Introducing: Dance Duck

Last weekend I went to Montreal with some friends and we went to a great Fringe Festival show called Dance Animal Presents: Dance Animal. Inspired, we all created our own dance animal personas. This is the bio of my friend Dance Duck. I think it (and she) is beautiful.

Close your eyes and imagine a duck in motion.

You’re probably picturing a duck walking; her awkward waddle painfully amusing. Or perhaps you’re imagining her flying – encumbered by her bulk as she lifts, dragging her webbed-feet like landing gear as she approaches the water.

But you see, ducks are designed neither for walking nor for flying. They have none of the gracefulness of their long-legged bird cousins on land, or of their sleek cousins in the air. They don’t step effortlessly through the marsh grasses like the snowy egret. They don’t soar like eagles or dip and dive like barn swallows.

And yet, the duck is not sorry that she waddles and flies heavily, because she knows that ducks are designed for floating. The essence of a duck in motion is actually stillness. The duck is moved only by the medium upon which it floats. Water.

Stillness can be defined in any medium. It is darkness to light. It is blankness to color. It is silence to noise. These are not opposites – darkness is the beginning of light and the end of light. Blankness is the beginning of color and the end of color. Silence is the beginning of noise and the end of noise. Stillness is the beginning of motion and the end of motion. The duck is still and yet a part of motion.

I’ve always been aware that I am a person of stillness. When the light is bright, I stand in the shadows. When the noise is great, I am silent. When the color is strong, I seek the solace of muted tones.

But I didn’t realize that my stillness was necessary, that I was necessary, that I was Dance Duck until Dance Tiger looked deep in my eyes – crossing the distance from her place on the stage to my seat. Yes, my seat in the shadows as far from the motion and noise and light and color on the stage as I could sit. When her gaze reached me there, I realized that indeed I was Dance Duck, destined to celebrate the stillness that is necessary to the motion and the noise.

You will see me on the stage with my Dance Animal friends, STILL – but not unmoved by the music. And you’ll understand that without my stillness, the motion is meaningless. My friends will dance and I will float. I am Dance Duck and I am necessary.

Really? I Live Here?

I took my cute little camera on my trail run this early morning. These are shots from my usual course that my friend Dance Duck (aka Nichole) turned me on to many years ago. I've run this course countless times and even gotten brave enough to do it all alone in the early morning when I figure lots of critters (bear and moose?!) are moving around. But I bring my good dog Rosie and we make noise. This morning I startled a deer, who startled me. But mostly, I'm just in awe of and in love with the beauty of it all. I've even written poems about this run. I feel so fortunate to live here and after 12 years I still marvel at my luck and the wonder of this amazing place.

Click on this picture (just below) to see the wild beast!

Piano Recital

Wayne took these pictures at the kids' piano recital last week.  They played beautifully (everyone did) and it was a great event in a beautiful location on Burke Mountain.  We're lucky to have some incredible music teachers here in the Northeast Kingdom.  This was Patrick's 4th year of piano and Harper's 1st.  He also plays guitar and she, the clarinet.  I love the light in the picture of Gram.  And I'm certain my children had the highest number of grandparent-types in the audience; Grammies Robin and Cindy, Grandpa David, Poppa Wayne and Great-Auntie Sally!  Wow.

New Blog

I'm creating a new blog for all the pieces we've written about camp. It's here: stoddardcamp.blogspot.com

And I'll try to add anyone who wants to contribute to it. Let me know.

Love and stuff.

From the Road to the Trails

Yesterday I ran a 2-person relay with my friend Michelle at the Vermont City Marathon.  It was totally fun and I broke 2 hours for my half marathon time; a personal record.  This was my 4th year as a participant in VCM.  The first year I was part of a 5-person relay and the last two years I ran the full marathon.  It was pretty sweet yesterday to hit mile 8 and contemplate another 5 miles rather than another 18.  And the Vermont City Marathon is really the greatest race in terms of organization, crowd support, course, etc.  Because I ran the first leg, I was able to spend over an hour as a spectator at the finish line.  I saw one woman puke while running, a man basically get carried across the finish line by 3 or 4 other people, our local Judge finish the full marathon, lots of bloody nipples and my team mate's glorious finish. We also had a great long weekend with the Fays at the our favorite house in Burlington, which we have enjoyed as an exchange 5 times.  Wow!

Now that the Half is over, I'm going to hit the trails hard in preparation for the Black Fly in My Eye 10 mile trail race over near Mt. Washington at the end of June.  I did this race the first year they held it, 4  years ago, and it was incredibly challenging.  I swore I'd never do it again.  It was brutal. One leg of it is pretty much a mountain climb, at which point I saw no other runners and thought I might be lost (I wasn't) and the end is really intense because you go down a steep hill, across a shallow but wide river and then up the embankment to cross the finish line, with everyone watching you so you feel really self-conscious and worried you're going to slip and make a fool of yourself.  But I convinced some friends to do it with me this year and I'm really psyched about it; a serious challenge, but not too much pavement pounding.  It's going to be awesome.

Camp

Gram has asked all her children and grandchildren to write something about what Camp means to them.  Camp means so much and so many things to me that I've been avoiding this task.  I just don't really know where to start or how exactly to approach a subject that is so much about feelings and senses; smells, sights, temperatures, sounds, tastes, immersion.

Camp is immersion.   The first thing I always wanted to do when I was little and arrived at Camp in the summer was jump in the lake. Straight away.  (We didn't go to Camp in the winter back then. Never. Could the little ones in our family even imagine such a time?  We just had the camp, not Grammie's house, not a paved, plowed road leading there.  It was strictly a summer place.  You would sleep in the back seat until the limbs of the trees on Grandpa Chick's road scraped the windows of the car and woke you up.  Then you knew you were there.)  And I remember being very small and not wanting to leave Camp and actually having my sneakers on and TIED (arrggggh, that's it, when the sneaker are on and tied; you are GONE, back to that other place that isn't really home or where you want to be; the suburbs!) and "falling" off the dock into the lake so Dad would be forced to stay longer.  I don't even think I knew how to swim at the time.  I was desperate.

Now when I go to Camp it is to immerse myself in my family.  Their loudness, craziness, overbearing, over-the-top ways.  Ways that I need to escape sometimes (I am, after all, an only child, at least by some definitions).  But ways that I crave and need for sustenance and identity. So Camp is immersion.  When I am there and immersed, I know exactly who I am.  I am a Stoddard.  I am proudly my grandmother's daughter.  That's not a typo.  Anyone who knows me well knows I spent every summer, beginning when I was 5 years old, at Camp with my gram. And I am nearly as close to my mother's generation (9 years to Raetha) as to my own (6 years to Netdahe, another 3 to Henekis).  So while I love being the eldest grandchild, I also feel like gram's youngest kid.  I'm grateful to be hers AND my mom and dad's.  She helped raise me and I like to think that I take after her in some ways.  Most importantly, she taught me loyalty, acceptance, forgiveness and unconditional love. And how to swim.

Back to Camp.  When I first walk into Camp after an absence, I am struck by the smell of the aging pine and the way the light refracts through those single-paned windows.  It usually overwhelms me with emotion and this has been the case ever since I can remember.  That smell.  That light. I'm home.  I suddenly remember my childhood, my teenage years, young adulthood, and just last summer.  Everyone is in that tiny, dusty camp.  Champ is there and the two of us are playing cribbage during the day when everyone else has gone to Attitash for the Alpine Slide.  Gram is sitting in her housecoat in the early morning, sipping her third cup of coffee and watching the Today Show while I stumble out of the side room in my pajamas.  Aunts, uncles and their friends are laughing, smoking dope and watching Saturday Night Live and I spy them through the Raggedy Ann and Andy curtain that serves as my bedroom door.  Grammie and Raetha have accidently locked themselves out during a mid-week, late night skinny dip and are calling me out of sleep to let them back in.  They're giggling.  I'm heading outside to sunbathe in the front yard (or is it the BACK yard) with Rae, who is grown-up (a teenager!) and beautiful and makes it so that boys come around.   Neil and I are spending a February weekend on a mattress on the living room floor and I'm reading Jane Austin.   I'm nursing my new baby girl on that crazy fold out couch that Poppa Dick bought while aunts, uncle and cousins sleep in the next rooms.  I'm introducing everyone to my 5 week old foster child at the beginning of an intense parenting journey...

Everything else happens outside.  In the lake, in the yard, at the picnic tables, in the hammock and in the road. And now all my friends, and all of YOUR friends want to come to Camp and to Old Home Weekend.  Because Gram makes everyone feel special and at home and loved and part of a family.  Unconditionally.  Camp helps her to do this.  Gram and Camp and Family are all the same here; they all stand for each other, reference one another in their existence.  Our holy trinity.  On Old Home Weekend I am so proud to show off my extended family to my friends and my friends to my family.  Camp and Gram let me bring these people all together. I'm no only child!  And Look! at how charming and strange and brilliant and f-ed up and neurotic we all are.  Look at the ways we've screamed at and mistreated one another, but continue to come together in love.  Look at the way we take care of our children and each other. Look at how we always come back to Camp, no matter what.  It's love.  It's why I know love so well.  If Gram hadn't given us all Camp and herself, it wouldn't be this way.  Love would be something else and it wouldn't be nearly as rich or safe or encompassing.  I can't even imagine who I'd be. 

Fun With Rosie

Harper's laugh is the best part.