That Time I Was Bitten by a Tree

In the summer of 1988, I was no longer a Counselor in Training. At 17, I could assume the role of Junior Counselor. For the first time, I was part of the real camp staff; no more dishes to wash in the mess hall; no more shoveling sand on the beach. I could have nights out. I received an actual paycheck at the end of the week, a sweet fifty dollars for my time.

The junior staff had more experience with the camp itself than other staff members. Most senior counselors would be there for only a summer or two. We were the crew who, for one reason or another, could not quit the place. I had been coming up to Camp Aharah for at least a couple of weeks each summer for the past nine years. I knew the secret places: the clearing beyond the archery range (site of my first tentless camping experience), the sunken cabin in the swamp, and the climbing tree out by the old railroad bed. I took great pride in my ability to navigate at night and rarely took a flashlight in the cabin area after dark. There was always enough ambient light to find the way.

1988 was also the summer before I headed off to college. Wanting to arrive in Massachusetts without the thick-lensed glasses I had worn through high school, I decided to try contact lenses, quickly discovering that camp was not the place to experiment with contacts. I lost one when I forgot I was wearing them and jumped into the blue water area. My parents sent a replacement up from Kalamazoo. The lenses were hard to keep clean in the northern woods, and I spent a few weeks with scratchy eyes, red and irritated, before abandoning the project.

One evening, I was finishing up in the bathhouse. The contacts were safely stowed in their cleaning case. My glasses were back at the cabin. I heard a commotion coming from the girls’ side. A camper had woken from a nightmare and was panicking. Flash, her counselor, took her out of the cabin because she was upsetting the other girls. The camper was beginning to hyperventilate. When I called over and asked if I could help, she asked me to run to the dining hall and get a paper bag, the all-purpose cure for hyperventilation.

Booboo, another junior counselor, was there as well. We set off to get the bag together though either could have handled the task alone. I suppose we were unconsciously following our own advice to take a buddy. We made it down to the kitchen, where we began a furious search through the drawers for the supply of paper bags, a nearsighted blur of a search for me. We found the brown stack, and Booboo took off running toward the bathhouse, leaving me to carry the all-important brown bag.

I sprinted on the path without glasses or a flashlight, guided by the light of the bathhouse. Periodically, Booboo would shine his flashlight back at me, ensuring I was still behind him. After one of these checks, as my eyes readjusted to the dark, I saw a tree about six inches away from my face. It was a thin silver beech tree with a trunk I could wrap myself around, which I did at full speed. The bark scraped the right side of my face and the inside of my right arm.

There was a moment of bright light, like the flash of a camera, as I hit the tree. Then, I found myself on the ground by the Arts and Crafts shed, about twenty yards from the bathhouse. 

       “Indy, are you all right?” Booboo called.

       “The bag,” I muttered, “Take the bag.”

He took the precious paper from my outstretched arm. Left without a buddy, I waited for the darkness to descend, knowing I had given my life for a greater good. A little girl would breathe into a paper bag, and all would be well. Breathe, little one. Breathe the rarified air of a brown bag, the smell of so many school lunches, as I breathe my last…

Booboo found me again a few minutes later. The camper had calmed down while we were in transit, so my injuries served no purpose. I stood up and walked into the bathhouse. In the mirror, I could see the angry scrapes on my right cheek. My shoulder was beginning to bruise where it took the impact of the tree. My face ached, and the scrapes stung.

We walked down to the Mess Hall on the main cabin trail to look for first aid supplies. As usual in the evening, the other counselors were hanging out and eating leftover desserts. The room fell silent as I entered and the staff saw my fresh cuts and scrapes. They asked what happened. I told them the story.

Again there was silence until Ronny, the Swedish exchange counselor, spoke a line indicative of the nature of Scandinavian humor. He looked, laughed, and said, “I’m sorry Indy. It’s not funny…but it is.”

In the morning, we gathered for our pre-breakfast flagpole ceremony. I was groggy from a poor night’s sleep. The scrapes were scabbing over, and the bruises were more vibrant than the night before. The young camper whose life we were trying to save with a paper bag came over and apologized for the trouble. A few people expressedconcern, and I think I was given the morning off. I wanted to say something smart like, “You should see the other guy,” but the other guy was an unremarkable beech tree, standing calmly and guiltlessly by the Arts and Crafts shed.

Later that summer, we erected a homemade sign that I nailed into my arboreal assailant. “On this spot in the summer of 1988, Indy was bitten by a tree.”