Paul Grondahl grew up in Tacoma, WA, and, looking back on his summer camp experiences along the Puget Sound in the 1970s when rules were an afterthought, he sometimes wonders how they all survived.
In 1981, he took a train from Tacoma to the University at Albany for grad school in English and planned to stay two years. Instead, he met and married Mary, and they now have two grown kids and a pitbull mix named Lily. Paul says he aspires to be the person their dog thinks he is.
He is the Opalka Endowed Director of the NYS Writers Institute at the University of Albany, founded by his mentor, William Kennedy, and says it’s a dream job that enables him to continue writing books and articles.
The best writing advice Paul ever received was to “Find a good story and get out of the way." He’s written a half-dozen of his own books and a handful as a ghostwriter. Over 40 years as reporter and columnist at the Albany Times Union, Paul has written ten thousand stories, and here is the first one he’s ever written about summer camp.
A magical canoe adventure
By Paul Grondahl
In 1976, I was a 17-year-old neophyte camp counselor along with Dave, another newbie my age.
We worked at Camp Blanchet on Raft Island near Gig Harbor, a weeklong sleepaway camp run by the Catholic Youth Organization, or CYO. We were assigned the oldest kids, 13- and 14-year-olds.
We were about to embark on a four-day canoe trip that the young teens planned as an epic survivalist adventure. “Let’s live off the land!” the biggest camper hollered, who was also our group’s leader. The other kids pumped fists and chanted: “Off the land!” They planned to catch fish, dig clams, pick berries, forage greens and glean the bounty of the Puget Sound. Dave and I stoked their enthusiasm.
We loaded up fishing gear, buckets and clam shovels, a guide book on edible plant foraging, as well as tarps, sleeping bags, cooking gear, first aid kits and five-gallon jugs of fresh water.
Dozens of campers and counselors watched from the dock as we paddled away.
Our kids posed like warriors headed off to battle.
The first day was sunny, a perfect start. We caught a few flounder and cod, dug dozens of clams and picked buckets of blackberries. The kids found fiddlehead ferns. We cooked up a rustic feast and built a big campfire. We told stories and sang songs. The campers had a swagger.
It rained for much of the second day. The fish were barely biting. We found no clams. The berries were waterlogged. We did not build a campfire and went to sleep soggy and hungry.
We woke to more rain pelting our lifejackets, and worse -- a thick fog enveloped our flotilla of seven canoes, each holding two paddlers, one in the bow and one in the stern, with camping gear stowed in the space between them.
We were paddling around Fox Island in the southern end of Puget Sound in Washington state.
Suddenly I heard the low, throaty rumble of a cargo ship’s massive engine, maybe one-half mile away, an angry sea monster churning toward us. We were way in over our heads.
I could not see the other canoes through the fog. I tried not to sound panicked. “Stay calm,” I yelled. “I am going to get us safely to shore. Paddle toward my voice. When I shout “Hi,” you shout “Ho!.” I paused. “Hi!” I shouted. “Ho!” they yelled back. We were echo locating, like a pod of orcas.
Within five minutes, all seven canoes were safely beached and dragged ashore.
We heard the huge ship thunder past us, out in the channel, and massive waves soon crashed on the beach. Tragedy averted.
The campers huddled under a Douglas fir’s canopy to stay dry. A couple kids whimpered softly. Tears stained their cheeks. I assured them everything was going to be OK.
We stressed safety and tried to keep the canoes in tight formation, hugging the shore. The Puget Sound is a tidal estuary with a tangle of bays, inlets and islands surrounded by forests and mountains. It is a truly spectacular, even mythic, environment.
It was the third day and the frightful fog incident had pushed the kids over the edge. I gathered them around my canoe, untied the tarps and opened two big coolers. I had packed eggs, bacon, milk, orange juice, pancake mix and syrup, and three boxes of Lucky Charms.
The kids whooped with joy. It was as if I had brought ice to Macondo. As we gorged on the breakfast feast, I told the campers how proud I was of them. Nobody at Camp Blanchet had ever lived off the land on a canoe trip, their epic adventure.
We paddled a shortcut passage back to Raft Island. The rain stopped. The sun broke through. A throng lined up at the dock to welcome back their conquering heroes. The kids had their swagger back. The empty ice chests remained covered with tarps.
We never spoke of the Lucky Charms. They were magically delicious.