As it is that time of year where we consider the blessings that surround us, I submit this story written to commemorate The Great Camp. I usually send it in an email yearly to those who are familiar with the story's origins, but I thought this year I'd put it where others could read it too.
The Great Camp
A Legend Only in Vermont
A Legend Only in Vermont
In the time before the world as we now know it began, there was another world. This world started long ago with a great explosion of feathers.
You may well ask "feathers?, Are you sure?," but it is so, as surely as the great duck once lived in Vermont. It is written in the landscape, it comes forth still from the great cornucopia, and is evident in the composition of the great camp, formed long long after the great explosion.
This is the story of the Great Camp and how it was created during the events of that strange and wonderful time before there were any wristwatches.
After the Great Explosion of feathers, all things began to form from the settling and resettling of the feathers. After many less successful combinations had come and gone, there came the time when the Great Dear (which in that time was spelled with an A) and the Great Duck came to be. They lived together in Vermont in harmony and peace and shared the land that was different in appearance then, because the Great Camp and all of the Great Buildings and trees around it, weren't yet there. Still, how wonderful their coexistence was, for together, they watched as the rain of feathers from the sky continued to fall and change the land and the forms around them.
One day there came The Great Stillness and quiet. As the Dear and the Duck watched and listened, it became clear to them that the rain of feathers had stopped. It was a stillness that roared. This was especially disquieting to the Great Dear who had little memory of the past and no knowledge of the future unlike the Great Duck who had memory of past and future, but no present. Therefore, the Dear did not know that the roar portended a wondrous event. The very fear that engulfed them actually enabled the event to happen.
At that time, the Great Dear were amphibious creatures that enjoyed the Great Pond as much as the Great Duck. The Great Dear gathered together on the pond and chose amongst themselves a leader, that would go from the Great Pond and make an offering to the sky to make the roar of silence stop, in hopes of restoring calm to the Dears’ universe. They decided that an antler from the leader should be brought to rest between the place that the Dear lived and the place where the Great Duck lived to express a symbol of their wish for peace and quiet, for the Dear had not the wisdom of the future to come, and supposed that the Great Duck had the power to control the silence that roared.
The Great Dear Leader sped to the place where the antler would rest, but because he had so very little memory about the past, he forgot what he was doing and in the excitement of the moment, fumbled and crashed the antler to the ground, sending splinters flying to a field less than a mile away. The Great silence continued and the Dear feared all the more the roar of silence, for in not knowing much of the past or any future, they knew mostly the fear they felt presently. They flocked together on the pond and dove down to the bottom, where their great antlers began to grow and take root in the great pond. As they were large Dear (hence the name Great), their bodies were not completely covered by the great pond, and their tails stuck out of the water, and many a legend tells in vivid detail designed to put children and adults asleep - the story of the Great Dear's tails becoming the white birch we know now.
Meanwhile, a piece of the great antler that broke off and landed less than a mile away began to quiet the roar with sounds. From the tip of it started flowing strange and wonderful things. These things began to form other things, and before the Dear could know the silence, a different kind of peace had returned to the land.
The Great Duck saw all this, and knew now that the Great Cornucopia had landed and was changing the world much as the rain of feathers had done, except that now, the Dear could not see or hear the changes, since they too like the rain of feathers had become one with the land. The Great Duck knew all future and past and began to contemplate them, for now that the cornucopia had landed, things would be different.
The Great Duck watched patiently (for there was no time for impatience then) as the pond dried up. She saw the Great Cornucopia continue to pour forth great multitudes of pumpkins, water in bottles, mixes of all varieties, apples, and potatoes, maple sugar candy, canned fried potato sticks, chocolate semi-sweet chips, canoes, and water, and oars too, garlic, diapers, Toyotas, high paying jobs, tiny things of all kinds, beautiful but curious pillows that could not be used, free medical care, toothpicks, a different spelling for the word Dear, and more!
The Great Duck watched this and smiled. She thought about the future, and the past and how the land had changed, and she watched the tails of the Great Dear grow to become beautiful white birch trees. She thought about the buildings that would one day occupy the spot where she watched. She thought about the pump house near the pond that would one day fill with water again, and flow through the pump house to feed the great camp's water needs. She thought about the two neatly hung wrenches that would someday hang in the pump house and the gallon of water in the plastic container meant to prime the pump, and then - or maybe a little before then she grew weary indeed. She had just barely enough time to think about the fact that the Title GreatCamp.doc has too many letters and had to be shortened to Greatcam.wps to be acceptable to the wordprocessor available at the time in the future when this story was recorded (but a tiny miracle for another story). For now, the Great Duck was weary beyond measure, and knew that it was her time to take part in changing as well.
As she lay resting she noticed that her body was beginning to take on another form. She was aware from her knowledge of the future that this would be so, and she smiled and was not alarmed, especially since the Great Cornucopia had not as yet poured forth any wristwatches, much less alarms of any kind. She knew that her body was changing into the Great Camp itself. She felt her skin harden and thicken, and form into walls and a roof. Her eyes multiplied and spread out to form well-placed and easy to clean windows. Her feathers dropped from her and were drawn inside to make splendid camp beds and marvelous pillows, although some of them could not be used because of a need to sacrifice things of beauty to the Gods of Useless Beauty’s happiness. From her bones formed exquisite furniture and dazzling utensils for every taste. Her internal organs turned out and formed a refrigerator, range, and wood burning stove. Her Great webbed feet separated and formed the guest house and sauna hut, with its very own wood stove. Her teeth (in that time Great Ducks had great teeth) collected to provide a lustrous commode in both the kitchen and toiletry areas. All these things came to be in their proper times, and they were good. In time there would be creatures that would marvel at the bounty of the Camp and not know of whence they came. These creatures would need to create their own stories to explain from where the riches they harvested would come.
But, be that what it may,
let it not be forgot
that once there was a time when,
The Great Camp it was not.
The End.
