Dining Hall Hill

After settling in for the week before camp two years ago, I found myself relaxing with Mrs. Tellier, this year’s cook at Cachalot Scout Reservation and mother of my current boyfriend. I had grown close to her and her family, and she was very dear to me. This year I was the camp’s kitchen manager and Mrs. T, and I had come a week early to help set up the kitchen. It would be just us for the week. Just past midnight, and after a long day cleaning and rearranging the kitchen, we sat comfortably in the Cooks Cabin where Mrs. T stayed the entire summer. She indicated to me through very obvious means she wanted to be alone and go to bed. “Are you okay walking by yourself?” she said as she was making herself coffee; she lived off coffee. Smiling, but with heart aflutter I said, “Yeah I should be fine,” nonchalantly. I lived in a cabin in the forest, and I was scared. It was dark, and I had never been in this camp without the bustling staff. I knew my walk would be accompanied by only the woods that night. I left the dim light of the Cooks Cabin porch.

We had had a fire going earlier that day. One of those big rusty half barrels rested on cinder blocks by the side of the cabin, barely noticeable in the dark. To the right under the cabin window stood a small makeshift table with a 3D puzzle of a cottage decorated with moss, rocks, and twigs around it. No one would even know it was there in the dark unless they had seen it earlier that day. Like the stones that I avoided as I walked and the coyotes that not so quietly followed me on my way to the cabin, this little cottage was something that I knew was there even though I could not always see it. A couple of days per month, the moon lit the forest paths. However tonight like most nights the moon was either too small or not there at all to guide me.

Earlier in the day I had my cards read for the first time. My mother strongly disagreed with the practice of tarot reading and coincidentally, the cards knew that. This reading was exciting to me. Mrs. T’s view of the world paired with her pagan religious practice has always interested me. This combination of things made her quite eccentric; she loved colors in her hair, and whimsical tattoos covered her body. Given our closeness, she felt reading my cards would include bias but reluctantly, she felt I needed guidance beyond her words I chose to ask how I could overcome obstacles between my better self and me. I don’t remember every card I was dealt, but I remember the two I found most important.

The Empress was the mother of earth, fertility, sensuality and femininity, and the overall ruling figure of life. I pulled this card, and it helped answer what could only be described as the underlining source of the struggles I was facing. Half Smiling, Mrs. T looked at me and said:

“Do you know why you got that card?” She knew, I knew. You could ask the coyotes, and they would’ve known. “My mother,” I said very quietly. She described in further detail the card, glancing at me with forlorn eyes. Two cards after that were the final card. This card represented what would come of my life if I took this reading to heart. Despite the cards significance, I could not remember its name but only its picture. A thorn-wrapped ladder sat in front of a sunset sky and on the top a gold crown lay among the barbs. Mrs. T looked at me but this time with a more genuine smile. “This one is a good one,” she said. “Can you tell me what you think it means” she added. It was then that I pondered my future and what it held for me. Under the hum of the air conditioner and the dim glow of fairy lights, I realized that maybe my life wasn’t going to be governed by my overbearing mother. I remember the cabin’s mildew smell being masked by Mrs. T’s incense and candles and the smell of the new plastic bowls we had bought to eat out of that morning. Her Irish cream coffee still hung in the air as it seemed she always had a cup of it warmed by her side. I looked at her and pressed my lips together.

My mother was a very strict, by-the-books type of woman. For most of my childhood she made sure I had what I needed: food, clothes, shelter and an education. Except I hadn’t realized, I lacked social skills and didn’t have many friends. Partly to blame was the constant denial to see them. I remember once being invited to my cousin’s birthday party; my mom told me my cousin and her mother were bad people and only allowed me to drop my gift off and then I had to go. Grown up now I realize they were not evil people. Similarly, she let me see a friend for only 20 minutes after school because she believed that because she lived in the wrong part of town, she was a bad person. I lost all my friends and learned to stay alone in my room. Come my later years I was riddled with so much anxiety I could barely function typically in public; I was convinced my mother had permanently ruined that aspect of me.

“It means I have to fight for this all, and figuratively speaking at the end I can sit atop the ladder with my gold crown?” I guessed. “It won’t be easy, you will need to fight,” she said sternly. I knew this all too well because I had been trying for years to crawl my way away from my mother. “Remember, if you don’t follow this reading, your result will ultimately change. This reading isn’t set in stone, by no means can you sit around and wait for this to happen” She included.

Mrs. T was a very emotionally driven person. She took things severe for someone who had such a free spirit. After the reading and starting my walk, I brought back my thoughts in private. Having already passed the cabin and being drenched completely in the dark I neared the top of Dining Hall Hill, a rumored haunted area occupied by a benevolent Civil War spirit, and my least favorite part of this walk. The rumor was likely made up to scare the younger boy scouts. I, however, was more afraid of the coyotes that I heard in the thicket. Regardless of which it was, I kept my eyes on the ground the entire way down.I kept my mind busy though with thoughts of the tarot. I was getting older; soon I would be more independent. I was spending six weeks away from my mother and was free to be myself, act out, get in trouble and see what I was really capable of doing. Last year I relied too much on being told what to do since I was so accustomed to not making my own decisions. I vowed I would take this job by the horns and show everyone I have more to offer than the pusillanimity of my previous self. I had bigger plans for myself.

I had just reached the bottom of the hill when I heard a twig snap roughly 40 feet to my right. I quickened my pace past the marshy section of the waterfront where the frogs cried like infants, and the mosquitoes were relentless. I avoided a puddle the size of a car on my way to the trading post. There was a light on the side of the building outside that never went out. I stood right underneath it and slid down the wall until I was tucked into myself. I felt safe in the presence of this light and about 200 moths. I searched for courage.

What was I so afraid of? Everyone had always said I didn’t have to listen to my mother. She just had a way of getting under my skin. She supported me like a good mother should. I could take my happiness and freedom and run off possibly resulting in my failure as an adult, or I could stay trapped in this house with financial security. Ever since I was fourteen, I said to myself, ‘Only four more years until I’m eighteen, and I’ll be free to leave.’ Except in my hurry to leave I never really prepared myself actually to go. That’s what that reading was trying to tell me; I had to buckle down and start learning how to live for myself. My eyes had adjusted to the light; I regretted taking shelter there. Saying goodbye to the moths, I then stepped out into a much darker pathway, away from the fading light of the trading post. I walked past the closing circle where a carved scout salute had been erected from a fallen tree. Of course, I couldn’t see it; I just knew it was there.

In the reading, Mrs. T said something that I hadn’t quite thought about. She told me “You’ve always had it in you to be more independent.” I mean I couldn’t see it, and I didn’t think it was there, but who’s to say maybe I’m just not paying attention to what’s already inside me. I have everything I need; I just have to start utilizing my strengths. Perhaps it’s just a matter of opening up my world enough that my mother couldn’t possibly hold me back. I rounded the corner of two paths that merged. The coyotes had let up because to follow me they would have had to emerge from the cover of the forest, as far as I knew I left them at the bottom of dining hall hill. I walked up the last hill to my cabin. I thought of everything I needed to do: start college, get a job, a license and start seeing friends more so I could work on improving my social skills. All of it was a very daunting thing to complete, but as long as I took it one step at a time, things would eventually fall into place.

I liked thinking in the woods; they were so free of a cities congested feel, and it opened my mind and allowed a very unconventional way of thinking to seep in. I scooted into my cabin and closed the screen door behind me. To my right a locked door waited to be opened and then quickly shut again. I sat down on my bed and took a deep breath. I was feeling very hopeful that soon I would be someone I was proud of. It was late; almost one, I had to be back to work again for six. I quickly got to bed as the promise of little over four hours of sleep quickly made me sour.

When I woke at about five thirty, I begrudgingly got ready and left the cabin. A loud rustle of pebbles from the paths floor jolted my attention upwards. A buck flew from the road in front of me into the brush. I had never been so close to a deer before. I hurried past the closing circle where the carved tree stood visibly now. Just as I was nearing the waterfront, I noticed a turtle crawling in the middle of the path. “How spectacular!” I thought. I walked up to him and moved him closer to the shoreline, knowing very well he could get run over. He quickly disappeared into the reeds. Looking back now those animals represented the time it would take me to complete this; some things could be done quickly, as the buck, and some would take time, like the turtle. Having the forest to help me realize the potential that lay dormant inside me made me feel at ease. That day and that walk were the start of something bigger than I could imagine.