On July 13 I packed up my car with camping supplies, enough
clothing for a week, and of course my fiddle to attend Northern Fiddle and
Dance Week at Ashokan in the Catskills. Olive was taken to Candlewick for the
week, then after a quick last stop at home I headed out.
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| The quilt temporarily hung from the balcony. |
When I arrived, I chose my usual camping spot and set up my
tent. The weather was pleasant at that point. After setting up my tent I
attended the opening supper and contra dance. Jay Unger, the camp director, spotted me and
told me that the quilt my friend Laurie made from my old camp T-shirts and
donated to the Ashokan Foundation had been found after missing for a few years.
Temporarily hung from the balcony over the dance hall, it will be permanently
displayed somewhere in the main building. I was pleased to hear this and sent an email to Laurie.
Sunday was relatively unstructured. I had a pancake breakfast,
caught up with some friends, and spent most of the day relaxing in my tent for
the busy week ahead. At 3:00 the orientation and welcome activities began,
followed by a pasta supper, an evening dance, and some jamming.
This year I decided to do things a bit differently from past
years. David Kaynor, a superb fiddler and dance caller, has been a fixture at
camp since its beginning. Last Fall I learned that he has been diagnosed with
ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease. The last time I had seen him was in February at
the Dance Flurry festival. He was talking slow, though his fiddling was in top
form. When I greeted him at the camp it was immediately clear that his voice
was now completely gone. At the orientation he used an electronic device with a
keyboard to communicate. He would type what he wanted to say, and the words
would come through a loudspeaker in an artificial voice. The system is not
perfect, but David was able to communicate in that manner. I resolved to take
as many of the workshops he was offering as I could.
It turned out that he was teaching a beginner’s fiddle class
that would have been pointless for me to take and two sessions that were
basically jam sessions. One featured easy New England tunes while the other focused
on more complex and difficult tunes with long traditions, some dating to the
early 1800s (called “chestnuts” by folk music aficionados). I took both of
those plus a class on Swedish style fiddling, taught by two excellent musicians
from Sweden.
I settled into the rhythm of the camp life. Breakfast, the
New England tunes session, a break (while other classes were going on), the
Swedish class, lunch, the chestnut session, another break, then a popular
French-Canadian jam session, followed by supper. After supper was a
Scandinavian jam session, followed by the evening dance, followed by the
late-night snack at eleven.
In past years I have tended to wear leather sandals around
camp, made by a fellow named Alan Block who was a popular fiddler as well as a
superb leather-worker. This year one of the straps broke, so I was forced to
resort to a pair of sneakers and a cheap pair of bargain store sandals I
brought because they are easy to slip on and off for late night treks from my
tent to the bathroom. I also have taken with me an old TV tray to use as a
night table in my tent. This time the plastic clips that hold the tray to the
stand broke (three of them), so I was unable to use it. So that was two items
that failed this year. Don’t things usually happen in threes? Well, I thought,
what else could go wrong?
So it went until Wednesday. It seems that around 2:30, while
I was in the chestnut session, there was quite a rain and wind storm. It has
stopped before the session ended, so I trekked over to my tent to check that
everything was ok. I noticed right away that something was not right. At first
look I thought that one of my metal tent-poles had been displaced. As I worked
to correct the problem it became clear that the pole had cleanly broken in two,
rendering the tent useless. As I started to move things from the tent into my
car, we were hit by another intense rain storm. Everything got soaked.
I got an ok to move into the bunk house. Everything,
however, was such a soggy mess that I decided I needed some space to sort
things out and spread some things out to dry. I reluctantly decided to get a
room at a Super-8 motel in Kingston, the nearest large town about a half hour
away. Fortunately, a room was available, so I tried to spread things out as
much as I could to dry then drove back to the camp.
I got there just as supper was finishing up. Wednesday night
is traditionally ice cream night there, so I grabbed a bowl. That night my
supper consisted of a banana and a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Not a healthy
supper, but better than nothing and it held me until the late night snack when
I was able to put together a sandwich.
After driving back to Kingston, it seemed that nothing was
drying very well. The hotel has a guest laundry room, but it was closed from
8:00 PM to 8:00 AM. The night clerk would not make an exception and let me use
it for an hour to dry some things, so I had to live with the floor covered with
wet things, including my sleeping bag and tent.
On Thursday morning I made it to the camp in time for
breakfast. I followed the normal routine, though it was strange to not have my
tent to read, rest, or nap in. I tried napping in my car with little success. A
jigsaw puzzle that was a community effort in the main hall ended up taking a
good portion of my break time. I remembered why I avoid doing such puzzles at
home: I have a very difficult time pulling myself away from them. Being very
tired I left the camp for Kingston shortly after the Scandinavian jam. I might
as well have stayed for the dance and late snack, as I could not get to sleep
in the hotel room.
Friday was the last full day of camp. On Friday night each
class usually does something for the Friday night review. My Swedish fiddle class
played a waltz. The chestnut class played “Petronella”, a very old Scottish dance
tune and traditional contra dance. One of the session participants, Paul
Rosenburg, is a popular and highly experienced contra caller. He called the
dance for a sizable group that wanted to dance it. The dance is still somewhat
popular, though called rarely these days at modern contra dances.
After the last late snack, I said my goodbyes to some friends
and drove back to Kingston. I decided to forgo the Saturday breakfast in that
it would add an extra hour to my trip back home. I would have to drive back to
Kingston to pick up I-87. In the morning I packed up my car with things that
were still damp or wet. The hotel supposedly included a continental breakfast.
The coffee was cold and the cereal stale. I forwent the “free” breakfast and
hit the road, stopping at a diner that I knew for a vegetable omelet, toast,
potatoes, and hot coffee. A far better breakfast than what was offered at the
Super 8.
My usual routine is to stop in Danbury Connecticut for lunch
at a large shopping mall just off the highway. Since this mall has an LL Bean store,
I decided to do something about my three “fails”. It turned out that the LL Bean store could
order a replacement pole for my tent. Much cheaper than buying a new tent. I
also picked up a pair of good quality sandals and a camp table that folds up
into a surprisingly compact package to replace the TV tray. I then headed to an
Italian restaurant nearby for grilled salmon with vegetables and a glass of
Pinot Grigio. While the food at camp is quite good, somehow the salmon lunch (the
tangy sauce served over the salmon was excellent) with wine struck me as
something I needed. For dessert I stopped at an ice cream stand and had a scoop
of “bourbon vanilla bean truffle” ice cream. It topped off the salmon nicely,
but they charged enough to buy a full gallon of ice cream at a supermarket.
Finally, I headed home, arriving around 6:00. The
arrangement with Candlewick was that I would pick her up at noon on Sunday
after she had a bath. I got there on time Sunday and Olive was ready. She
greeted me as if I had hardly been away, smelling fresh from her bath. The
groomer added a note that said “Olive is absolute perfection!” Well, of course.
As soon as we got home, she showed her appreciation for the bath by rolling on
grass. I was relieved that there was no poop involved. She is sleeping near me
as I am writing this, back to normal.
