Tuesday, November 12, 2024 Entry #126
I have a ritual whenever I drive to Camp Thunderbird in Northern Minnesota (which, considering it is 14 hours away from St. Louis, happens more frequently than you might think). When I turn down Beltrami County Road 9 and catch my first glimpse of Lake Plantagenet, I put on the song “Carolina In The Pines” by singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey (best known for “Wildfire”). This is a song that I first heard sung around a campfire on Plantagenet’s shore as a 10-year-old camper, and it gave shape to a large part of my musical taste for the rest of my life (including, of course, my deep affection for the music of Bruce Springsteen). While Thunderbird is in Minnesota, not the Carolinas, there are definitely a ton of pines, and at this point I crave the song as the soundtrack to my imminent arrival at camp. Then, on the dirt road off County 9 called “Tbird Trail” that leads directly to the camp welcome gate, I play a song that is in the same folksy style as “Carolina In The Pines,” written by a counselor specifically for the camp. The chorus gets to the heart of the matter:
Thunderbird, what you are, reaches near and far. You stretch your fingers and you send strong young boys to proud young men
Curating music to accompany a drive like this makes an emotional and sentimental moment even more so, and I am an overly emotional and sentimental guy as it is! So, I was a very “happy camper” when I arrived at Camp Thunderbird for an extended stop along my trek to Canada to see two more Bruce Springsteen concerts.
I had never been to this second home of mine as late in the year as November, and though I didn’t get the snow I had hoped for, it was cold, crisp, clear, and solitary. I spent hours just walking and taking it all in.
I have tried, in recent years, to come up with a word to describe what it is like to be in a place where there is a viscerally glowing memory at nearly every turn. I have been connected to Camp Thunderbird for over five decades, encompassing countless relationships and encounters. There are many individuals who I have seen in this beautiful parcel of land first as young children, and then I have been back again to see them return transformed into teens, young adults, and later, as parents with their own camper children. Though I am physically alone this time, all those years, memories, and people (and all of the incarnations of each person) were stitched together and utterly present to me as I traversed camp today.
“Haunted” works in a way, but that word has such a negative connotation. It was actually a recent Bruce Springsteen song that helped me embrace the idea of a “holy haunting.” “Ghosts” is on the 2020 album Letter To You, and it has become a standard part of Springsteen’s setlists on the current tour. In the song, Springsteen tells of how just looking at the “old buckskin jacket” that a deceased dear friend and bandmate always wore seems to mystically bring that person right back to him. Springsteen hears the sound of his friend’s guitar, and sees “your ghost moving through the night, your spirit filled with light.” The phrase “I’m alive!” is exclaimed throughout “Ghosts,” suggesting that these paranormal events are far from frighteningly ghoulish to Springsteen, they are rather extremely life-affirming, Ruminating on “Ghosts” helped me understand how I could be haunted in such a positive way as I continued my stroll.
I spotted a deer (who tend to stay away when camp is populated), saw the lake from a spot (the “Upper Ballfield”) where such a viewing would be impossible in the summer because of foliage, sat on the pine-needled forest floor that was my first “pulpit” (the non-denominational services area), and kicked back in an Adirondack chair in the village I lived when I was the camp’s Assistant Director, waxing nostalgic in the cold.
Though I was certainly a fan of Bruce Springsteen’s music by the time I was an older camper, The Boss doesn’t directly play into my Thunderbird experience like other singer-songwriters such as Michael Martin Murphey, John Denver, and Bob Dylan (my counselor nickname was “Dylan”) do. However, I do have one Springsteen association with this place that I recalled today. When I was the camp’s Special Program Director, I made a mix tape with songs to play during the camp’s Fourth of July celebration. Alongside “This Land is Your Land,” “Pink Houses” (“Ain’t that America for you and me?”), and “City of New Orleans” (with its stirring chorus of “Good morning, America how are you?”), I added two Springsteen songs. One was “Born in the USA” of course, but the other was “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).” The later, while it has the holiday in its title (justifying its inclusion to me), makes no mention of the country, and contains a narrative and a melody line more challenging than most of the other selections. Anyways, it made me smile slyly all those years ago when I heard Springsteen’s accordion-accentuated, wistful boardwalk ballad amidst the hoopla.
I also recorded some videos, trying to capture that haunting feeling, but of course you can’t film ectoplasm!
My friend Michael who lives near Bemidji met me as the daylight faded. He took a picture of me in front of a camp cabin where I had lived as a camper (1977 and 1978) and counselor (1981 and 1982), and where years later, I stayed with Amy and our kids multiple times at Thunderbird’s annual post-season Family Camp week. Michael and I took a selfie, and I said “so long” for now to Thunderbird as the moon rose over Lake Plantagenet.
Our next stop was the nearby tavern in the woods, another place that I guess haunts me, but for different reasons than camp does (just joking). There, we met up with another camp friend who had made this area his permanent home for a pitcher of beer, Tombstone Pizza, reminiscing, catching up and some good laughs. Afterwards, Michael and I made our way to his place where he graciously hosted me the night before I was set to cross the border into Canada from North Dakota.
But first, a bonus video. This one is from the area where the entire camp community gathers three times a summer for a sacred ceremony. As a wide-eyed 10-year-old kid overcome with emotion, I first heard the aforementioned “Carolina In The Pines” (the song I now always play when I get super close to camp) sung in this spot by a beloved camp counselor. Years later, as a counselor myself, I unpacked my guitar right here to play and songlead in front of everybody for the very first (but far from the last) time. As a dad, I had the incredible pleasure of singing in this Council Fire area with each of my kids attached to me in a backpack carrier when they were babies.
I was trying to do a 360 thing, so the video ends up a little too dizzying I think, and the area really doesn’t look that different in late November than it does in late June. But if you are a Thunderbird person, or if you just like this kind of scenery, go ahead and check it out. Tomorrow, I’m on the road again.
Day 2
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