We ended the afternoon with a stop at one of the local pubs, The Happy Tap. At first we were the only folks in there, with the very inquisitive barkeeper Karen asking us about where we come from and what we're doing there in Westfield. But soon a few locals entered and all chatted about how everyone's saying the deer are really hiding this season. 
(My sweet Woodsman-at-heart, looking so handsome and rugged.)I was just enjoying the opportunity to use an indoor commode for once!
Plus I really liked the atmosphere.
I will have to say as we are sitting at the bar enjoying the rest and a the drinks, it was most surrealistic to me when Karen asked us the inevitable question of, "So what do you two do down there in Chicago?" and we had to answer, "We're both in theater."
..."Is that right?" Karen responded in her back-woods twang and cigarette-raspy voice.
We watched a little football on their HD widescreen t.v. and then headed out to the camp for one last night. I didn't take anymore pictures of the camp, but it was actually the most beautiful night I've experienced up there yet. I'm getting better at creating a good roaring and sustainable fire, and Ray cooked some amazing burgers that night. The overcast clouds kept the temperature in the 30's for a bit and there's really nothing like that sense of peace and quietness that happens around a crackling fire in the late evening.
We took turns keeping the fire going while underneath it a very strong pad of hot coal was going strong. Just learning about the different kinds of fire is amazing to me. But more so because I find myself thinking about the ancestors all coming before me who had to have had a very intimate and instinctive sense about fire, about fuel, and about nature, about survival, just in order to keep surviving themselves and for future generations to come. And they succeeded. Living by fire. Surviving by fire. So many failed and so many didn't. And this fire before me that I'm learning to work with - that I'm learning to feed and control and manipulate - is so very close to the essence of life's beginning necessities.
Amazing to me. And how foreign as well. But its becoming less foreign to me each time we go up there.
My respect for my ancestors has grown by leaps and bounds. My humbleness towards the nature of life has deepened. Several years ago I began to grow so restless with my surroundings and with my life. I wouldn't have called it restlessness at first - I was instead constantly asking the question "is this all there is?" I was getting depressed. Suddenly the experience of shopping at a Mall had an underbelly of shallowness that I couldn't escape. I couldn't keep my attention on any t.v. program long enough to sustain interest because the gnawing awareness of "none of this is real" wouldn't leave my head. And in general, all things I used to think were so important to me were all suspect as I started to ask over and over again, "what really matters?"
The other important context to this crisis/restlessness that I started to have was, of course, that my job at that time involved working with adolescents whose lives were already more battled-scarred, exploited, and trashed with degrees of abuse than most people will ever know in their lifetimes, and by the very people who brought them into this world in the first place. And I was there, among the other psychologists, trying to help put any kind of pieces together so they could function again in society. Right now, as I write this, chances are that 60-80% of the teens I worked with back five years ago are probably occupying a jail cell or actively involved in very high-risk behavior that will eventually get them in prison.
Oh well.
It's not for me to decide or control such things.
I guess it's just another lesson in humbleness.
But I want to keep learning about those qualities in our humanity and sense of purpose that made it possible in the first place to go from living by fire, to living in a high rise condo along lake shore drive...and at least then be making the conscience choice about the direction I want my life to go, instead of just going unawares.
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