Camp Huntington Day #2

It has been an excellent day. I got up early and found a nice quiet spot on the dock by the kayaks. I was able to squeeze in fifteen minutes of yoga and ten minutes of meditation before it was time to head to breakfast. I hope that I can do that every morning that I am here. It is so peaceful. No wonder William Durant spent so much time developing this "Great Camp" and convincing his wealthy aristocrat friends to visit and invest in the Adirondacks.

After breakfast we gathered for another nature hike. We got to see where the sauna is and the final destination was Camp Kirby. Camp Kirby was the home of the mistress of William Durant. I made an interesting local connection with the couple that was staying in the cabin. They were both retired physical education teachers. After telling them where I taught they immediately perked up and asked me if I knew a Tom Major? Which I do. He is a retire physical education teacher from my school district and still volunteers for playground duty. There names were Donna and Shorty. I am supposed to tell Tom that they said, "Hi!" Another woman who is working with the administrative staff taught fifth grade at Enfield Elementary school had my old classroom when I taught fifth grade at Enfield. It is two degrees of separation in the education industry.

The best part of the day was when we got to chose whether we wanted to go kayaking or canoeing. Since I grew up doing a lot of canoeing, I decided to Kayaking. It was beautiful out on the water. I had a great conversation with a classmate while paddling back to the dock. We started talking about where we lived and our family make-ups. Then our dialog turned to the smell of our home towns. We spoke about how great it was to roll into your hometown. The smell, familiar surrounds and the comfort of knowing your family and friends were near kept popping into my mind.

I am heading to Alaska on August 2nd to visit my family. It is where I grew. Now I live in Trumansburg, New York. I will have lived there four years next month. It is really starting to fell like my hometown. It is interesting to me how you grow so attached to different places. Fairbanks Alaska will always be where I grew up, but I think that Trumansburg and the state of New York is started to become my new hometown and it feels great!

We'll time to sign off. Dinner is in 10 minutes, then work time on class project, movie and popcorn time and then a hot sauna tonight!