I had showed the map page on my laptop to the women at the counter of the cafe. "Can you tell me where this place is?" I asked them.
At first they were mystified. Then one said, "Oh, that's the Methodist camp." Once they had that figured out, they told me how to find it quite easily. It was close by. Once I knew where to turn, I noticed the small hand-lettered signs saying "Fishtrap" that I had missed before when driving past.
I pulled into the parking lo andt ook a deep breath. I'd been driving since 5:30 in the morning, all the way up the gorge and over the Blue Mountains to La Grande with only short breaks. Then it was another hour over the pass into the Wallowa Valley, where I had stopped at the campground north of Joseph long enough to check in and set up my tiny tent. Then I had headed south through Joseph and along the impossibly gorgeous lake set against the jagged outlines of the Wallowas, which are by far the most scenic mountains I have seen in Oregon. I couldn't believe it was my first time visiting there.
After three hundred miles of driving, with my impeccably uncanny sense of timing, I had finally arrived at my destination at exactly the minute that the workshop started. The conference center was visible through the fir trees. I crossed a large grassy lawn, past a cluster of wooden yurts, to the towering a-frame wooden structure built in the familiar style of church camp buildings from the mid-to-late Twentieth Century. These kind of places give me a good relaxed feeling. I'd spent part of my childhood in church camps and had only pleasant memories of them.
The tables outside the door were staffed by a row of friendly Fishtrap folks awaiting the registration for the weekend program. I'd arrived too early for that, specifically so I could attend Kim's workshop on digital storytelling. One of the staff members pointed me to the cabin a couple hundred feet up a side road.
With a light heart, anticipating a fun reunion with a friend, I halfway skipped over the tiny creek that ran across the road, scurrying up to the cabin with my backpack.
The cabin was not large. Approaching the door, I could already tell the session was in progress. A rustic-looking bearded man, whom I would later learn was Mike Midlo formerly of Oregon Public Broadcasting, was at the door with an upturned hat collecting donations for the workshop. I put in the suggested five bucks.
He said that there might not be room inside. A peek inside the door confirmed his diagnosis. There were at least fifty people crammed into the small space, some sitting on a wooden platform, which looked rather uncomfortable. I went inside anyway. After having come all this way, after so long a time, I wasn't going to be denied.
The only free seat I could find turned out to be right behind Kim's chair, flush up against the front wall. I had to crane my neck to watch the video presentations that he and his wife Perrin were showing us. At one point, Kim noticed me behind him and asked if I wanted to swap chairs.
"I've seen all these before," he said. Clearly he didn't recognize me. But I didn't expect him to, after so many years.
Kim looked much the same as I remembered him, with the expected changes from almost three decades of the passage of time. I had known him when we were both young men. Now even I had a stubbly white beard (I had almost shaved off the week's growth but Red suggested that I keep it on for the conference).
The workshop was informative and inspiring. The subject was how to make short personal essays using an I-Phone and other "democratic" video tools. It seemed like something Kim would be doing lately.
He directed us a couple writing sessions in which we composed possible personal video essay scripts based on an old family photograph, among other things. I chose to write about the photograph of my sister and I sitting in my first car, a 1978 Volkswagen Rabbit, right after I bought it and before I set out for college in Oregon.
Among the other things we learned was how to use copyright free music.
"You'll find yourself making friends with any musicians you know," Perrin said. She said the music for one of her videos, about her nephew with Down's Syndrome who studied Sasquatch and Superman, had come from a street musician in Berkeley from whom they had asked to record the first music that came to his mind.
When the workshop was over and we got up to leave, Kim looked at me with a puzzled look, mostly because it was the fifth day of the conference and I was a brand new face. Since I hadn't yet registered, I also wasn't yet wearing the ubiquitous Fishtrap nametag, a thin slice of aspen log with one's name written on it, that everyone else was wearing around their necks.
Knowing that I had come in late, Kim located one of the workshop handouts and handed it to me. It listed urls for video-making tutorials.
After he gave me the handout, I gave him a small note that I had written during the workshop:
Kim,
A blog post about you: http://theticketcollector.blogspot.com
"The Physicist's Tale"
--a grateful former student
He read the note right after I handed it to him. He looked back up at my face, trying to figure out who I was.
"Help me out," he said, fumbling through his mind for my identity.
"It's all there," I said, pointing back to the note.
He grinned. That seemed to satisify him. I slipped out the door and left him to talk with the other students.
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