Surreal

Tonight as I was carrying a box of mass supplies up the hill to the main house I had sort of a flashback. The snow is crunchy, and the air is cold and heavy and humid, and the moon is full. (There actually was a lunar eclipse earlier tonight but we had clouds then.) I had closed up the lodge and was trudging up the hill in plain old gym shoes, not recommended for crunchy snow, ice, and mud.

And suddenly I had this flashback. Years ago, I served here as a Missionary Cenacle Volunteer. My second summer I was drafted to be the volunteer coordinator, and I soon developed a major sleep deficit. I stayed every night until the lodge closed, then I would go up the same path I was going up tonight, only without the snow. One night I was sort of loopy from lack of sleep, and my friends convinced me to actually go to bed before the lodge closed. What a concept. That particular night it was rather chilly, and a fog had come up. The spotlights shining across the grounds created this kind of eerie effect not unlike a horror movie. As my friends escorted me to the main house, from the fog emerged another volunteer, Jackie. Jackie was carrying a rake. She passed us by without a word. A minute later it sank in, and I said, "Did I just see Jackie with a rake? Is she going to rake leaves at eleven o'clock at night, in the fog?" It was, like, totally surreal, man. I started giggling and could not stop. Really, I think I was still laughing ten minutes later. I learned a valuable lesson. Sleep deprivation makes you silly, really silly.

In a few months the summer will be here, and now I will be the volunteer coordinator again. My big plan is to get more sleep. I expect it won't be too hard. We have more help these days than we did back then, plus I have learned to take better care of myself in the intervening years. That's not to say, of course, that I won't ever get silly....