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NOTES ON THE WAY TO HEMLOCK HALL

 

9/29/73: The car must have gone through a pollen patch, catching some at the top of the windshield, because a bee sucked at the ledge just as avidly as he would at a flower. Then we're in the colored woods of the western Adirondacks, having eaten lunch of cheese and crackers in the car, and stop in likely woods to pick mushrooms off tree and get to Hemlock Hall at 3 pm, just getting Ben and Lucy going off rowing on lake, and walk back roads and pick MORE mushrooms, particularly oysters from Minnowbrook log, and back at 5 to fry some, eat some, to dinner at 6 for turkey and mashed potatoes and peas and gravy and CHOCOLATE cake (three pieces AGAIN) and back to room to go to john, all of us, and at 8 we're out to watch Milky Way and stars and smoke hash. Trouble with the matches in the breeze, and John gets VERY paranoid about people moving about in the rowboat. Lucy out of it in the front, I in back, John and Ben TRYING to row toward the light, but we KEEP going around in circles. All of us helpless with laughter, except John's getting rather frustrated. I know how he operates, so Ben and I change places and start going, and for a long time we keep in the same direction, but then the lights don't seem to get any CLOSER. Think the effects have gone since each of us have had only two puffs, but then we start swinging around under the stars and laughing very heartily again, and even John stops rowing for a bit, but I keep on, and we even manage to swing past the other rowboat which has swung out in front of the dock, and we're into the cabin at 11 to sit in the dark and watch the stars move. I get out another pipe which we all share, talking less and less, and vaguely wish the Harms's weren't there so John and I could cuddle, as Ben and Lucy seem to be doing on the sofa. Finally they get out of OUR bedroom and we pull down the Murphy bed and undo the strong springs holding all the bedclothes in place, and crawl into a VERY cold bed at 11:30, John insisting that he wants the window open to hear the waves outside, but the REFRIGERATOR makes so much noise we can't hear a thing, and it's VERY cold, even with three blankets on---sheets cold around our heads.

10/5/73: Back to the room about 3, preparing to work for a long time, but surprised to find that THEY come back about 4:15, having been only to the airdock at the beginning of the third lake, so it's really not THAT far. Found a lot of mushrooms that they couldn't identify. I wanted to work on the index while they were out, but decided I could do it anyway, so I work from 4:30 to 6, getting up a little bit late, so I haven't been properly introduced to anyone, and much of the pressure of talking isn't on me. I STILL don't care for the round tables full of people introducing themselves with their names and home towns and occupations and number of years in attendance at Hemlock Hall, but since we were more often than not, it seemed, at the same table with the Griswolds, it wasn't as bad as it COULD be. There was a pleasant tiny plump woman with an impish grin under her crew cut cap of graying hair, who truly loved her big, gawky pleasant husband; then the awful couple where the husband was a silent doctor who surprised me by knowing quite a bit about something, but I've forgotten what, with the wife who was a painter and kept trotting out the platitudes about nature's paint-box and human scale to art and lovely colors, who whipped around in their car all day looking at places; and an older couple who seemed genuinely interested in us as "growing boys," and I said I'd have to RECORD the last people to say it to me, and it was Mrs. Hoyt, bent over in age, at our last dinner together on October 4th. John triumphed: being able to talk about mushrooms and invite the Griswolds in to eat them, he was invited back, which pleased him more than a tea with Queen Elizabeth and Phillip, AND they said we'd have to go out so they could show us SOME kind of trefoil with an edible horizontal root, and John felt just IN. I was glad to leave at the end. We all came back and wrapped ourselves in blankets and sat out on the wharf eating peanuts while I told them about the solar system and the galaxy and the cluster and the universe, watching shooting stars, growing cold, and they went in early, I was left out at the end, watching, then in to get into an early bed, saying goodbye to the Harmses, who leave at 7 am.