To Build and Be Built
Dinner. Songs. A walk across the bridge to the girls’ side of camp to join all the other staff members at the campfire site. It was my first night at Interlaken and while I had spent many summers at other camps before, it was different. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know what I was doing.
The fire blazed in the circle. Surrounded by towering pines that must have stood for decades. The light of the fire ascended to make a funnel to the starry night. The benches, half logs painted white were rickety from years of use and wood rot from perpetual exposure to the Northern Wisconsin clime. Sparks of light rising and the warmth moving outward enveloped me in what would ultimately become a community.
Ateret, the camp director, who offered me the job as counselor and nature specialist one winter day in her office, began to speak.
The Ba’al Shem Tov, in times of threat to the community, would go into the woods, to a place well known to him, light a fire, and say prayers. And the crisis would be averted.
Another generation came. They remembered the place and the prayers, but no longer knew how to light the fire. And again, the community was protected.
Yet another generation remembered the place, but neither the fire nor the prayers. Still, the crisis was averted.
Finally, a generation came that no longer knew the place, could not light the fire, and had forgotten the prayers. All they knew was how to tell the story.
And that, too, was enough.
Elie Wiesel reflected on this: “God made man because he loves stories.”
Mornings at staff training week were called avodah. Work. The staff was marshalled to do the physical work of preparing the camp to open. Putting in docks, straightening and reinforcing the bridge, cleaning, painting, and pulling out the various pieces of equipment that were stored the previous season brought a sense of purpose and connection. It also helped in getting to know the other staff.
This was reinforced during song sessions after lunch and dinner. The sessions included folk songs from the pioneering days of Israel. They expressed the importance of dreams, ideals and effort to create meaning. The chalutzim adage of “We came to the land to build and to be built by it” had real meaning in our daily lives.
It didn’t take long to realize that there were lots of Davids at camp. In fact one year we had a David day because there were so many, including some with the same last name! There had to be a way to keep track of the various Davids - and I became David Nature. Sometimes Naitch, sometimes Nature Dave, but officially David Nature. One of my now longtime friends became David Israel. We simply added his middle name to form a camp name.
Nature came from the activity I was to lead and try to get campers interested in - Nature. It didn’t have the pizzazz or sexiness of horseback riding, waterskiing, sailing, theater, canoeing, or pretty much anything else - but it was me. Nobody could have been more shocked when campers actually signed up for Nature!
When my group wasn’t trekking around the environs of camp to discover all kinds of things about the Northern Wisconsin ecosystem, we’d talk about our earth. A year earlier, in 1970, the whole country seemed to get behind Earth Day. We decided that we would have an Earth Day at camp. It included reclaiming land from what was an in-camp dump behind the garage and adjacent to the mysterious bog, a few marches, some letter writing, and walks to discover and celebrate the biodiversity that camp contained.
For me, the day concluded with grabbing a shovel, digging up a few young pine trees from the forest, and planting them beside the tennis court on the athletic field.
Years pass. In 1985 I returned to Interlaken, but now as the Camp Director. My trip into the camp became a blend of nostalgia, anticipatory excitement and nerves. Deep memories of Ateret telling me how she never could sleep at camp returned. On the way to what had become my camp cabin, which previously was Ateret’s, I passed those trees that had grown to be 25 feet tall and were taking shape.
I pointed out to my wife at the time that I planted those trees years back. A smile came to her face, but I knew that she, having grown up on a farm, probably found a few trees growing pretty ordinary. I passed those trees many times a day, and countless times over the years. Somehow, within something so ordinary can live the extraordinary.
During the fall of 1998 I spent a week in the Sylvania Recreation Area, right across the Wisconsin border in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I was on a trail maintenance project sponsored by the Sierra Club. We’d paddle our canoes from lake to lake and on the portage trails remove downed trees, clear paths, and make the wilderness experience there a little more accommodating. At the end of the week, on my way back to the Rhinelander Airport, I took a detour to camp. It’s a very different feeling being there alone.
Walking through on a crisp fall day I was struck by the sight of a cabin tent still up from the summer. Normally we put those away right after the campers leave. At the flag rectangle, I stopped. The quiet of the day was broken only by the squeal of the chimney cap turning in the wind atop the Chadar Ohel, the old dining room.
It strikes me that nobody else knows how those trees came to be there. It wasn’t random. Whether it is a certain place in the woods, a tree, a fire or even a prayer, what seems ordinary can become profound. Seldom do we have the benefit of knowing, in the moment, what actually matters.
Much has changed. The painting of the song “Eli, Eli” that I did on the trip shack one night in the ’70s is long gone, but the memory is vivid. The trees grow in a place that evolves, and I remember…
Oh Lord, My God
I pray that these things never end
The Sand and the Sea
The Rush of the Water
The Crash of the Heavens
The Prayer of Mankind
“Eli, Eli”—words by Hannah Senesh; music by David Zehavi.
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