Grubbs and mushrooms

[jere7my]

Photos, finally, plus a few more highlights of Pinewoods, before they fade from my mind:

• I got to play fetch with Sophie, black lab / camp security officer! She jumped into the pond and paddled very diligently out to fetch the toy I threw, then shook herself dry in a great scintillating explosion of water on the camp house porch. Also, she rolled around on her back in the wood chips, and we played "I'm-gonna-get-yer-stick!" I so miss having a dog.


• kdsorceress and I went on a fabulous two-mile hike through the Conant-Storrow Nature Preserve, which is about a half mile from camp. (This was, I think, the second time I'd ever left camp during Pinewoods.) We saw a rushing stream with fish in, gorgeous metallic green damselflies called ebony jewelwings, Halfway Pond and its island, bright green cranberry bogs beneath a bright blue sky, and unexpected beehives. I did not get us lost, despite making a wrong turn, and despite turning around to see we'd left a big "NO TRESPASSING" sign behind us. Oops. (It was more generally very nice to have Kat there; it was her first time at camp, and I love playing tour guide, especially for a place that I love and know like the back of my hand.)


• I met and danced with a very nice young volunteer named Robin, who is a burlesque dancer. Actually, I danced with a lot of people, and had a nice time with them all.


• I lost my crown as Feelies champion. Feelies is a game of identifying little objects in little blue bags by touch alone; I won last time, but was robbed this year because I didn't recognize a Boggle cube, despite having the brainstorm of using the power of magnetism to identify the fridge magnet, which was otherwise a heavy little disk. Next year, the tiebreaker!


• It was wonderful mushroom weather — heavy rains (just before we arrived) followed by hot, humid air made for dozens of brawny little mushrooms shoving up through the pine needles. One the size of a dinner plate was growing from a log outside the dining hall; a half dozen people made sure I knew about it.


• I had several good conversations with David Grubb, who is rapidly turning into one of my favorite Pinewoods-goers. He is British, and appropriately dry-humoured, and always reading an Iain M. Banks novel.


• I wore my red British military jacket, loud Macleod tam o' shanter, and Utilikilt to the Friday ball, and looked either ridiculous or dashing.


• I enjoyed a lot of ice cream and birch-or-ginger beer on the camphouse porch, played with many bathroom marble machines, ate delicious food in the dining hall (the roast chicken was amazing), hugged a lot of people, laughed a lot, skulked and sulked some, used an outhouse, made new friends, saw old ones (old friends — nothing Lovecraftian), played guitar on the dock, and generally had a Pinewoods.

kdsorceress wore LED gloves to the SF party Monday night; I got some lovely long exposures.


The musk turtle I de-leeched (note: not a juvenile snapper, after all). You can see the mouth end of the leech attached to the lower left of her plastron.


Unexpected beehives!


Cranberry bogs.


The passage between the ponds.


The gills of the great mushroom. (Many more photos of it on Flickr.)


The lovely kdsorceress and mogwit, all pretty for the ball.


Myself, likewise. Note sexylicious leg wounds.

As always, the full set is on Flickr.

Comments

[sicksickcity.livejournal.com]

That is surely your best outfit ever. As my mom would say, we won't lose you in a parking lot.

[uncleamos]

Red coat!

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

Okay, filk-fiend. As soon as I read the name, the question that pressed upon my mind was, "why hasn't J7y written I Am a Man of Conant-Storrow"?
Or have you?