Fast freezing eggs for breakfast, Cornbread Kendra Gone AWOL, and the Ecstasy of the Zero

I arrived at breakfast bundled up in 4 layers of protective clothing, 2 pairs of socks, Sorel boots, a headband and hat, gloves and a sad sinking sensation in the very pit of my cold empty stomach. Cornbread Cookie Kendra was nowhere to be seen, although the Spanish-only speaking cook was dishing up eggs, turkey sausage and biscuits. Without Cornbread Kendra present, pandemonium almost let loose. Afterall, who would monitor the "No Leftover Club", who would select the quietest greenhorns to get their food first, who would hold up her fingers like coyote ears to get the kids to listen? Thankfully, in spite of the below freezing temperatures, a teacher from another school of kids visiting this godforsaken camp had her wits about her. She took charge and sent the children in table groups up to fetch their food.

I secured some hot water (clearly not boiled but above body temperature) and removed an earl grey tea bag from my jacket pocket, and prepared myself a cup of tea. After a biscuit and some eggs, that more or less froze immediately upon contact with my plate, I noticed a sad, shivering, sweet, adorable and chubby little boy at the table across from mine. He was fighting back tears and rocking back and forth. It was as though he was acting on the outside the exact feelings I was having on the inside. I felt an instant kinship and approached him slowly. I asked if he was cold, he nodded as tears streamed down his chubby cheeks, steam rising from them as they made their way down his cold face. I saw that he had only a sweatshirt on and asked if he had a jacket. He told me that his had gotten dirty and couldn't be worn. I put my hand on my compadre’s back and told him not to worry, I'd get him an extra jacket. It was at that exact moment that one of the naturalists wandered into the mess area. I pounced on her like a jungle cat and asked if she could secure a warm jacket for my freezing porcine little friend. Embarrassed by the notable absence of Cornbread Kendra and all other staff, she agreed immediately and returned within minutes with a warm jacket for my little buddy. Once he had the jacket on and was happily tucking into his fast freezing huevos, he smiled, and it was at that precise moment that I understood why I had been lured to gold country. Not simply to freeze my friends, but to serve.

After an artery clogging morning meal, I spent the entire day out on the mountain visiting mines, learning obscure horticultural facts and singing poorly composed folk music. The highlight of the day for the kids was the individual hike, where each child was sent down the ¼ mile path at 2 minute intervals to commune with nature and enjoy more freedom than they ever had before. The highlight for me came at noon while eating my rock hard plain bagel with soy butter, when I realized I had my can of Coke Zero in my knapsack and pulled it out for a thirst quenching chemical filled taste of the 21st century. Bliss.

The kids were also invited to join the "Hard Core" club which can only be done by eating the entire apple handed out at snack, core, seeds and all. If you do so, sparing the earth the discarded core, you get to write your name on Tumblesworth's guitar. This prize is so valuable that at least half the kids, including my adorable Livvy, ate the entire apple and jubilantly scribbled their names on the guitar. Of course, what confused me is how it is better for the earth to have the children eat the entire apple and then no doubt have it all end up in the toilet versus simply chucking the core onto the ground. I was about to pose the question of Tumblesworth but seeing the joy on the children's faces as they were individually indoctrinated into the Club, I thought better of it and kept quiet.

Dinner was an optimistic abundance of overly cooked spaghetti and turkey meat sauce with canned chemical tasting parmesan-like cheese that never crossed an international border, apart from quite possibly the People's Republic of China. The meal was served in the now familiar outdoor mess area at a balmy 30 degrees. Campfire entertainment for the evening was a local Miwok Indian woman who told stories with important morals, and sang several shrill and slightly off key tunes. I suspect that she may well have been making up the words.

And now I am standing in the wifi hotspot, arm to the sky, updating my loved ones and dreading my night ahead in the folding cot with my 16 tweenage bunk mates.
Tomorrow afternoon we will at last leave Coloma and after a 3-4 hour drive, I'll be home again. Hallelujah!

my best,
lightnin'

Horrific Hoe Down, No Left Overs Club Rewards, and awaiting the verdict of Cornbreak Cookie Kendra

I know my friends you will be relieved to learn that I survived the night with only minor back injury from the aforementioned folding cot. I enjoyed a 5:45am wake up, courtesy of the 4 girls closest to me who thought it would be fun to draw images by directing their shining flashlights on my face. Hilarious.

After last night's Hoe Down, I for one can truly appreciate all music created without a fiddle. We gathered in the same tarpaulin covered space we had been welcomed into upon arrival the day before by our eager hosts. At night the space is transformed into a sub-freezing dance hall, complete with dirt floor and senior citizen fiddling trio, aptly named "Slim Pickins." Slim himself loves his fiddle beyond all imagination, while his overweight, balding "guieee-tahr" playin' girlfriend was notably less enthusiastic. The trio is rounded off by the near sighted and wild haired mandolin player, who had the presence of mind to keep her comments on the history of her six stringed instrument mercifully brief as the crowd approached a mass-hypothermic trance.

The kids were shown several dances and then the "caller", a naturalist whose name escapes me as it was so very cold that I am quite certain my brain cells froze and were incapable of retaining the admittedly extraneous data, began calling out the steps. The now blue-lipped children participated as best their near frozen limbs would allow and I huddled beneath the one heat lamp in the entire area, fending off little people as they tried to approach and displace me from my key position at the front of its flickering warmth. When finally Slim and his enthusiastic elderly accompaniests had had their fill of fiddling fun, we were dismissed to our bunks for a night fraught with tossing and turning in my sad looking cot.

After the early flashlight-rich wake up, I am now off to a frigid al fresco breakfast where "Cornbread Cookie Kendra" has promised to personally inspect our plates and decide whether or not each and every one of us will make it into the "No Leftovers Club." If I make it into the club then I will get a star on the "No Leftovers Club" chalkboard. I am a sucker for a star, so I hope it's worth the dense french toast congealing in my stomach. Then I will be off on a 7 hour hike with the complaining prepubescent masses. What delightful organic waste will I have to compost this morning? I can hardly wait.

my best,
Lightnin'

My Trip To Coloma: or Could This Simply Be A Cruel Joke; Gold panning, bunked down with 16 nine year old girls, putting the R in rustic

I am on a three day overnight with my youngest daughter's 4th grade class to Coloma Resort, an outdoor wilderness school set in 1849 that only the most imaginative marketer could have named a "Resort". The school is located in the heart of Gold Rush country on the banks of the American River. I have a sleeping bag and flashlight in my duffle. We're not in cel phone or internet access range, so I am blogging now and will post when god willing I make it back to civilization. My only luxury is the can of Coke Zero I smuggled in my day pack.

Well we made it to camp and let's just say that rustic is insufficient to capture the essence of the place. I will be sleeping on a folding cot in a ramshackle bunk with 16 9-year old girls and 1 toilet. It's 40 degrees and I am not a Polar bear or Arctic fox, enough said.

Our naturalist, (that is an outdoor expert guide not a naked person,) has been speaking all afternoon in an Irish lilt but I think the accent is just a little too perfect and have shared my suspicions of the fraud with one of the other parent chaperones. To be clear, I am technically not a chaperone but a "teacher's assistant", and my fellow female companions have determined that my "assistant" status is a station or two below their "chaperone" status, and thus I am being treated ever so subtly like an enlisted soldier in an officer's camp. This is how I came to be sleeping on a folding cot. You see the bunk house had only enough actual bunks for the 16 girls and 2 parent chaperones, and so a folding cot was produced. This posed an uncomfortable problem, who would sleep on the uncomfortable cot? Naturally the parent chaperones immediately offered up the fact that I was just the "assistant" and then followed this up with laughter in a feeble attempt at masking this serious barb as merely a joke.

I, however, take my "assistant" role to heart and realizing that my compatriots were both: a)looking down at me; and b)not about to offer up a solution, I stepped forward and graciously volunteered to sleep on the offending cot. The teacher hugged me gratefully, appreciating my choice of rising above the situation and saving her a parent intervention, but the parent chaperones seemed to take it in stride, believing that justice has simply been served. As for me, I held my head up high, knowing I was being the bigger person I often encourage my children to be on the playground of life. I imagine this is how the men on the Titanic who sent the ungrateful upper class women to safety must have felt; doomed but vaguely superior.

I have vowed to smile through it all and make the most of the accommodations, the compost heaping duties, the high carb low fiber food, and the obligatory panning for gold in the frigid river water.

Now back to our naturalist and his phony Irish accent....I mentioned to the parent chaperones that "Tumblesworth" seemed to have too perfect an accent and that I suspect it to be a fake. No they responded in disbelief, it couldn't be. So I approached our tall, guitar playing, neck harmonica wearing, toe-headed new friend and casually asked him what part of Minnesota he was from. He nearly dropped his guitar and turned to me to ask, "Did Cornbread Cookie Kendra give me away?" (Cornbread Cookie Kendra is the lead naturalist) "No," I responded. He smiled, "Cedar Creek, Minnesota."

The parent chaperones turned to me incredulously, "How did you know?" they asked like children to a cheap party magician. "Lucky guess," I replied coolly. And smiling to myself thought, "Who's the assistant now?"

Later that afternoon we took our Gold Rush names, a baptism of sorts, sealed with the very cornbread we cooked as a team in the Dutch oven Tumblesworth set a top the fire he ably started from nothing more than a flint and some twigs. My Gold Rush name is "Lightnin' Lorna," the alliteration pleases me in a way I am certain nothing else here will. The children then failed miserably at the shelter making exercise but on the bright side no one was seriously injured.

I have asked my beloved husband to please book me a massage for 4pm Saturday (80mins), I'll need it.

Oh how I miss you all and my Egyptian cotton sheets.

One final note before I sign off, there is 1 tiny wifi hotspot half way across camp although I can only send and receive messages when standing in a particular spot on 1 leg holding my phone to the sky. Please picture this with me in 4 layers of outerwear, as I am doing it now.

my best,
Lightnin' Lorna (my gold rush Nom de plume)