened to be in on a day we had dessert. "No, I can't have either one of those," she said when I asked her which she wanted. I was sad until I remembered--we had one hat left!

Yes, the best thing about fall and winter in the kitchen is that Becky's 85 year-old friend knits hats for our helpers. We don't have an unlimited supply, but she restocks us periodically. Last year the hats weren't very popular, which I believe may have had something to do with the colors she was using.

This year they're going like hotcakes. My little friend was thrilled to take a hat. I won't lie, I really wanted one of these. I went so far as to try one on. It turns out I don't have a kid-sized head.

Maybe it's because I grew up somewhere too warm for hats, but it seems to me like the most quaint and wonderful thing that this sweet lady knits hats for our kids and they take them and wear them. One girl actually asked about the origin of the hats and ended up bringing in a thank-you note to pass on. I hope her parents are very proud.

On the other hand, I had a new second-grade helper in for the first time this week, who had probably asked to help twenty times before she got a turn in the kitchen. When her time was up, I asked her if she wanted chance tickets or the last hat we had on hand.

She looked at the hat and screwed up her face. "Could you make some scarves?"

She took the chance tickets.

Here Come the Kitchen Helpers

I like when Mrs. Becky and Mrs. Martin let kids help in the kitchen.

We've put them off for as long as possible, but tomorrow we are going to let students into the kitchen.

Self-serve condiments are bad enough, but when I started my job last year I had no idea that eventually kids would come into the kitchen and "help." Once I had gotten sort of up to speed, Becky told me it was time to let the helpers in; helpers I had no idea existed. I panicked just a little bit. 

Our kitchen is small, and my work time is short. Making sure no one gets burned by the dishwasher or whacked with a basket takes time and effort. Whereas before I had just washed dishes as fast as I could, I now had to teach and manage students, two things I was trying to avoid by taking a job as a lunch lady. I am that horrible mom who doesn't even encourage her kids to help in the kitchen at home because it's more trouble than just doing it myself.

The better thing is often the harder thing, isn't it? So it should come as no surprise that having student kitchen help is both the most tiring and the most rewarding thing about my job. Becky told me I didn't have to have students in if I didn't want to. But, ultimately, what on earth is more important than people?

We don't have any official procedures for selecting our helpers. They pop up in the window and say "Can we help?" It's usually first-come, first-served, and the competition is fierce, especially during the rainy season. If I notice that someone hasn't had a turn in a long time, I try to save a spot. I'm such a "everything has to be fair" person that choosing the kids without a system is the part that stresses me out the most. 

Last year the school boundaries were re-drawn in our district, and something like 25% of our students were new. For a few of them, spending their lunch recess in the kitchen with me was a safe way to get their bearings. 

Our kitchen helpers are all over the place. One second-grader last year was on the ball enough that she probably could have run things by herself. I had boys who argued over who had to wipe down a cart with a soapy rag, and I had girls who asked if they could scrub the drains.

In the fifteen minutes they are with me, the kids can give me an earful. Unfortunately, with the noisy dishwasher running, there are times when I can only guess at what they're saying and pray that my noncommittal response noises are not wildly inappropriate for what they've just told me. I hear about their vacations, their pets, their families, and their injuries. One girl told me that she sometimes has to stop and think about what language we are using, since her parents speak to her in Russian (and sometimes Ukrainian); one girl told me she wouldn't go on a field trip because she gets car sick; one girl told me about her three dads. What I can give them is the attention of a friendly grown-up, and that seems to be what they want.

I love watching the kids who have helped in the kitchen before teach a new friend how it's done. I love having helpers that I already know (and whose parents I know) from years of volunteering in my boys' classes. I love that pairs of boys will ask if they can help, almost as often as the girls. I especially love that last year one of the most disruptive boys from Willem's class started coming in. It was a challenge to have him, but it seemed important to give him the chance to do something he could feel good about.

Maybe it's weird to feel this way as a grown person, but I can't help but feel like some of my negative school experience from growing up has been redeemed by these kids. They give me bracelets, they ask me to sign their casts, they ask if I want to borrow a book. It is a sweet thing in my life.

The weather's been so nice so far this fall that when the kids have asked to help, we've told them to play outside instead. We've enjoyed the peace and relative ease of having the kitchen to ourselves. But now that the rain has started in earnest, we'll let them in. I guess it's time, as they're starting to get testy about it. It will be more work to have them there. But it will be worth it.

My Window

When I signed up to be a lunch lady, no one told me there would be self-serve condiments. It is a horror show.

I didn't know that tiny five year-old hands would grapple with adult-sized ketchup dispensers. I had never laid eyes on a five-gallon bucket of ranch dressing, or realized how quickly 160 (or so) kids can tear through said bucket when left to their own devices.

The students stack their condiment-covered trays in my window only after they have navigated the byzantine regulations regarding the disposal of their trash. We are in the Portland metro area, after all, so there are four different waste receptacles from which they need to choose. This necessitates special training every fall, one classroom at a time. My kids usually bring their lunch and just pack all their trash home, thereby garnering a few extra precious minutes of recess time.

The younger students often comment on the state of their trays as they hand them over to me.

"You might want to wash this," says one earnest first-grade boy, as he sets down a tray with ranch dripping from a corner.

"It's pretty dirty," says one little girl sheepishly as she passes her tray over. I tell her that's OK.

"Wash this tray!" demands a Kindergartner, whose tray is barely visible beneath a lake of ranch dressing.

"Wash it!" she says the next day. "Wash this!" the next.

"That's not very polite," I let her know. She doesn't say that anymore. Now she just sets her tray down with a smile.

So many of them want to share:

"I ate all my lunch!"

"My tray is clean!"

"Look, I lost my tooth!"

They come in waves, dismissed from lunch one table at a time, one grade at a time. If any student stops to say more than a single sentence to me, the line gets held up, and all the kids start bouncing off each other in something akin to a freeway pile-up. I try to get the talker to stand to one side. If he doesn't, kids will start reaching over and around with their dirty trays. If things get to that point, the applesauce will start to fly (applesauce--WHY, God?) and at least one person will get clocked in the face with a tray. So I try to keep the conversations short and sweet if I can.

One day a first-grade boy approached with a tray in each hand. He was slight and rail-thin, with short blond hair sticking up from his head.

"This is my friend's tray," he said, only barely managing to set it down without dropping it. I saw a sturdy round girl just behind him, half a head taller, with long, dark disheveled hair. She was sniffling.

"She got hurt. I'm taking her to the health room," he said. And he put his scrawny arm around her broad shoulders and gently guided her down the hallway. That happened at the start of last year. It made me feel like maybe I could stick around for a while.

A month after that, one of my favorite fifth graders came by. The first time I met her, she had walked into the kitchen to help. Her very first words to me were, "We're reading the book Holes. It is SO GOOD. Do you like that book?" She talked like a modern-day Valley girl, and I found her delightful and terrifying. She popped up in my window on picture day.

"I can't help in the kiiiiiiiiiitchen," she trilled. "It's picture daaaaay." She wore a fancy dress and lipstick, and her hair was curled. She stood there in the window, and I became concerned as a line began to form behind her.

"I'm wearing heels!" she said. "Really!" The next thing I knew, she had vanished. But then an arm appeared in my window. It was waving an espadrille with a two-inch jute wedge heel. I could hear her voice coming from the other side of the wall, somewhere near the floor.

"LEGIT HEELS!"

I affirmed they were indeed legit, and off she went to recess.

And the kids kept coming to my window.

An Introduction to Lunch Lady Land

Last fall, I decided it was time to get a (little) (paying) job after spending ten years as a stay-at-home mom. Working for the school district so I wouldn't need childcare seemed to be the way to go. Applying for a job ten years after your last one is every bit as difficult as people say it is. Thank goodness for Facebook, or I would never have been able to track down the three required references.

I didn't set out to be a lunch lady, but that was what was available. Jobs at the school district are hard to come by, and just getting an interview involved a connection made at a long-running local Bunco game and some downright providential timing. The job description said I needed skills like "counting" and "lifting", so I figured I'd be OK even though I had no prior food service experience, apart from a few months in high school when I served in the dining room at a ritzy old-folks' home. I'd never eaten a hot school lunch a day in my life. But I've been feeding and washing up after my family for ten years. How hard could it be?

Pretty hard, it turned out. I knew that there would be two of us to get the lunch out for 160+ students and clean up afterwards. I knew I would work 2.75 hours a day. I never really put together what kind of pace that would entail.

For the first week, I came home from work and laid down on the floor. I took two-hour afternoon naps. I was sore all over. It was pathetic. I think part of the exhaustion came from having absolutely no frame of reference for much of what I was doing. Becky (who cooks and serves and does the work of at least two people) did a great job of training me, but we don't always speak the same language. When she asked me to quarter some tomatoes and then added --"into eight pieces"--, I'm pretty sure a little smoke wafted out of my ears as my brain worked to process that instruction. Eventually I got the hang of things.

So here's what I do:

First thing is to prep and put out the salad bar. Every day we have salad greens, two fresh raw vegetables (carrots, celery, broccoli, or cauliflower), fresh fruit, canned fruit, and a canned vegetable. After a lifetime of singing "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck," I am inordinately pleased that our boxes of tiny kid-size apples are labeled "one bushel." On days when we have leftovers from specialty salads (tomatoes, lunch meat, hard-boiled eggs), we put that out first. Students must take two "scoops" from the salad bar, or four if they don't want an entree.

I love the salad bar. It's hard for me to tell how much the kids actually eat from it, though, as they dump their trays before bringing them to me to wash.

Most days Becky walks by and says, "Isn't it pretty?!" It's part of our routine.



After I put the salad bar out, I wash any dirty dishes we may have from lunch prep. It's mostly just what I've used, since Becky is an absolute machine and has usually washed up everything else. Once the first shift of kids has finished eating, I start washing their trays. Here I am with my dishwasher, Hobart. I wish I could take Hobart home with me.

I am fortunate to work at a fairly new school, with a new kitchen. It is very ship-shape, with a place for everything, and everything in its place. That pleases me.

On special occasions  (e.g. when the school board is visiting), Becky likes to wear a chef's coat and hat. I demur, but she did make me wear one for a picture. Becky is small but very feisty (also kind and generous, and fun to work with.) This is a weirdly hunched and neck-less picture of me, but I will include it anyways.



I love having a uniform, especially such a simple one. I have five t-shirts (red or black) and five black aprons. Every weekend I wash them, and I count down the next work week as my stack of aprons and shirts diminishes by one each day. I wear jeans of my choice, and the ugliest black industrial shoes on the face of the planet. They are often sporting a film of dried soap suds in their crevices, which looks pretty sinister if you don't know what it is. I know you all are disappointed, but I don't have to wear a hair net. I can't tell you what a huge relief that was.

I thank God that I get to work at my boys' school, where I already knew the principal and many of the teachers and students after a few years of volunteering there. Nels waves "hi" as he goes by my window; Willem blows me a kiss. Lots happens at my tray window, as a matter of fact.

More on that next time.

Remembering Dad

My dad passed away on April 5 this year, about two weeks before what would have been his 66th birthday. My sister and I knew that his lungs had not been doing their job for quite some time, and we knew he would not "get better," but his final decline was swifter than we expected.

I always wondered how my dad got the name "Scott" a generation ahead of all the other Scotts I knew. My dad didn't know the story, and I never asked my grandma about it before she died. Maybe she sensed  that he would always seem young, even when he was grown, and so the name would suit him.

My sister Annalaura and I grew up in a blended family in Southern California, in a household headed up by our mom and stepdad. Our Dad Scott lived in Bellingham, Washington, and we saw him about once a year, at Christmas or in the summer. 

Visiting Dad in Washington was like going to another planet, a wonderful planet. We loved my dad and step-mom's old house overlooking Bellingham Bay. We loved the smell of the evergreen trees. We loved the novelty of getting a Blizzard at Dairy Queen. But mostly we loved being in the orbit of Planet Scott. He was inventive and funny and moody, and had a ton of charisma. He took on an almost mythical quality for me. It was like having a unicorn for a dad.

Because I didn't see him very often, it is taking a while to sink in that my dad is gone. I don't have day-to-day memories of living with him. What I am lucky to have, though, is a highlight reel of remembrances.

Here's what I think of when I think of my dad:

1. He loved the ocean and the natural world. See that student ID card up there? When my dad was that age, he used to stick his finger down his throat to make himself throw up, so he could stay home from school and go surfing instead. Later he was a commercial diver in Washington and Alaska.

One of Dad's favorite spots to take us on our visits to see him was  Larrabee State Park. We spent many happy (and chilly) hours combing the beach there. 

Dad regularly took us fishing and crabbing on his little boat. One year he treated us to a deep-sea fishing excursion off the coast of Vancouver Island to catch salmon and halibut. One other memorable time, he took us on an ocean kayaking camping trip in the San Juan Islands. Things went slightly off-schedule, and we found ourselves paddling by moonlight in the wee hours of the morning. Tide charts and driftwood and rocks and fish guts and crab tomalley make me think of my dad.

2. Dad was creative. I wish I still had my childhood toy box. He painted it in a 70's Art Nouveau revival motif on a background of avocado green. He drew and painted beautifully. Dad was self-employed as a graphic designer. He worked at home in his basement office, and once I grew up and made some artist friends, I realized that I wished he could have found a community of creative people (in addition to his wife Juli, who is amazing at making things herself) to be a part of. He was such a Lone Ranger in that regard, and I think he would have benefited from the input and camaraderie and encouragement of some like-minded people.

3. It's easy to say that my dad was funny and charming, but it's almost impossible to communicate the reality of it. He was always telling outrageous and often true stories, like the time when, as a teenager, he was hand-picked to be an extra in the Antonioni movie Zabriskie Point, and traveled to Death Valley with the production to be part of its most infamous scene. Or the incident in which he finagled an honorary discharge from the service (thereby keeping his GI Bill benefits) by being intentionally caught with a drug that was so new as to not have been ruled illegal yet. Dad read a ton and had a very active imagination. Every once in a while Juli would have to amend one of his tales: "That part didn't happen, dear. That was a Kurt Vonnegut story."

To the end of his life Dad was like that. Annalaura and I came up to visit him and Juli when he was failing. At one point we were all trying to get him safely down the stairs so the paramedics could transport him to the hospital. Dad narrated the whole thing (though he had not a breath to spare) as though he were the guide on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. It was so absurd and wonderful. That will be a weirdly treasured memory.

4. Dad's hair was a major part of his identity. He spent forever in the bathroom every morning with his blow-drier and his extensive collection of hairbrushes tending to his silky brown hair. He cared more about his appearance than the average fellow is prepared to admit. It was exasperating and endearing. He asked Juli well in advance of his death what picture she was planning to use for his obituary. I think he would have been pleased with her choice.

5. My dad and Juli were married for thirty-four years, and I am so glad they had each other to love. I love them both.

*

I don't know if Dad ever imagined that one day he'd be taking his grand-kids to the beach at Larrabee. I'm glad he got to. I'm so glad they got to know him.

So long, Dad Scott. We miss you now, and we'll keep on missing you. The whole big world will miss you, whether it knows it or not.

Goodbye to Gold Butte Lookout

The boys did a good job keeping themselves busy at the lookout, but Willem did start to get a little squirrely. We finally let him have the camera, and he spent much of the last evening and our final morning taking pictures.

Here's Willem's shot of Shaun working at the stove. (I did the grocery shopping and the advance cooking for the trip, Shaun did the on-site cooking and cleaning up. Like I said, GOOD MAN.)

Willem took several pictures of Nels with his pocketknife.

We had a lot of cleaning to do that final morning. Here's the place all spic and span and ready for the next visitors.

We thought it would be nice to have it on record that all four of us were there together. Here we are at the back of the lookout.

And here we are at the top of the trail.

We posed for one more picture, all loaded up and ready to hit the trail. Plunk! Giant raindrops began to fall. Plunk! Plunk!

For some reason, the load on the dolly was more difficult to secure on the way back. We were tired and cold and getting hungry and had to stop a few times to get things shifted around. We were only a little bit down the trail when--whoops!--the dolly tipped over, and most of what was on it went bouncing over the side. At least one of the cartons lost its lid, sending cookware flying down the slope. Shaun and I stood in the rain and laughed, while Nels and Willem looked back at us like we were crazy.

Fortunately for us, we were at a fairly narrow (though brushy) switchback. A few of our things landed on the trail below. Shaun had to climb down to wrest the remainder of it out of the bushes and then reload the whole business. There was no cover, so we and our things just got wetter and wetter while we stood there. We made it down the rest of the way without further incident.

This is truly the stuff that memories are made of.

After taking our last picture of the trip, the kids and I huddled in the car while Shaun sorted through our bags and pulled out dry clothes for everyone to change into. Then he packed all of our wet gear into the car. Then he found a good spot for all of the wet clothes, and at the very last he changed into dry things and we headed home.

During our stay at Gold Butte Lookout, I thought several times a day that it was one of the most amazing places I've ever been. It made me feel what CS Lewis describes as "a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious." That trip was a gift to our family, and it wouldn't have happened without Shaun to plan and drive and haul and pack, and to keep us from asphyxiating indoors when using the lamp and the stove.

So, if you have a Shaun in your family--or if you are a Shaun--go stay at a fire lookout! It's worth it.

More Gold Butte Lookout

When we woke up on our second morning, the clouds had moved in even closer than they'd been the night before. Our little cabin was like a boat on the ocean.

 Here's the view Shaun had while cooking breakfast. (He cooked all the breakfasts. He is a wonderful man.)

The clouds started to break up, and Shaun decided it was time to fly the flag. I was surprised and moved to see Willem take it so seriously.

The boys were hanging out around here together when a bald eagle flew by at eye level. I was sorry to have missed it but thrilled for them.

The chipmunks were bold,

but the animal I really wanted to see was the pika. We heard their strange squawky calls all day, but I never caught sight of one. Do check out this link so you can see how adorable this little cousin of the rabbit is. They even have a recording of its call!

The boys occupied themselves with a hatchet for a while. As you can see, there was plenty of wood available for use. Unfortunately, it was cut to a length that was too long to fit into the wood stove. Weird.

Giant cloud shadows.

Dirty faces.

Enthusiastic hot-dog eaters.

If you could open up my brain to the word "vacation," you'd see this picture there.

Right next to this picture.

It's hard to go wrong with a sunset, but it's even more beautiful when you feel like you could be caught up in it yourself at any moment. These pictures don't even come close to the reality. Everything was glowing pink.

Including the peak of Mt. Jefferson. Totally lit up pink.

And then so nice and dark.

Good night.

Gold Butte Lookout

I opened my eyes on our first morning at the lookout to this:

The one bed sits in a corner, right at window level. I felt like a bird waking up in its nest. (There are also three beautiful cots, but they are very creaky. Next time we will either bring air mattresses or ear plugs.)

The lookout was originally built in the 30's by the CCC as part of a fire-detection network. In WWII it was used as an Aircraft Warning System station. It was abandoned in the 60's and refurbished in the 80's. Willem's favorite feature was this defunct telephone. He talked on it pretty much the entire time he was indoors.

His outdoor favorite thing was, as previously mentioned, the bench.

Here I am enjoying my favorite spot (the bed) while Nels makes a paper crane to contribute to the geocache box we discovered entirely by accident.

There weren't a whole lot of things to do outdoors there that didn't involve just going back the way we came. We did go back down to the trail "landing," where the boys made a game of seeing how far they could bounce rocks down the side of the hill (no trail on that side, don't worry.) I think they could have done that all day.

Finding the geocache provided a fun diversion as well. My favorite item inside was the provisional driver's license of a stocky teenage boy from Canby, Oregon. We added Nels's origami crane (sorry, geocachers, we didn't bring anything extra with us) and took out a deck of cards that had been marked as used by a casino. I knew why the cards had holes punched through them because my first cousin once removed was a pit boss in Vegas (possibly still is, I should check with my dad) and my Grandma Toni used to deal blackjack.  

Indoors, Nels worked on a house of cards...

and Willem ate chocolate pudding. We tend to junk food it up when we're camping.

The evening got cool long before the sun went down. Any excuse to put my pajamas on early.

It was a very good thing that I didn't get the perpetually clear, sunny skies I was hoping for, because cloud-watching turned out to be the thing I enjoyed most about our stay. We spent much of the first day without the "view" we thought we had come for. But the clouds seemed to do something different every few minutes, causing the view to change drastically throughout the day in unexpected ways.

At sunset, we suddenly found ourselves on an island. It looked as though God had unfurled a sky-sized roll of cotton batting and put the world to bed for the night underneath it. 

The only things we could see poking out of the blanket (apart from our own perch) were the peak of Mt. Jefferson and this one little tiny spot

of trees.

And, above the blanket,

the heavens.

Gold Butte Lookout: Getting There

Last summer we did not let a lack of time or money prevent us from having a memorable family vacation. We figured a stay in a retired fire lookout would provide affordable novelty and getting-away-from-it-all-ness. We picked the location by a simple process of elimination: I was not willing to sleep in a structure on stilts, nor did I want to drive for hours and hours. Gold Butte Lookout in the Willamette National Forest fit the bill. 

Getting a reservation for Gold Butte requires the same sort of luck and dedication that buying tickets to see a massively popular band in a small venue does, but Shaun got up early a few weeks in a row and eventually secured us a three-night stay for the end of August.

The lookout's website bears this well-merited warning: "Note: The last two miles of road access is rough gravel and dirt with 10% grade, and is not maintained for low clearance vehicles."

I will say that Shaun did an admirable job of driving our minivan up that crazy, bumpy road. We were bounced and jostled enough to make it feel like we'd just barely crossed over from everyday life into adventure mode. It was the first "we are all in this together" moment of our trip, but it wasn't the last.

We had booked our trip for August in order to avoid rain. But the road was worringly muddy. And the air was ominously misty. By the time we pulled into the parking space at the trail head, it had started to rain in earnest.

Rain had not been forecast, so we had not prepared for it. Rather than arrive at the summit with soaking clothes and sleeping bags, we decided to wait out the downpour in the car, as time ticked away and daylight grew shorter. The boys had had enough car time, so they ran around in the rain for a good long while and got the ants out of their pants.

All of our family camping trips to this point would best be described as car camping. It was hard to know just how much we would need to pare down our stuff for this trip, so we didn't, really. We should have. There were wheelbarrows available for use, but we didn't need them. Shaun had modified our dolly (he calls it a hand truck, which I'd never heard before we were married) in order to more efficiently cart our things up the hill. 

We lugged everything four people would need for three nights (including water) up a trail that was "about a mile." Our GPS put the distance at closer to a mile and a half, which may not sound like a big deal of a difference, but, oh, it was. Every step was uphill. The website describes the hike as "difficult," and I would not argue with that.

This is insane. Shaun was basically a human pack horse. About 20 steps into the hike we were all seriously wondering if we would make it. And I was concerned that Shaun was going to have a heart attack. In fact, when I went to bed that night I dreamed for for the first time in our thirteen years of marriage that Shaun had died. Of a heart attack, of course.

Nels lent a helping hand as best he could. At one point there was a sort of landing before the trail narrowed for the final ascent. We had to leave many of our things there, and Shaun and Nels made two trips back down to bring the rest of it up. I would not normally describe Nels as the stoic trooper sort, but he sure was in this case, and I couldn't have been prouder.

We made it! Don't you love our cheerful body language?  

It was almost dark by the time Shaun and Nels made their last trip up the hill. The campers before us had left behind a bit of water, which Shaun decided to use for his one shower of the trip. He had certainly earned it. He told us that he would be stepping outside, removing his clothes, and dumping the water over his head. The boys were simultaneously alarmed and intrigued. Adventure!  

I had wondered what the boys would think of our setting; would they appreciate it, or would they would think it was boring to be so isolated?  I got my answer when hates-to-be-alone, never-stops-talking Willem made a beeline for this bench and sat in quiet solitude.

Remarkable. In every way.