Slack Lining Between the Junipers

Wow. I think I blinked and a month went by. I have no idea how it can possibly be the middle of July already, and yesterday I realized that I am leaving for France in four weeks. Fastest summer ever, and yet somehow one of the best. I have never worked harder, or been happier doing it, so I guess there is little complain about. I have spent three out of the past four weeks on the river. Two weeks on the John Day (lower, and then the upper) and last week on the Grande Ronde. Not too exciting at low water, but so much fun to be out, and not in camp (which means more freedom to do whatever we want with the kids.) The people I work with are absolutely amazing and wonderful, and the kids for the most part are bright and enjoyable, though of course trying at times.

This past weekend has been the best though. Instead of driving back to Portland with the kids this weekend I drove back to Hancock after we got off the river (in a 108 degree weather) with Ben to clean rafts/gear and do KP for the Family weekend. We promptly got trashed at our "staff meeting" upon arrival and then proceeded to clean gear under the happy spray of the hose. The evening consisted of floating in a large John Day Eddie while consuming more beer until it got too dark to see. On Saturday we set up a slack line and we spent hours playing around on it in the evening. I made some serious improvement, but we had to take it down last night when the first groups of kids showed up. Stupid kids anyway, camp is a lot more fun with out them... :)

KP turned out to be the best job ever, as I had heard it rumored to be. I spent most of the weeekend in the kitchen reading cook books and helping John and Brian (two amazing cooks and people) make meals. Last night they even let me make cake for dessert tonight! Brian helped me but it was definitely the first time I'd made cake for 72 people. I was going to make tortes but realized I might need spring form pans, not a standard item in the HFS kitchen. So Brian suggested we order ten of them and we would have them by Wednesday. I said they couldn't do that and he looked at me, blinked and rather blase, replied, why not? It was then they let me in on their little secret: HFS has the biggest kitchen budget ever, and no matter how hard they try and try they do... they can't use it all up every month. I didn't realize how serious they were until buy 9pm they had written in on the order sheet, 8 lbs of goat cheese, several smoked salmon, 120 4.5 oz. Bone White Fluted Ramekins (because I made a joke about making Pots de Cremes and John decided that the ramekins would make good dessert bowls anyway) fresh basil, just so we can make good pizza next week and Salmon Pate for the Bagels Brian (Brain makes fabulous fresh bread almost every day, including some tasty cranberry banana that I made into french toast this morning, so good!) and I started this morning during my time off. I looked for good loose leaf tea in the book too but it had to be the only thing not in there... we could certainly order, green tea ice cream, snails or Fillet Mingonne if we wanted too after all. Plus, I got John excited to make Beef Stroganoff this week and I'm getting the after noon off on Wednesday so I can help him cook the Veggie option with TOFU. Yummy!

Alas I have to go back to my real job in a few hours though, when my kids get here, but it should be a fun week and I have a co-counselor for four girls. Which means I might still be able to get up at 6:00 to go running which I have been good about doing, and maybe still find time to sneak into the kitchen every day for a bit. It's amazing how early I get up here, but I just can't seem to sleep in later. Chet has the week off as well, which is sad as I have been loving working with him. He's a really cool kid and a favorite with the kids for sure. We played cribbage all last week on the river in the evenings and next weekend he's going to try and remember to bring a cribbage board out with him.

If you feel so inspired to send me something (which would be sweet), the best way to reach me these days is through snail mail. There is certainly no cell phone reception out here and the internet access is limited. But here is the address:

Becca Cooper
Hancock Field Station
39472 Hwy. 218
Fossil, OR 97830

Also, I can send mail, so if I don't have your current street address, you should leave it.