Mom's Memories

Kathleen Bradley and I crawled through the swampy parts of camp in September, making a list of plants we recognized.   By the time we made it down to Cook's Cabin, we were pretty whipped.  I flopped down on a ridge in front of the cabin and found myself eye to eye with a miniature, spiny pink seed pod hanging under a leaf.  I pointed it out.  Kathleen has an encyclopedic knowlege of plants, and she identified it right away as "Heart's A-Burstin".  The tiny pod had already split, liberating even tinier red seeds.  It did indeed look like a valentine heart that had burst open.  It's also called strawberry flower, but I like the first name better. 

My mother-in-law, Ele, is a fan of wildflowers.  She taught me most of the ones I know.   A day or so after the hike I told her about our hike and asked her if she had ever heard of "Heart's- A- Burstin".  She hadn't.  But she was very interested in where we had found it.  "Sunny may have planted it"  she said. "Not the Sunny you know.   Her real name was Mary Hoyt.  She used to run resident camp.  One summer, she planted a wildflower garden between Cook's Cabin and the creek."   

I asked Mom to tell me more.  Mom had been volunteering at camp and was stationed in the Nature Hut - the little cottage just off the path between Kirby and Hilltop.   Between visits from girls, she was poking through a stack of old camp newspapers.  In one of them she found a poem written by her daughter Cindy.  It was unexpected, and made her happy.   

She said there used to be a campsite on the far side of the lower lake.   It was called "Innisfree",  after the poem by W .B. Yeats 

     

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

"Innis" is Irish for "Island" . This particular campsite was isolated, beautiful, and high above the lake with the waterfall below.  One could imagine being on some misty Irish Island in a storybook time.  Naturally, the waterfall right below  was called "Innisfree Falls".  Logically enough - especially since it fits with the spirit of the poem,   listening to the sounds of the water.    

Mom later met another leader who had never heard of the poem, never heard of the old campsite, but had been on a hike one time and thought she heard it called "Industry Falls". So that's what she always called it, even though it totally made no sense.    
    

- Lynn