When I was having lunch with my siblings in Dahlonega, Georgia, last October (see previous post), I started reminiscing about being a counselor at Camp Glisson, a Methodist Church camp just outside Dahlonega, when I was in high school. I asked our waitress if Camp Glisson still existed.
"Oh, yes," she said with a bright smile. "It's close by." When I said I had been a counselor there, decades ago, she urged me to go see it. My siblings were willing to indulge my nostalgia, so on our way back to the lake house, we stopped at Camp Glisson.
I recognized, or thought I recognized, the large log reception building with its porch and pole railings, but I was thrown right back into my Camp Glisson days when we walked to the top of the waterfall.
Vivid memories returned: swimming in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, dinners in the rustic dining hall, the campers under my wing, and, most of all, the coterie of young people who worked at Camp Glisson that summer.
The head counselor, older than the rest of us but probably just a recent college graduate, was one of the most ebullient people I've ever known, with an outsized sense of humor and imaginative ways to use it. He name was Charles, I think. His powerful charisma bonded all the counselors in a summer of madcap fun. Without ever being irresponsible to our campers or disrespectful to God and the church, we centered our summer around adventures, games, and play with each other.
I wish I could have walked down to the little stone chapel, nestled in the woods, but I was too cognizant of dragging people around a place that held no memories for them. I had loved that chapel. I used to go there alone, more to sit in its serenity than to worship or pray. I was more romantic than religious in my church days, and the sweet little chapel, with its stained glass windows and large cool stone floor, fit my teen-age romanticsm perfectly.
If I had walked through the rows of cabins, would I have recognized the corner of the cabin where one of my campers was bitten by a copperhead? I remember the girls crowding around me as I took her to Charles, who put her, me and another camp leader in the car and drove us fast to Dahlonega to find the town doctor. At this point the story has become myth to the extent that I don't know if what I remember really happened or was another exaggeration in that exaggerated, bigger-than-life summer. Was the doctor really drunk? That's what I remember we said when we told the story. Did he really use a rusty razor blade to make the X cut over the fang marks? That's what I remember our saying. I doubt the latter, maybe not so much the former. After all, it was north Georgia in the fifties, deep in the Appalachian Mountains, and it was already after dark. At any rate, my camper survived without ill effects and, if I remember right, returned to finish her stay at the camp.
One weekend, between camp sessions, Charles had one of his innocent-practical-joke ideas: why didn't we catch lightning bugs, he said, put them in a jar, then go to the movies in Dahlonega and let them loose there? Immediately in the spirit of the game, four or five young people were leaping around the yard in front of the cabins, snatching the blinking lights from the air. Fireflies! Lightning bugs, those most magical of all creatures, not only because they light up the night with their cold yellow blinking lights but because they don't bite or sting; they're easy to catch, and they sit on your palm, blinking a few times before flying into the air again, unperturbed by their brief stay on that warm surface. Who could object to seeing them fly around a movie theater?
When we had a jar full of lightning bugs, we hid it in a bag and took off for town. We filed into the theater quietly, respectfully, but secretly gleeful. I don't remember what movie we saw, but I do remember when Charles opened the jar and let out the lightning bugs. They flew off in all directions, flashing their lantern lights everywhere in the dark theater. I don't know whether the other patrons were annoyed or amused, but the counselors from Camp Glisson were suffused with glee at our harmless and maybe even charming stunt.
I was a bit in love with Charles, in my teen-age way. I was mad about him, but not seriously. That a future with him wasn't contemplatable was a good thing in more ways than one. Once, when I served him his dinner, he looked at his plate in dismay and said, "But the peas should be on the other side of the potatoes!" When I told my mother that story, she shook her head and said he would be no man to marry!
I could see her point, even then. Nonetheless, he was one of the most brilliant personalities I have known, and he made that summer at Camp Glisson a bright star in my galaxy.
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