Waiting (and waiting) for Spring

It's been a long, cold, snowy winter in New England. Depending on which direction you like to look, summer is either a distant and faded memory, or it's a tantalizing hope, just out of reach. This time of year is always difficult, waiting with impatience for the last of the snow to melt and for the ground to thaw, so we can get to work. And there's a lot of work to do!

I made a quick visit to camp this morning on my way to Concord to get our boats registered for this year. Camp's not exactly on the way to Concord for me, coming from southern Maine, but it was relatively warm and sunny when I woke up this morning, so it seemed like a good idea to take a spin around the grounds to see just how close we really are to having winter firmly in our rearview mirror. The answer was a stubborn "still a ways off."

It's different every year – sometimes even a heavy winter melts away quickly, and other years it hangs on. This year, every time it snowed, the cold temperatures made for a fine, dusty snow that the wind blew in to tremendous drifts while leaving patches of bare ground elsewhere. Now, that means soft and muddy ground right next to persistent piles of snow you can sink in to up to your knees.

There's really no telling when the ice will be out on the lake. There are gaps here and there, but for the most part Winnipesaukee is still locked in to winter. Last year the official ice-out was on April 23, while in 2012 it was a full month earlier, on March 23. This year? Hoo-boy, I don't know.  It's been fourteen years since we still had ice on the lake as late as May... If you're interested in taking a guess, check out winnipesaukee.com for a full accounting of the lake's ice history.

Jeff Kuebler will arrive in a few weeks. Jeff has the enormous task of readying the waterfront and all of the boats – he's been doing it for years. Last September, he put everything away, and after a warm winter spent in Florida, he'll soon be back where he belongs, happily puttering away. Bill Cox has been working with Bruce this winter rehabbing rowboats and the war canoe, so Jeff will be able to devote his energies to re-making the moorings, repairing and refreshing the aging fleet of Townes, readying the motorboats for their annual Marine Patrol inspection, and doing everything else that I don't even realize goes in to prepping the waterfront every year.

Everywhere I walked, and everywhere I looked, there's evidence of a hard winter. Camp came through it for the most part unscathed, but there's always considerable work that needs doing to be ready for opening day. There are trees that need pruning (or outright removal), brush that needs clearing, earth that needs moving. My brother Mark, who if our records and memories are accurate will be putting in his 23rd year at camp, will be coming in just ahead of Jeff. Mark doesn't have the luxury of spending his summers at Kabeyun these days, but he comes out for the spring and a bit of the fall to help with opening and closing camp, something it seems as though he's been doing nearly forever. Like Jeff, Bill, and Bruce, he's got his work cut out for him this year.

As hard as it might be to believe that in two months this place will look like it always does, ready for campers and staff to fill the woods with laughter and enthusiasm, this is a process that we begin anew every year at this time. It takes an admirable effort from not just those few people I've mentioned here, but from an entire cast of characters who will start making their presence felt before long.

Between the staff's pre-camp week, the eight weeks that camp is in session, and the two weeks of family camp, Kabeyun is in full swing for only eleven weeks, just a little more than 1/5 of the year. It's easy sometimes to think of camp as dormant for the other forty-one weeks, but that would be overlooking everything that goes in to making those eleven weeks what they are. The energy may ebb when the campers depart at summer's end, but life goes on, for sure. As quickly as one summer slips away from us, the next starts to draw near. And this summer will be here before we know it – believe!