When I was 16 I worked in a summer camp. It was the summer camp I had attended for three weeks each summer since I was 13, where I’d made good friends who during the year lived scattered amongst the boroughs of New York and Long Island. Decades before the internet and cell phones, we either wrangled our parents to let us visit one another (maybe once a year if lucky, it was a schelp), made the rare non-local (pricey) phone call, or more likely, wrote letters. (Paper! Sometimes with illustrations! And “SWAKBALWS – Sealed with A Kiss Because A Lick Won’t Stick” on the envelope, an acronym which, I know, follows no logic whatsoever.)
Once we “aged out” as teen campers we all applied to work at camp. For my two months of labor I earned the whopping sum of $50 to work in the office answering the phone switchboard (yes, the kind with plugs, old fashioned even then!), reporting to a crabby older woman named Estelle, who for some reason took an immediate dislike to me no matter what I did. Despite that discomfort, it was otherwise a cushy job compared to my buddies who slaved in the kitchen, learning the secrets of what really goes into bug juice and monster meatballs.
After all, I was otherwise getting a free summer in the country, spending downtime with my friends, hanging at the canteen, enjoying arts and crafts, or learning to drink Turkish coffee from the Israeli counselors. Sometimes we’d spend our days off hitchhiking to the Putnam County Fair, Woodstock, or a nearby winery or concert. The late folksinger Pete Seeger, who lived close to our camp, held many a free Hudson River Sloop Clearwater concert to bring awareness to pollution in the Hudson River.
Now, what was that about the bees?
At mealtime those of us not working the kitchen were assigned a camper group to eat with. Mine was a bunk of little boys; about 9 years old, if memory serves. I rather dreaded it at first, but then I got to know them. They turned out to be a sweet bunch of kids, often trying to entertain me. I now suspect that perhaps placing a teen girl at the table might have been no accident, and designed to encourage them to be on best behavior. One, in fact, had a bit of crush on me and made me a leather bracelet in arts & crafts. I wore that hippy bracelet all summer, and I hope it made him feel good.
But, oh yes, the bees. Or rather, the bee kid. The bee lover. No, no, let’s call him the Bee Whisperer.
I can’t remember his name. I do remember he was a bit chubby, and full of a calm self confidence. He loved the bees and they seemed to love him. The boys would tell me how the bees would light on his finger but never sting him, and I didn’t believe it until I saw it.
It must have been in the lunchroom. The bee landed on his finger, choosing him as if it knew him. All the boys stayed calm and he talked to it softly. He petted it gently. The affection and respect were palpable. It was kind of strange to see this connection, especially at a time when we weren’t yet enamored with bees out of concern for their welfare and environmental impact… and it was also kind of wonderful.
I can’t help but wonder if the young Bee Whisperer continued to have this rapport with bees as he grew up. Or was it a kind of magic granted to some of us in childhood and then lost as we shed innocence and open acceptance?