Dear readers,
This is the first “chapter” of a new book, now named Through the Eye of Old Man Kyle. I wanted to offer more of a taste of this project—a novel written in the form of journal entries over the course of a young man’s final summer working at a remote church camp in southern Oklahoma. It’s a story about the brokenness of a young social outcast, alienation, faith, deconstruction, masculinity, the search for true self-knowledge, how to cope with mortality, and God and the great unknown. It’s a mystery, a swashbuckler, and a love story all in one. I hope you enjoy the first journal entry. I’ll be in touch with some exciting news about this book very soon! (Note: the preface of the novel is that Hunter Saint is making up for a creative writing assignment by writing about a memorable experience. So, he chooses to document his final summer at Camp Woodward—his “second home.”)
Here goes, Prof: Once upon a time there was a camp of tin buildings atop a hill overlooking a lake in the outback woods of southeastern Oklahoma. I worked at that camp for four summers in a row, counting this one. Call it an emporium of hard work. Call it a play place for church kids who don’t have good home lives. I call it home and highwater—and here’s why.
It feels weird, but refreshingly familiar, being back. Like taking a deep breath after you’ve been holding it for a couple of minutes. I honestly don’t even know if I’ve fully processed graduation. They flew us through commencement, as you know. You and I barely got to shake hands. We walked across the stage in tassels and robes and honors. Did I botch the handshake with President Clerk? There’s no way to remember. The last two weeks have been a blur of moving cabinets and unruly laundry, of congratulatory cards from relatives I never see, and the feeling of another commencement into something new, whatever that newness entails. All that cliché talk you told us to avoid, Prof.
My sister, the lovely Carey Saint Morgan, got married, and I was in the wedding. That was the Saturday after graduation. She and Jared are happy so far as I can tell and are spending the next couple weeks in Costa Rica.
But now here I am at Camp Woodward, established in 1987, hereby in its thirtieth year of operations, working here for the fourth year in a row. It’s the home away from home where I can safely say that that other world of final exams, lack of sleep, cars, emails, and romantic confusion is pretty much removed. Well, maybe not the romantic confusion. Sometimes that element intensifies here by about a thousand degrees. But we’ll get into that later. Here, it’s quiet. Not quiet as in lack of noise, per say, since there are plenty of cicadas, locusts, and bird calls to madden the air, but quiet in terms of spiritual respite. That’s how I see it, anyway. Camp Woodward is not mechanical. No engines or ringing phones or hissing espresso machines or rumbling generators. Some staffers say it’s a bubble, totally disconnected from the “real world,” as if this place requires a suspension of belief to enjoy.
That never seemed quite right, though. After every summer, I’d go back to college in the fall, quickly get thrown back into the melee of duties and lab assignments and the occasional wonderment over why I’m doing any of this, and then in May find myself back on this dock and dipping my toes in the healing waters of Lake Woodward. By all accounts this is the real world. The Shawnee hills roll in the distance like green putty. Tart blue skies, sprayed with stratus clouds, mark the beginning of a hot summer. The hills and the skies and the trees and the resident beasts of the surrounding forestry are still here, like they’re supposed to, and invite the human invaders to partake in the contentment.
I’m sitting on the dock with my feet in the water, thighs against the edge so it feels like I could fall in at any moment. A huge catfish bellied in the mud when I first got down here. He was stirring up muck, only to flit off when my shadow crossed him. Now there’s just perch bickering in the reeds and a water moccasin coiled in the grass underneath the water jug.
I really don’t know why I decided to buy a hardcover journal. I’ll have to transcribe all of this into a computer document at the end of the summer anyway, I guess. My deadline is September 1st or I don’t officially pass college, which would be awkward since my diploma is setting on my dresser at home. It’s not even a journal. More like a sketchbook. I’m writing tiny. I feel like a monk hunched over some ancient manuscript, translating Latin into Old English, or whatever. I’ve never kept a journal in the introspective sense or tried to document a section of life like this. But now that college is over and I have to actually start thinking about what to do with the rest of my life, it’s as good a time as any to try and figure some things out on the page. I’ve heard writing down your thoughts is good for you, anyway. It helps you construct your life into a story. Helps you make at least some minimal sense of things and abide by the insights. Professor Snodgrass, you’d agree, no? Or is it the other way around? Is writing about trying to figure out the story that’s already been presented to you? Huh. In any case, I’m already thinking about things that I otherwise wouldn’t have. Maybe because I always knew, up until this summer at least, that the gentle shores of Camp Woodward would always be waiting to host me for a chunky three months of respite, so I didn’t feel the need to jot things down to remember any of it. I felt like my time at Camp Woodward was never going to end.
Tonight, we’ve got orientation, and all the formality. It’s always a giddy, nervous time for the newcomers, and an old hat for veterans like me to don with well-earned authority. Zach and I’ll sit in the back next to Gabe the old maintenance guy and his young protégé, Jerry. But orientation is when Jenni really comes out full flare. She intimidated me during my first summer here, to be honest. She’s this sharp-eyed thirty-year-old gal in a blue blazer, chewing gum under a ball cap, ponytail bouncing all over the place. I remember she perched up on stage with her clipboard, and she asked me if I had a highlighter. I mean, who has a highlighter on them at random? Funny thing, though, I did have one. It was in the pen pocket in my backpack, and after I handed it to her, she made some lines with it and then set it next to her leg on the stage in the cafeteria. I considered it a real act of courage just asking for it back.
Jenni has worked at Camp Woodward in some form or another for fourteen years, ever since she was in high school. She grew up in Adler, which is where I’m from, too, and started coming out to camp in the summers with her father. Her dad used to preach to some of the churches that came through. When Jenni was sixteen, she signed on for a two-week internship, wowing the administration with her quick judgment, no nonsense obedience, and voracious appetite for fun, and was offered a seat on the council not long after she graduated high school a year later. She’s never looked back, and she’s never gotten married.
Now Jenni treats me like a cousin. Or a nephew. Sometimes like an old son. When I go off to college, we always keep up a texting thread, and she’ll FaceTime when she’s walking from the camp office to her own house, which is just behind the rec field and overlooking the rest of the property like a resident temple. All said and done she’s been the best boss I’ve ever had, and one of the best friends, too.
Here comes Lorrie, in the present tense.
She’s coming down the hill towards the dock, arms swinging, looking down at me through her sunglasses. She’s probably wondering what the heck is Hunter Saint doing on the dock scribbling in a journal. Maybe she’ll think it’s romantic and poetic. This is me making up for the fact that I was a biology major. Actually, it’s just me making up for a late assignment.
We’ll see.