episode 3 in a weekend with extended family
As coincidence would have it, on the evening of that very distressing day when the final decree for divorce from my first marriage was issued, I had been roped into being ‘entertainment’ for a Methodist Church family camp up the hill from Chico. There, I regaled the assembled with my impressions of Jimmy Stewart [everyone can do impressions of Jimmy Stewart] and my strumming of the ukulele [anyone can strum a uke; most are smart enough not to.] I don’t imagine that I was particularly entertaining. At some point, the minister asked the typical how’s it goin’ question, and man of God that he was, I gave an honest answer. Probably unexpected.
Fast forward a few years and I am marrying the good reverend’s daughter at that very camp.
Thirty-eight years later, almost to the day, said bride, my dear Candace, and I are returning from a Lake Almanor family weekend. We’d chosen to travel the scenic Deer Creek Highway and were doing so when she suggested we take a detour into Butte Meadows and then up the gravel road to the Boy Scout Camp where it all began.
The place had aged and the spirit seemed muted as the parcel was dotted with No Trespassing signs nailed to yellow pines, cedars and fence posts. A stroll through romance and memories would be out of the question this day. We turned around at the gate, but after a couple of hundred yards, the urge was too great. Parking by the side of the road, we hiked back to the gate and entered the property. Just this side of the three flagpoles on the edge of the Chico Meadows greenery, I hailed a young man. “Permission to come aboard,” I hollered.
The fellow may not have understood the reference, but he did kindly shepherd us to the grand old lodge fashioned of huge logs and timbers where we were graciously welcomed and – there being no young campers on site yet – invited to explore around a bit.
Camp Lassen was established in 1933. (I’d always thought the main building was a product of the WPA.) Sometime during the 1950s, a young camper named Billy Bernard attended, paddled an aluminum canoe in the pond, sipped water from pipe at the far end of the meadow – that spring being the source of Chico Creek – and located arrowheads crafted from flint and obsidian.
In 1986, thirty years later and now the Superintendent of the Jamestown (Tuolumne County) School District where I would enjoy my first administrative placement, ‘William’ Bernard took the children of those attending out to find arrowheads and splash in the pond.
Out back of the lodge stands the staff cabin, suited for those who’d be living in Chico Meadows for a summer rather than simply a week.
There, some miscreant attending our nuptials found it entertaining to stuff the wedding bedstead with pinecones and needles and a grotesque sculpted clay fish head. Something about which is still laughable.
Candi is the individual within our coupling that always wants to see what’s around the next bend. Time after time, she’s encouraged us to travel just a bit farther or explore just a bit more or edge across a line I might otherwise turn from. This was the case at Camp Lassen this year: 38 years later.
I’m so glad she did because we were informed that the Lassen Area Scouting Council is putting the property up for sale. With Scouting in 21st century decline, one wonders where the future Billy Bernards of the world will find their first arrowheads.
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Church of the Open Road Press
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