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)
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