First Trip to Camp

ON THE TIMES

BY ART STOTT

Victoria Daily Times

March 22, 1955

You can stand on a float in Cigarmakers' Bay these day and whip a fly out over the water. The brisker you whip it, the warmer you'll get--and that, as far as I can see, is all you will get.

Of course when you're flailing around with a fly rod, you're not dropping that small bit of feather and hook onto the surface as the books say you should drop it. Still, a little energy in the performance does promote body warmth and body warmth is worth promoting at Shawnigan during this early spring.

Looking south last week-end, you still could enjoy a Christmas card picture. The hill rising from the head of the lake was dusted with snow. Wherever the slopes face north, the scene was something for a December calendar.

It will be some time yet before the trilliums scatter their white three-pointed stars under the trees and before the yellow wood violets make their shy appearance. The birds have only begun to sing. They are not yet in full voice, though a loon lifts idiot laughter from the water and a disturbed grouse whirrs away with a frantic rush of wings.

Snow in the hollows carries the track of deer. The animals haven't yet achieved the semi-friendliness which brings does out with their fawns in one of the loveliest of lakeside sights.

It's cold at a Shawnigan summer camp this early in the season. You twist the key in the lock, open the door and step into a shack that seems to hold a dead-air chill in almost solid form.

There's a dampness in the cushions, the bedding, the old clothes hanging behind the door. The fireplace is moist and reluctant. Smoke from a hastily built fire lifts sluggishly to the flue. And when the flame dances brightly above the crackling wood, the windows steam up, woodwork sweats.

Yet there's a certain pleasure in an early trip to camp. Around you is the tranquility of woods and shore not yet broken by the invasion of humans, not yet shattered by the roar of outboard motors.

If the ground doesn't offer up the tiny cadence of a hundred little streamlets rushing to the lake, it is softening and springy to the tread. Dusk brings the quick miracle of a few strong stars bright in the fading sky. The air is crisp and sweet.

Indoors, the fires beat the cold, bring out the homey, slightly musty smell of rafter- draping blankets. Coffee bubbles in its well-sooted pot on the stove. The benediction of its aroma mingles with the robust smell of camp cooking. And dinner is an event for ravenous appetites honed keen in the out- doors, careless of a palate's delicacies.

Night pulls the stars down closer to the earth. The open fire glows. Its warmth spreads a drowsiness to figures in chairs close grouped about the hearth. A boy rises, pulls a fire-brick from the stove oven, wraps it in newspaper, slips it into his sleeping bag and shortly follows it.

Sharp cold will come with the darkness, when the fires sink and die. Skim ice will form on water buckets on the stoop. But in that quiet time before retiring, while embers are red, a man knows a certain luxury and a certain peace--a time for pipe or two and unhurried reflections, or perhaps that even more restful state, no reflections at all.