Last evening, I enjoyed an unexpected visit with an old friend and a new one. Janet called to say she was in Sewanee. All those years I haven't seen her vanished when she and Jim took me for pizza, which we ate in their room at The Sewanee Inn.
I first met Janet when she 9 years old at Camp Green Cove. One of the youngest children at camp, she was a champion camper -- eager to make friends, to laugh, to learn new things, and to embrace challenges. She embodied the cliche of "live wire." When, toward the end of camp, she was invited on the five-day Smoky backpacking trip, I went down to the trip room to see her and the rest of the group off. Janet's backpack weighed more than she did (somewhere in the neighborhood just above 50 pounds). I'll never forget seeing her muscular, little body supporting that pack.
About a decade ago, we went to a camp reunion together, where we visited with more than a hundred women who crossed many decades of camping . The magic still crackled and we found ourselves still loving camp and each other.
For all the years I've known Janet -- at camp and beyond as an adult in New Orleans -- I've never seen her look happier than she did that morning as she boarded a cattle truck to hike for a week and as she did last night in her room at The Sewanee Inn.
Margi was one of four eight-year-old campers in my first-ever cabin as a counselor at Camp Green Cove, Junior 1. In arts-and-crafts, she made this wonderful little Winnie-the-Pooh for me. I've always set it in my kitchen or on my bedroom chest-of-drawers. Here, he has a place of honor in my window just above my kitchen sink.
I see him many times of the day, and I remember Margi and summer camp and my friend Susan Little and my mother (who read me Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.
Susan and I became friends at camp, where on days off at 17, we paraded down the main street of Hendersonville, North Carolina, in yellow rain slickers and high black waders. We loved dressing like Christopher Robin and leaving "sustaining missages" on the Lodge tables at meals and delivering them at activities and reading Pooh stories at campfire. Indeed, when a new building was added to Junior Line, we christened it "The House at Pooh Corner" and renamed the cabins after Hundred Acre Wood sites.
Susan died years ago after suffering from multiple sclerosis, and my niece and nephew never loved Pooh as much as I. However, there are four little ones in the family now, and soon I plan to start reading them A. A. Milne's stories about his son's stuffed animals and then illustrated in books by the wonderful E. H. Shepard before they get indoctrinated by the awful Disney versions.
Last evening, I enjoyed an unexpected visit with an old friend and a new one. Janet called to say she was in Sewanee. All those years I haven't seen her vanished when she and Jim took me for pizza, which we ate in their room at The Sewanee Inn.
For all the years I've known Janet -- at camp and beyond as an adult in New Orleans -- I've never seen her look happier than she did that morning as she boarded a cattle truck to hike for a week and as she did last night in her room at The Sewanee Inn.
