Late
in the afternoon our four-vehicle caravan arrived at Deer Point Isle in the
1,000 Island resort area. The three-day winter excursion took place at Steve
K's cabin. We almost didn't make it there because someone made a wrong turn, taking
two cars on a short jaunt across the Canadian border. Steve started a heated
discussion with the remark, "Canada, isn't that a third world
country?" The occasional flurry often brought us to a standstill on long
drive from New York City. It was the first week in January; an extremely cold
day. The sun was setting as we heaved our luggage into an aluminum rowboat,
fire brigade style, down the embankment into a huge pile.
Someone had taken the liberty of bringing my ghetto blaster, I don't know whom, because there was no electricity, and we had been told there would be no power. When you see your ghetto blaster plopped on a large pile of luggage on a frozen body of water in the wilderness it makes you think. You look towards the barren trees and instead of seeing phantom wolves you see the shoddy clerk who sold you the box at the crooked electronic store. You realize you have to leave the cruel city behind you, and enjoy the serenity of nature.
Someone had taken the liberty of bringing my ghetto blaster, I don't know whom, because there was no electricity, and we had been told there would be no power. When you see your ghetto blaster plopped on a large pile of luggage on a frozen body of water in the wilderness it makes you think. You look towards the barren trees and instead of seeing phantom wolves you see the shoddy clerk who sold you the box at the crooked electronic store. You realize you have to leave the cruel city behind you, and enjoy the serenity of nature.
I participated in the summer witnessing campaign of 1985 in San Fransisco, and when it was over gathered with West Coast CARP at a Lake Tahoe resort. I met with Dr. Suek there and asked him
permission to start my family. Since we met the requirements and Dr. Suek gave
the nod of approval.
The workshop put on the usual skits for evening entertainment. One mime performance that struck me as funny was about a team fund raising with foil prints. The props were foil prints and paper brown paper bags that covered the head. The first wave of fundraisers had frowns painted on and got poor results. When the fundraisers wore the bags with smiles their results increased dramatically. The highlight of the workshop was the testimony of a Swedish brother who had slept the night in a sleeping bag on top of the van. It was getting very windy, when he woke up and found the van had started moving...
At the end of the workshop an announcement was made that Mr. Aoki would be donating four members to the New York Region, to help with witnessing. I was chosen to go, even though. I was supposed to be returning anyway. The four of us, Jules H, Steve W and Wilbur H flew to New York and promptly started witnessing at the Columbia Center. We were referred to as 'The Swat Team.'
Of the 20 or so people living in the center, we were the only ones who could dedicate ourselves to witnessing. We would bring guests to the house, but they would rarely return. There was only one college age member, Steve W, and he was 26. Steve was the only single member living at the town house. The rest of us were between the ages of 30 and 40, were married, but not one of us were living with our spouses. I'm sure that it would be hard for students to see that our sacrificial lifestyles were consistent with the ideal families that we would lecture about at our workshops.
All headquarters staff was directed to move into the Columbia Center, to live in barracks style bunk beds and commute by subway to the New Yorker. We left our rooms at the New Yorker, which were taken care of as part of our meager stipend, worked at our missions five days a week and were now compelled to fund raise on the weekend to raise $150.00 to cover our room and board. Things weren't going well for us in the center, so John D decided we needed a break. So we found ourselves at Steve K's cabin...
Reins were attached to the rowboat, creating a "makeshift dogsled." Everyone took a position and we started mushing the mile or so way across the frozen channel. Six yards and a half towards the goal the boat stopped. It wouldn't budge. The stuff was dumped out. My ghetto blaster must have felt like the proverbial pigskin under a massive tackle. I took pictures of the human dog team silhouetted against a dark purple sky.
The surrounding cottages were all deserted except for a few hardy ice fishermen. One happened to see us, and hooked his snowmobile to our lead lines to tow us to the Isle. As Steve K opened the cabin Craig D explained the origins of the Universe, using a flashlight to point out the constellations. The cottage was barely big enough for 18 people to camp in, but we were used to the sardine life.
Though the temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit no one complained. It was too cold to talk. Breath turned to foggy vapors, crystallizing as we spoke, the molecules froze so you could almost hear them clanking into each other, or the faint chattering of teeth. The beauty of it all was that everyone helped each other — giving someone an extra pair of woolly socks, or whatever, we were forced to rely on each other for our survival. It was so cold that half the cabin filled with condensation when the door opened. We all slept in our sleeping bags with our ski jackets on.
The first day was spent gathering firewood; some played the lumberjack cutting up a tree that had been hit by lightning. "How do you know it was hit by lightning, where are the scorch marks," some one said. Steve K, who had helped build the cabin with his father, wielded the chain saw. A rip saw was used by the rest of us taking turns. Jules H patiently sharpened the other rip saw while armful upon armful of firewood was loaded on the front porch. We cut a hole through the ice to get drinking water.
The purpose of the trip, I gathered, was to breathe some fire into a dozen and a half burnt-out Carpies. On most occasions Carpies went to workshops to hear the Principle to get fired up. We had been to hundreds of them. It was an exhilarating experience of three days unfettered beard growth. But this was something different. It was invigorating and heart warming. We ended up having an arctic picnic in the abandoned Bolt Castle after walking five freezing miles through three feet of snow at 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Having just been made the official CARP photographer, my mission started on a symbolic note as I took a group picture at the outset of the illicit excursion to the Bolt Castle. Everyone from the New York Region lined up before the tripod and I shot a few shots. It was freezing cold; the twenty or so weren't going to stand one second in the cold while I put away my gear, and started on their trek to the castle. I went into the cabin to stash the unneeded gear. By the time I came out everyone was a quarter mile away. It took me an hour to catch up with them.
Walking along the channel was easy, but through the forest the drifts were over three feet deep. That's where I saw a mysterious image in the snow — a snow angel, probably made by an owl catching a mouse. When the owl took flight the wings must have made the impression of an angel. It made me think of one of the first poems I had written about angels in the snow, and how they sometimes make the image of a butterfly when the snow melts. "When ambitions overflow, beyond an angels wing, The last island of snow becomes, The butterfly of Spring." I photographed the apparition.
I took a number of shots, metering everything with my bare hand so as not to be fooled by the snow. I ran ahead to an overhead trestle to shoot the whole troop walking abreast on a river so their tracks could be seen in the snow. I shot Robin and Hans tumbling down a snow bank. I captured Steve up the tree, and shot Steve K giving the tour guide spiel with the distant castle over his shoulder.
Following the river a while, we stopped so that Steve W could climb a tree as if it were the mast of a whaling-ship to see if he could spot the castle. He hollered "There she blows." Traveling up a snow bank, Sheila F took the lead, and held up the line, with everyone bunched together like penguins. Jim O said, "Everyone's bunched up like penguins."
Finally we came to a clearing where our destination loomed beyond the white expanse like a castle in the clouds. Steve K shared the history behind it. "It was around the turn of the Century, during the golden age when millionaires such as George Boltd came to upper New York to build their dream resorts.
"Boltd started out as a kitchen boy who made a fortune as the proprietor of the Waldorf Astoria hotel; then made a killing in the life preserver business. Boltd invested his fortune in building a medieval castle on Heart Island for his wife Louise. He bought the island in 1895 and started building the castle at the cost of two and a half million.
"The tiny island, on the Saint Lawrence River, was shaped into the form of a heart. Louise died a year before the castle was finished in 1904 and Boltd abandoned the project. Locals looted and vandalized it. The last I heard a tour company acquired the property and are now turning it into an attraction.
Finally we made it the last distance across another frozen channel. We trudged into the Cathedral sized boat house, where a small boat named Uncle Sam was frozen in it's berth The wind chill factor was quite severe with the wind being whipped along the Saint Lawrence; we were all anxious to get inside.
It took a while for Steve K to shimmy up an elevator shaft to find a way for the rest of us to get in. We walked in through the front door. The downstairs was like a museum, with photographs of the Great Gatsby days on display. In the bedroom suite, which had not yet been restored, where nothing but graffiti adorned the cracked walls, we had our picnic. We must have looked like a bunch of homeless people with our half frozen tuna sandwiches, oranges, tortilla chips and a steaming thermos. Everyone was quite impressed when Steve K burst in with the heater and extension cord. There was no electricity though, it must have been years since Mr. Bolt paid his electric bill.
As we sat around the fireplace at the end of the day eating Smores, John D asked us to share about the hike. Each person's testimony revealed an enriching experience. The overwhelming consensus was that everyone had felt the presence of God, or had at least acquired a profound appreciation of each other. Jim O shared about how an American Indian had been prepared to meet the pilgrims. "He moved in with them and showed them which vegetables to grow. The Puritans wanted a different religious experience... Some of you may be wondering why we left New York. We want a different religious experience. God has shown us by the second coming of Squantus on a Snowmobile, that we can have a transforming experience. I don't think that it was a coincidence. We were struggling to cross the channel and a generous man comes to help us, asking nothing in return."
John D spoke at length: "The whole day has been mystical. I saw angels in the snow. You can doubt and question anything I say. I don't want to leave here, it is so beautiful. At the Seminary I studied Theory of Art. Art is an expression of joy through creating and appreciating beauty. What is beauty? That is a philosophical question. Many of you expressed appreciation in your testimonies. Out here, this is all God's artwork. It's pure beauty. The stars and the snow and the trees we cut up and put in the fire. It's all right and natural. It's important that we appreciate it. We never took the time to appreciate each other. We weren't experiencing joy. 'You must be joyful,' that is Dr. Suek's command for us. Through being joyful, that's the only way we can be attractive to others. There hasn't been so much laughter and joking in Manhattan. Up here the thought of drugs and violence seems so wrong. Beauty is an emotional response. The woods are sacred. Relationships between men and woman are pure among us. Everything made sense in the woods. It's good to take time to appreciate everything; to the right perspective. It's meeting God in the right way. We have a tendency to run dry. It's hard to keep your heart open; you can't appreciate things with your heart closed. We're in the most difficult department maintaining a tradition of suffering. Sometimes we get cramped at our house. We have to appreciate God, and each other. Somehow we have to distill this experience and use it. It is like the castle, the castle is symbolic. Get journals and write down what happened. I was moved that everyone participated. Let's give everyone a hand.
The wind was biting hard the day we set off to leave. Mark N scraped the ice from the bottom of the boat to make it easy to pull across the powdery snow. This last event, pulling the boat, which had been so difficult at the beginning, now seemed effortless, based on the level of unity that we had achieved. Then again, the fine layer of powder snow may also have something to do with it.
HEART OF SNOW
On a lake at the edge of wood
A young girl figure skates
Her eyes sparkle in a flood
Of endless figure eights
She stops to make an angel's wing
In freshly fallen snow
Will the dream live on past Spring
Her ambition overflows
Footprints fade
Into dotted lines
On a page that overflows
Yet the passage
Has nowhere to go
When love is written
In a heart of snow
A young boy watches
In the wings
With cheeks a winter rose
Beyond the curtain
Of willow strings
Love ventures to suppose
He draws a heart
Upon the snow
And puts her name inside
Skates once more
Into her eyes
But she just lets him slide
Above the falls
The boys have thrills
When skating on the lake
They rush to where
The water spills
And then slam on the brakes
There was a boy
A friend of mine
Skated as fast as he could
He tried to stop before the line
It didn't do him any good
© 1997 Stefan des Lauriers
The workshop put on the usual skits for evening entertainment. One mime performance that struck me as funny was about a team fund raising with foil prints. The props were foil prints and paper brown paper bags that covered the head. The first wave of fundraisers had frowns painted on and got poor results. When the fundraisers wore the bags with smiles their results increased dramatically. The highlight of the workshop was the testimony of a Swedish brother who had slept the night in a sleeping bag on top of the van. It was getting very windy, when he woke up and found the van had started moving...
At the end of the workshop an announcement was made that Mr. Aoki would be donating four members to the New York Region, to help with witnessing. I was chosen to go, even though. I was supposed to be returning anyway. The four of us, Jules H, Steve W and Wilbur H flew to New York and promptly started witnessing at the Columbia Center. We were referred to as 'The Swat Team.'
Of the 20 or so people living in the center, we were the only ones who could dedicate ourselves to witnessing. We would bring guests to the house, but they would rarely return. There was only one college age member, Steve W, and he was 26. Steve was the only single member living at the town house. The rest of us were between the ages of 30 and 40, were married, but not one of us were living with our spouses. I'm sure that it would be hard for students to see that our sacrificial lifestyles were consistent with the ideal families that we would lecture about at our workshops.
All headquarters staff was directed to move into the Columbia Center, to live in barracks style bunk beds and commute by subway to the New Yorker. We left our rooms at the New Yorker, which were taken care of as part of our meager stipend, worked at our missions five days a week and were now compelled to fund raise on the weekend to raise $150.00 to cover our room and board. Things weren't going well for us in the center, so John D decided we needed a break. So we found ourselves at Steve K's cabin...
Reins were attached to the rowboat, creating a "makeshift dogsled." Everyone took a position and we started mushing the mile or so way across the frozen channel. Six yards and a half towards the goal the boat stopped. It wouldn't budge. The stuff was dumped out. My ghetto blaster must have felt like the proverbial pigskin under a massive tackle. I took pictures of the human dog team silhouetted against a dark purple sky.
The surrounding cottages were all deserted except for a few hardy ice fishermen. One happened to see us, and hooked his snowmobile to our lead lines to tow us to the Isle. As Steve K opened the cabin Craig D explained the origins of the Universe, using a flashlight to point out the constellations. The cottage was barely big enough for 18 people to camp in, but we were used to the sardine life.
Though the temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit no one complained. It was too cold to talk. Breath turned to foggy vapors, crystallizing as we spoke, the molecules froze so you could almost hear them clanking into each other, or the faint chattering of teeth. The beauty of it all was that everyone helped each other — giving someone an extra pair of woolly socks, or whatever, we were forced to rely on each other for our survival. It was so cold that half the cabin filled with condensation when the door opened. We all slept in our sleeping bags with our ski jackets on.
The first day was spent gathering firewood; some played the lumberjack cutting up a tree that had been hit by lightning. "How do you know it was hit by lightning, where are the scorch marks," some one said. Steve K, who had helped build the cabin with his father, wielded the chain saw. A rip saw was used by the rest of us taking turns. Jules H patiently sharpened the other rip saw while armful upon armful of firewood was loaded on the front porch. We cut a hole through the ice to get drinking water.
The purpose of the trip, I gathered, was to breathe some fire into a dozen and a half burnt-out Carpies. On most occasions Carpies went to workshops to hear the Principle to get fired up. We had been to hundreds of them. It was an exhilarating experience of three days unfettered beard growth. But this was something different. It was invigorating and heart warming. We ended up having an arctic picnic in the abandoned Bolt Castle after walking five freezing miles through three feet of snow at 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Having just been made the official CARP photographer, my mission started on a symbolic note as I took a group picture at the outset of the illicit excursion to the Bolt Castle. Everyone from the New York Region lined up before the tripod and I shot a few shots. It was freezing cold; the twenty or so weren't going to stand one second in the cold while I put away my gear, and started on their trek to the castle. I went into the cabin to stash the unneeded gear. By the time I came out everyone was a quarter mile away. It took me an hour to catch up with them.
Walking along the channel was easy, but through the forest the drifts were over three feet deep. That's where I saw a mysterious image in the snow — a snow angel, probably made by an owl catching a mouse. When the owl took flight the wings must have made the impression of an angel. It made me think of one of the first poems I had written about angels in the snow, and how they sometimes make the image of a butterfly when the snow melts. "When ambitions overflow, beyond an angels wing, The last island of snow becomes, The butterfly of Spring." I photographed the apparition.
I took a number of shots, metering everything with my bare hand so as not to be fooled by the snow. I ran ahead to an overhead trestle to shoot the whole troop walking abreast on a river so their tracks could be seen in the snow. I shot Robin and Hans tumbling down a snow bank. I captured Steve up the tree, and shot Steve K giving the tour guide spiel with the distant castle over his shoulder.
Following the river a while, we stopped so that Steve W could climb a tree as if it were the mast of a whaling-ship to see if he could spot the castle. He hollered "There she blows." Traveling up a snow bank, Sheila F took the lead, and held up the line, with everyone bunched together like penguins. Jim O said, "Everyone's bunched up like penguins."
Finally we came to a clearing where our destination loomed beyond the white expanse like a castle in the clouds. Steve K shared the history behind it. "It was around the turn of the Century, during the golden age when millionaires such as George Boltd came to upper New York to build their dream resorts.
"Boltd started out as a kitchen boy who made a fortune as the proprietor of the Waldorf Astoria hotel; then made a killing in the life preserver business. Boltd invested his fortune in building a medieval castle on Heart Island for his wife Louise. He bought the island in 1895 and started building the castle at the cost of two and a half million.
"The tiny island, on the Saint Lawrence River, was shaped into the form of a heart. Louise died a year before the castle was finished in 1904 and Boltd abandoned the project. Locals looted and vandalized it. The last I heard a tour company acquired the property and are now turning it into an attraction.
Finally we made it the last distance across another frozen channel. We trudged into the Cathedral sized boat house, where a small boat named Uncle Sam was frozen in it's berth The wind chill factor was quite severe with the wind being whipped along the Saint Lawrence; we were all anxious to get inside.
It took a while for Steve K to shimmy up an elevator shaft to find a way for the rest of us to get in. We walked in through the front door. The downstairs was like a museum, with photographs of the Great Gatsby days on display. In the bedroom suite, which had not yet been restored, where nothing but graffiti adorned the cracked walls, we had our picnic. We must have looked like a bunch of homeless people with our half frozen tuna sandwiches, oranges, tortilla chips and a steaming thermos. Everyone was quite impressed when Steve K burst in with the heater and extension cord. There was no electricity though, it must have been years since Mr. Bolt paid his electric bill.
As we sat around the fireplace at the end of the day eating Smores, John D asked us to share about the hike. Each person's testimony revealed an enriching experience. The overwhelming consensus was that everyone had felt the presence of God, or had at least acquired a profound appreciation of each other. Jim O shared about how an American Indian had been prepared to meet the pilgrims. "He moved in with them and showed them which vegetables to grow. The Puritans wanted a different religious experience... Some of you may be wondering why we left New York. We want a different religious experience. God has shown us by the second coming of Squantus on a Snowmobile, that we can have a transforming experience. I don't think that it was a coincidence. We were struggling to cross the channel and a generous man comes to help us, asking nothing in return."
John D spoke at length: "The whole day has been mystical. I saw angels in the snow. You can doubt and question anything I say. I don't want to leave here, it is so beautiful. At the Seminary I studied Theory of Art. Art is an expression of joy through creating and appreciating beauty. What is beauty? That is a philosophical question. Many of you expressed appreciation in your testimonies. Out here, this is all God's artwork. It's pure beauty. The stars and the snow and the trees we cut up and put in the fire. It's all right and natural. It's important that we appreciate it. We never took the time to appreciate each other. We weren't experiencing joy. 'You must be joyful,' that is Dr. Suek's command for us. Through being joyful, that's the only way we can be attractive to others. There hasn't been so much laughter and joking in Manhattan. Up here the thought of drugs and violence seems so wrong. Beauty is an emotional response. The woods are sacred. Relationships between men and woman are pure among us. Everything made sense in the woods. It's good to take time to appreciate everything; to the right perspective. It's meeting God in the right way. We have a tendency to run dry. It's hard to keep your heart open; you can't appreciate things with your heart closed. We're in the most difficult department maintaining a tradition of suffering. Sometimes we get cramped at our house. We have to appreciate God, and each other. Somehow we have to distill this experience and use it. It is like the castle, the castle is symbolic. Get journals and write down what happened. I was moved that everyone participated. Let's give everyone a hand.
The wind was biting hard the day we set off to leave. Mark N scraped the ice from the bottom of the boat to make it easy to pull across the powdery snow. This last event, pulling the boat, which had been so difficult at the beginning, now seemed effortless, based on the level of unity that we had achieved. Then again, the fine layer of powder snow may also have something to do with it.
HEART OF SNOW
On a lake at the edge of wood
A young girl figure skates
Her eyes sparkle in a flood
Of endless figure eights
She stops to make an angel's wing
In freshly fallen snow
Will the dream live on past Spring
Her ambition overflows
Footprints fade
Into dotted lines
On a page that overflows
Yet the passage
Has nowhere to go
When love is written
In a heart of snow
A young boy watches
In the wings
With cheeks a winter rose
Beyond the curtain
Of willow strings
Love ventures to suppose
He draws a heart
Upon the snow
And puts her name inside
Skates once more
Into her eyes
But she just lets him slide
Above the falls
The boys have thrills
When skating on the lake
They rush to where
The water spills
And then slam on the brakes
There was a boy
A friend of mine
Skated as fast as he could
He tried to stop before the line
It didn't do him any good
© 1997 Stefan des Lauriers
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