"Home again, home again, jiggity-jog"

"The best-laid plans o' mice and men gang aft a-gley," wrote the Scottish poet laureate, and today was no exception. I'd planned to have the camp struck before Morning Prayer so that we could hit the road right after, grabbing something for breakfast along the way so we didn't have to mess with cleaning cookware.

The day started out fine though I was unwillingly awake at 5 AM. I did get to see a beautiful scene with the full moon low above the camp, but... I didn't know where my camera was, so it went unrecorded except in my mind.

Later, about 7 AM, I was up and starting in on the packing, the stuff I could quietly without bothering anyone. As the camp got going (and the clock started ticking), the two of us set in on the various packing tasks -- plus a breakfast of cold materials + coffee (minimal cleanup). We made good progress, but I was dismayed to hear to service bell ring 5 minutes before the hour while we had at least 10 minutes' packing to do. Oh well.

Then I learned it was Holy Communion, not Morning Prayer, for the morning's service. Okay... there was Fr. Webb's sermon yesterday on time: CONVICTED! Actually, it was going to be Morning Prayer leading into Holy Communion, but they dropped the Morning Prayer.

Afterwards it took a long time, with all the good-byes to be said, before we could make it back to our remote corner of the camp to finish packing. And then there were many more good-byes with our nearby neighbors before we were able to hit the road at 10:30 AM, arriving home at 10:40 PM.

But all the good-byes were telling: a prominent element was "Next year in Rogue River!" (In Oregon, proposed as the site for next year's camp). In terms of building personal ties and friendships across parishes in the diocese, this was a HIT.

Thank you so much, Abby and Jon, for all your hard work!

More tomorrow -- I hope much, much more.