By Joe Crain
I’m not sure how many of you who were at camp this past season were aware that we spent most of the season in a severe drought. After all, to most of you hot sunny days are what summer camp is all about! Rainy days are an unwelcome interruption to the daily routine and program offerings. Now I’m sure there were a few of you who noticed the lake level gradually decreasing as the season progressed. Some of you may even have noticed the soccer pitch was fading a bit under foot as you ran after that impossible to get pass on what was supposed to be a masterful execution of a set play your team had planned. But for the most part I’ll bet most of you were so wrapped up in the summer fun that you were unaware of the remarkably few rainy days; by the end of August our area was more than 5 inches below average for rainfall. As a caretaker I became acutely aware that the grounds were under great stress as the months progressed. Riding on the mower one of the few times I needed to mow the grass, I was engulfed in a cloud of dust. And the grass was only healthy looking in shaded areas, and was dwindling to seed spikes in the areas of full exposure. The trees were also showing signs of drought stress as they were dropping more leaves than was usual for a normal summer. I was getting a bit concerned when by mid-July we had little more than a few spotty showers since the last of the snow melted in April. Well, I’m happy to report that once September began, the drought abated and things have turned almost too far in the direction of accumulating moisture! We have received around 10 inches of rain in the last 4 weeks. Unfortunately, most of that rain came in only a few large drenching storms that dumped inches an hour! These storms were so powerful, I had to put the back blade on the tractor twice this month to resurface roads in camp – the two roads on steep grades, leading to the Upper Diamond and the Bike Shack, hold together well in normal rains but can blow out when the rain comes in a gush. The other bad thing about so much rain so fast after a drought is that the grass was sparse from the drought and has less capacity to hold the soil in place. After our last gusher, a thin coat of sand washed down the Swamper Hill and left our tennis courts pretty sandy. Now, this is by no means a disastrous amount of sand, but it’s enough that they will take a bit longer to blow off when leaf blowing starts near the end of October.
Well, the grass has recovered quite a bit from the drought and I’ve needed to mow a couple times already this month. Elsewhere around camp the post season work jobs have started. Caretaker Andy has removed the water from all of the pipes in camp, and has added the antifreeze to all of the drains and toilets for the soon to come frosts and winter freeze up. Cody Keys has again joined us for the fall as our “seasonal” caretaker and assisted Andy with taking out the water, and has been scraping the Big House porch floor and preparing it for a much needed fresh coat of paint. After returning from my annual September vacation I have kept busy tearing out rotted wood on Logger 5’s entry threshold and some rotted siding on the back of Swamper 1. The list of jobs needing attention never seems to get any smaller as one job is wrapped up and two more are noticed and take their place.
Enjoying the bright reds and oranges of the progressing fall, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.
