The Epic Tale Of Johnstone & Potts

 Behind the serving of food, the cleaning of facilities, the facilitating of activities, the running of games, and everything else we do in the sight of our guest groups and campers, there is a rich tapestry of stories and sagas which populate the private lives of Camp Evergreen staff members. Our time off from camp comprises tales which run the gamut of emotion and expression—exhilaration, desperation, tribulation, celebration, and most everything in between. The tale I share here is perhaps one of the more tragic ones, but one that is necessary to understand the full spectrum of the camp staff experience. This is the story of Johnstone and Potts.

The story starts—like most good stories do—on a table at the back of an open garage. Upon this table sits an array of trinkets and knickknacks, amongst which we find two wooden ducks. The day is May 17, 2014, and it’s a good day for hitting up garage sales—the weather looks to be sunny and pleasant, but not sweltering. The garage sale in question is on a backstreet in Sundre, nestled behind the rodeo grounds. Our protagonists lie patiently on the table amongst other baubles and curios, discarded by their original owner, but holding onto hope that some other might take interest and put forward the pocket change necessary to liberate them from disuse and neglect. A car comes to rest on the curb and two young men, likely in their early twenties, step out into the gently warming spring sun. The two men slowly and methodically peruse several tables and bins until they reach our two valiant mallards.

One of the birds, later to be named Johnstone, bears the traditional markings of a mallard—a dark green head and white collar adorn a grey-speckled plumage. The other, Potts, offers a grotesque, possibly surrealist portrayal of a duck. It bears a misshapen white beak with splotches of red, a mauve head, and a plumage comprising an assortment of green and blue half-circles, as if its maker were internally consumed by peacocks and performed a prolonged artistic Freudian slip during the painting of its body.

One man, dressed—as in every other day of the year—in shorts and a well-worn and somewhat-scuffed pair of flip-flops, draws closer and leans in to scrutinize our two heroic—if immobile—waterfowl. He is intrigued by the juxtaposition of Johnstone’s fidelity to the traditional image of the mallard with Potts’s radical departure. He reaches into his back pocket, fishes a few coins out of his wallet, and hands them to a woman sitting in a lawn chair as he exits the garage, ducks in hand.

The day is June 25, 2014. At 4:30am, the same man is cruising down Highway 22 towards Cochrane. A sliver of open sky to the east starts to glow in anticipation of the rising sun, but his eyes are captive to the lightning storm which covers his path. A torrent of rain makes him grip the wheel as he heads to the mountains, praying that the weather will let up when he starts his trek. Just before 7am, he reaches the trailhead, just past Banff. There are no others—the mountain is desolate, save for the occasional scampering of small wildlife across the path. His eyes finally alert, he cradles Johnstone and Potts and places them both in his backpack between two water bottles. Walking stick in hand, he starts his winding ascent up the trail, with only two wooden mallards for company.

After meandering back and forth for 5 kilometres, the trail crosses a bridge of hard-packed snow over a mountain creek and goes steeply up a series of switchbacks before opening into a meadow. The weather takes a turn for the worse, and he wipes his eyelashes to remove the snow that is accumulating and clouding his vision. In the middle of spring melt, the meadow is water-logged and impossible for him to traverse without traipsing into puddles as he searches for a path to the lake on the other side. At long last, his feet soaked and nearly without feeling, he reaches the lake, which is still clinging to the tail end of winter. The shore is covered by ice and presents a threatening environment to any would-be resident waterfowl. He instead traverses a creek with a few deft hops and clambers up a boulder. He gingerly removes the two mallards from his backpack and positions them atop the rock before removing a modest lunch, which he scarfs down with stiffening, freezing fingers.

Longing for the warmth of his car and a hot coffee, he quickly alights from rock and wings his way down the mountain. Finally reaching his vehicle, he climbs in and drives off in search of a warm beverage. Suddenly, his heart sinking, he rummages through his backpack and realizes in horror that the ducks are no longer with him. Johnstone and Potts are lost, left sitting on the same boulder atop which he hastily ate his lunch. His legs sore and daylight waning, he knows he has no time or energy to retrieve them, and resigns himself to their probable demise.

Loss. Loss is an inevitable part of our lives as staff here at Camp Evergreen. Sleep lost due to sickness and late night crises. Time lost to adverse weather. Possessions lost in the chaos of a hundred campers running around on site. As followers of Jesus, however, our loss is always in the context of the goodness of God. Jesus promises us that any who give of possessions or time for the sake of the kingdom of God will not be without reward. It may not be until we are with him in eternity. It may also be that God rewards us here, as he did Job. Though Job lost children, sheep, oxen, and cattle, God restored his fortunes in his latter days and blessed him with more than he originally had. Last week, some of us visited some more garage sales and left with five ducks, ready for more adventures. With the goodness of God in mind, may we be as bold with our time and possessions in his service as we are with our waterfowl

-Nate

(Bacon)