The Sun's day indeed. The sun is doing its job--- the rain has ceased, and the clouds have vanished. Also reason to celebrate: the hedonist crowd is leaving, exodus-style, en masse. I have achieved nearly four hours of sleep during the night, which is also cause for celebration.

This morning has brought a bit of consternation--- some beasties have been eating my beach towel. It is brilliantly colored, so perhaps it looks like food. I suspect moths. Judging by the size of the holes in the towel, probably a moth with a fourteen-inch wing span. Either that or a very hungry bear.

While I eat my breakfast of plums and cheese, I think of Joshua Slocum when he ate the very same breakfast while sailing single-handed. This is what I recall of the story: I may have the details incorrect.

He said he enjoyed the cheese--- a gift from people he had visited upon his circumnavigation--- and he "ate the better part of it" as well as plums he had been gifted. The cheese in his stomach turned on him with tenacious vengeance. His gut puffed up; he turned feverish and delirious; he became unable to man the helm of his small sailing craft. Lashing the tiller, he went below to his bunk. Naturally, a very boisterous wind made up, and his craft, fending for herself, was having a hard time of it. Slocum was too incapacitated to do anything more than brace himself in his bunk and hold on. The waves grew higher, the wind picked up, and the sails on the boat started to flog madly. The craft bounced, turned beam-to the waves, and was getting the stuffing knocked out of her.

Slocum, in great pain, hardly able to think clearly, knew that if he did not reduce the sail and fly before the wind (to "run"), he would probably founder and die. He struggled out of his bunk, making it to his feet. As he staggered over the bucking, listing, heaving deck, he was astonished to hear---- voices at the helm. Clear, distinct conversation from the stern of the boat.

To his vast amazement, of her own accord the boat headed down-wind, the jib was let out, the jib sheet snubbed, and the boat was running with the wind on an aft quarter. The boat's motion steadied and the swells passed harmless under her.

Slocum lifted the hatch boards and could not believe what he saw: an ancient mariner in period garb standing firm at the helm, grasping the tiller with a brawny arm, while talking to a small boy in similar garb. The man at the helm nodded to Slocum, and continued his conversation with the boy. Joshua, seeing "all was well," went back to his bunk. The "sudden crew" stayed on for another day while Slocum recovered.

As I eat my plums and cheese, I wonder if I will meet any phantoms, any specters, walking around the lake. Ancient miners perhaps, or some long-dead Arapaho chief. Who knows what powers and abilities reside within a cheese gone bad?

Today I have a project: survey every campsite, and draw a map. I wish to do this for two reasons: I have nothing else that needs done, and it might be helpful to people if I put such a map on the Internet. While I make the map I can photograph a few of the camp sites (certainly not all of them), and place the images on the web site as well. This project could also be helpful for people who attend a meeting up here every summer.

Since I'm at the south end, I start with the Scout Camp, and I visit what I call The Sacred Grove. The Grove is a stand of young aspen which (who?) grow together and produce a shady, cool interior which one may, by pushing back a tree limb here and there, enter.

I recall the previous time I have visited this grove. It was two years ago in August, at noon. A drummer had generously offered to give some advice and instruction to novice drummers. Seven drummers, including myself, showed up, and three dancers.

For this brief moment, in this small space, each drummer surrendered his and her individuality and became a larger whole by drumming in synchronous. (The dancers, of course, retained their individuality and danced as the spirit moved them.) The facilitator selected a beat, and us novices did our best to follow.

"Dom-ta-ka-ta-ka dom-ta-ka-ta-ka dom-ta-ka-ta-ka" we seven drummers beat out upon our Congo (or whatever) drums. Once the simple beats were learned, we moved on to the more difficult ones.

"Dom-dom-ta-ka-ta-ka-dom-ta-ka dom-dom-ta-ka-ta-ka-dom-ta-ka dom-dom-ta-ka-ta-ka-dom-ta-ka."

While we played our drums, the dancers improvised. Every drummer listened to every other drummer, and followed gently, smoothly, into any beat change that occurred when the feeling came upon someone. Now and then a drummer, feeling individuation once again asserting itself, would add a sub-beat, a syncopation, to the main beat, follow it for a few minutes, and step back seamlessly into the group beat.

At the end of a long session, something very odd occurred. Something I have never seen before or since. One of the aspen trees shook violently of its own accord, as if a massive beast deep within the Earth had grasped it by the roots and tormented it. One of the dancers yelped at the violently shaking tree, and the facilitator said something like (I forget exactly) "I guess that mean's were drumming well." Once the tree ceased shaking, settled down, and acted like its sisters and brothers again, we drummed some more.

Now here I am, standing in a grove that I consider sacred, and what do I see? Trash on the ground. Not much: just tiny bits of tin foil, wee oddments of candy wrappers, remnants of someone's lunch. I get on my knees, pick up the trash, and place it in my hip pocket. Naturally, I am vexed.

My mapping goes well, as I am using a hand-help GPS unit. The electronic device listens to eight satellites in orbit and octo-angulates my position to within three or four feet. When I reach a campsite I hit the "man overboard" button, which logs a way point. I have set the track log function to record my position every ten seconds, which, when plotted on a graph, will generate a very accurate map of the main roads around the lake.

At camp site 61 next to the lake, close to the Scout camp area, there is a dozen pieces of paper on the ground. This trash appears to have been there for a few weeks, even though I watched as the campers who were there this week end came, stayed two days, and left. How, someone please tell me, is it possible for one human being (let along two or three) to not see this trash and pick it up? Do they really not understand that it is their job to pick it up, and not any one else's?! The fact that they did not put the trash there in the first place does not signify in the least. If these pieces of trash were dollar bills, certainly they would have picked them up--- why, then, did they fail to do their duty to the Land, to Nature, to all that is sacred and holy, and pick up the trash?

While I pick up the trash, I am astonished; I am dismayed. Try as I do, I am unable to understand how this trash could have laid there while people came and went. The edges of the trash has been burned, and there has been a fire ban for six months. Has the trash sat there in the mud all that time? Amazing. Bloody amazing.

As I make my way down the road, I pick up bottle caps, plastic pull tabs, an old sock, cigarette butts (fire ban!), a plastic spoon, candy wrappers, and dozens of nondescript bits of trash. After seven campsites visited so far, both hip pockets are full of trash. Seven down, eighty-two to go!

After awhile, I am so weary of picking up trash that I mentally calculate how long it would take me to remove it all. Given 89 sites and averaging the trash among them, I figure one person can clean the whole place in 2,047 minutes. That's a bit over 34 hours of bending and kneeling.

At camp sites twenty through twenty-six I find the worse. Most of the trash is very small--- the size of a dime or less. The problem is, there's a massive amount of it. There are dozens of larger pieces of trash, from bags to plastic forks to paper plates, which I pick up.

Two years ago, August of 2000, I joined a team of six people who had "policed the area" from campsite 14 to 30, and we picked up every bit of trash we saw. It took us six people around five hours to pick up the trash that other people, out here to enjoy Nature, left behind. Now, two years later, it's even worse than that year.

It is NOT Wellington Lake's caretaker's job to pick up trash. Della, the Lady of the Lake, has enough work to do without acting the nanny to ten thousand visitors every year. Candy at the office has more than enough work to occupy her by meeting visitors, handling their questions and their small camping supply needs. The assistant caretaker has more than enough work to occupy him. It is the duty of every visitor to clean the site she or he is camping in.

Some visitors will drop a tiny bit of paper and think "Well, it's very small and it will not hurt anything. It's biodegradable." Or a bit of paper or tin foil will blow out of their tent, car, backpack, and they will think that "this tiny little bit" is insignificant.

Oh, really?! The campsites twenty through twenty-six appear to be the most popular: they may be occupied twenty or more weekends in a season, and often (such as this week) for a week at a time. The tiny bits of "insignificant" trash ADDS UP.

It is vastly more than I, one fat and lazy person, can pick up. Doing so will require days of crawling on my knees, picking through brush and gravel.

This land is sacred; it is holy; it is consecrated. The wind comes here to speak through the trees. Elk come here to trumpet their songs under the moonlight. This is the home of bears, coyotes, squirrels, chipmunks, deer, raccoons, eagle, ducks, rabbits, ponderosa pine, piņon pine, juniper, aspen, living water, and yes, human beings. Trashing this land is the only blasphemy; it is desecration; it is sacrilege. It is profanity writ hard and vulgar upon the land.

The people who come here and leave their trash..... what would they think if every weekend a hundred forest creatures came into their churches, their synagogues, their shuls, their temples, their mosques--- and crapped on their alters, pissed on their holy books, spat upon their crucifixes and rosaries and blessed icons? Would they be outraged?

That's how I feel when I see trash in the forest, in lakes, in streams.

My mapping project continues, even while I fume. The larger pieces of trash I pick up, but the tiny bits overwhelm me and I leave them behind. Monday (tomorrow) or Tuesday I will go to site number twenty and start the clean up.

Mapping done, I carry my GPS back to camp and plug it into the computer. An electronic gulp and burp later, a dandy map is drawn upon the computer's screen. I am amazed at how well the idea has worked out. I have even included the waterfall. I may now copy this map to an image, link sections of the map to various web pages, and within those web pages I may offer the Internet viewer a look at what she or he may expect if she or he visits. When they "click on" the eye-glasses symbol next to the waterfall way point, they will be rewarded with a picture or two of the waterfall.

The sun is bright and warm; the lake an astounding vision of turquoise. The wind is gentle, cooling, caressing, almost loving in its movements. From my campsite I see upon the lake a silver canoe moving slowly while a passenger trolls for trout. Most weekend visitors have left: there are four campsites currently occupied, including the one I am using, F44.

Ah yes, my campsite. The incline that I had thought I would grow accustom to has only, seemingly, gotten worse. When morning comes, I generally find that I have been ejected from my blankets during the night and unceremoniously deposited hard up against the back of the tent. If I had not been using the tent, I suspect I would wake up every morning floating in the lake. It annoys; it gently torments; it troubles my sleep and makes me verbally assault obnoxious, noisy neighbors. (Well, that's my excuse anyhow.)

And yet, the incline would at least be bearable if it were not for the hard lumps of solidified gravel, the bus-size rocks, and canyon-size dips that assault my back each night. "Roughing it" can be taken too far! So, I did what any civilized lad would do; I drove into Lakewood and purchased an air mattress yesterday. Upon returning, I dragged my tent, with its contents, onto more level ground, and erected a second tarp over its then exposed side.

Good Goddess, the air mattress! Every camper who must sleep on the ground should have one. Two nights on this amazing item has sold me into a life of singing its praises. Gentle do I thus lay at night, in serene repose, like a cherub upon a puffy white cloud, to slumber and dream of soft, warm, comforting things.

Like Reba McEntire, for instance. She has been haunting my dreams, my daydreams, and my deep desires for a week now. Why Reba instead of, say, Stephanie down at Crow's Foot Restaurant, I cannot imagine. Maybe it is because women make far better lovers than girls. Maybe it's the red hair, which drives me insane with lust.

But probably it's Reba's voice. Anyone who sings so sweetly, so pure, so practiced and skillful, must be someone worthy of adoration and love. Do sour, vile, hateful people sing so greatly, so beautifully? When Reba hits the high notes and turns a one-syllable word into a six- or eight-syllable word, she gives me goose bumps. I, as do most men, like it when a woman yodels, yelps, wails, moans, and howls. Reba is more than a singer: she epitomizes what one thinks of as "an artist" when thinking of music.

The sun drops behind the "castle" and F44 falls into shadow. Across the lake it is brilliant, golden, azure, warm. My new map shows me that if I had been looking for optimum seclusion, I would have done better by moving down the road a few campsites, to F46 or F47. But as for now, it is quiet, and I can expect peace until it is Friday and once again the crowd arrives.