A Place of Power

I was in a place in the mountainous forests of western North Carolina so right, so perfect in itself, so magical that it took my breath away.  And in this place I was accompanied by people who fit that moment and that place just as perfectly.

For two days I got to play at working with my maybe, perhaps, just might be, new job at a wilderness boarding school for adolescent boys who have adjustment difficulties ranging from ADHD to ODD.  I've written about this before so I won't belabor the details, but two experienced counselors and I were given the responsibility of working with ten boys aged 14 to 17.  The school's main campus has all the modern amenities but the boys do not live there.  Depending on age and program progress each of the boys is assigned to one of five campsites which are remote from each other and from the campus. 

The campsite I was assigned to is the most remote; perhaps two or three miles over difficult trails from the school's entrance, and in the late afternoon sun, fully provisioned for the weekend, we set out for the site.  The trail followed the shore of a sparkling lake before it climbed to the top of a ridge, plunged down the side of a deep gorge through a series of switchbacks, and ascended the opposite side.  Once across the gorge the going was a bit easier, a distance where mountain laurel formed a living tunnel, brighter glades were lined with pink lady slippers, and towering oak and maple giants, energetic with their new greening, blocked out direct sunlight.  As we neared the camp the boys became quiet and increased their pace, as though they were intent on getting there without delay.

We rounded the final bend and I had my first look at where they lived.  I understood their eagerness, instantly and completely.  On an alluvial fan that terminated the gorge we had crossed earlier they had built the only home they would know for the one or two years they would spend at the school.  Trees covered a high ridge on the far side of the site, and a bold stream raced downhill between them and the camp itself.  There were three buildings, each showing the workmanship of the earnest but inexperienced young hands that had built them.  A raised composting latrine was located off to one side, while a lean-to shed with a fire pit constituted their kitchen and dining hall.  They cook and eat in that shed whenever they aren't at the main campus for academic classes, doctor visits, and like things.  Snow, darkness, cold, rain, wind - it doesn't matter; that's where perhaps 50% of their meals are taken.  Near the center stood the bunkhouse, a rustic thing on stilts, uninsulated, but heated by a single wood burning stove.  No electrical power.  No running water other than the trickle from a hand pump.  No televisions or computers or PS3 games.  Nothing but the greening of things, the rush of water through the stream bed, and the whisper of wind through the trees.

Between the buildings the boys had built a beautiful and extensive rock garden, a frog pond complete with lily pads, a group meeting place, and had sculpted a dozen faces into large pieces of driftwood which they then hung from a tree like a huge wind chime.   Twisting trails cobbled with stream-rounded rocks wended between all these things so that they might be better admired close at hand.  When we arrived the sun had just reached the top of the far ridge, and the entire site was bathed in that beautiful late afternoon golden yellow glow so prized by photographers. 

This is a place of power.  In the Celestine Prophecy there is a place in this part of the state that is called so.  This isn't that place, but it has to be a close second.  I think I know what the first person to discover Machu Picchu must have felt like.  I encountered something that has to be what and where it is.  There is no better place for this camp.

To a person, the students are highly intelligent and in various stages of dealing with their internal impulses.  One of the younger boys is working on, among other things, controlling his language.  At the campus he had trouble constructing sentences without at least one "damn" or "fuck" in it.  This is a problem because one of the other boys takes immediate offense and open warfare ensues.  When we got to the camp I noticed that he had toned things down and complimented him.  He asked if I wanted to see what made him completely calm and beckoned for me to follow.  At the edge of the stream, behind a tree sat a little stone statue of The Buddha.  He leaned over it, rubbed it's belly, patted its head, turned to the stream and started singing, first the Beatles Let It Be, then the refrain from Gloria in Excelsis Deo.  "It works," he said, "I'll be fine the rest of the night."  He was.  Another boy, really a young man and the oldest in the group, appeared very well adjusted and I told him so.  He said "You should have met me when I got here a year and a half ago, you wouldn't say that.  The kids who are new here would never understand it if I told them that I'll miss this place, this camp, when I graduate in a few weeks."

Before dinner was cooked over an open fire - pasta with tomato or marinara sauce, salad, dense bread, peas, corn and beans - everyone attended to their assigned chores; sweeping out the bunk house, adding wood chips to the latrine compost pit, tending to the frogs and plants, pumping water for washing, gathering firewood, and generally pushing back against the tides of entropy.  As I watched and participated I couldn't get images of Wendy's Lost Boys or thoughts of the denizens of Lord of the Flies out of my head.  It was so appropriate.

After eating and cleaning up everyone had time to read by flashlight before the ten o'clock curfew.  Maybe it was a special night, but there were no problems with any of the boys, something the experienced counselors say isn't all that common.  Sleep came swiftly to all of us.

Morning found the temperature at a brisk 38 degrees and, after a bit of groggy stumbling around, the boys cooked a breakfast of eggs and veggie sausage.  After food we headed to the campus for a science class and then on to the lake to fish for that night's dinner. At first I thought it was my imagination, but as we walked away from the camp the boys became less relaxed and started showing some signs of the behavior that had got them into the school in the first place.  But no, it wasn't imagination at all.  The other counselors said they see it all the time, and to prove their point, when we returned to the campsite later that day the metamorphosis was repeated.  Boys who had been unruly and difficult on campus started to mellow out just as they had only a day before.

A place of power indeed.