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A Stroke Of Fate

JUDI MEREDITH

HAVE YOU ever had an experience that you would like to forget-
but can't? Its picture has left so vivid an image in your mind
that the slightest scent of thick, woodsy smoke sets alive little impulses
of fear within your subconscious mind even now. No matter where
or when this irritating sensation tingles your nostrils, your memory
always goes back to that day two years ago when you grappled hand
to hand with Nature and first realized its power to destroy as violently
as it sacredly creates.

It was August 22 and the day that the private camp where I had
been employed as a counselor for the summer was closing for the sea-
son. As I helped the anxious little girls in my cabin do last-minute
packing of misplaced tooth-brushes and mementos of their vacation,
I thought to myself what a worthwhile and diversified background I
had acquired from my job. Little did I know, however, that within
the next eight hours of that day, I was to encounter an experience
more terrifying and vivid than any I had ever known.

The boisterous, excited campers were matched up with their re-
spective suitcases and, after what seemed a thousand good-byes, were
transported across the lake by motorboat shortly before noon. Be-
cause of the rocky and mountainous terrain, transportation in these
sections of the Adirondacks is usually by this means. After the ex-
citement of the morning, the remaining sixteen counselors and staff
members gathered in the dining hall for a well-earned lunch. The
meal proceeded much as usual except for the added merriment of the
group prompted by the absence of their usual supervisory obligations.
In the midst of the banter, a man came running through the door,
flushed and out of breath. Startling everyone with his exciting en-
trance, he shouted these words, "Hey, do you folks know your camp
is burning down?"

In one mass movement we all ran out of the building-to see a
picture that to this day I have been unable to erase from my memory.
The largest building in the camp, a four-story archaic wooden struc-
ture with porches on the three upper floors, was totally aflame. My
first shocking impression was that it looked like a gaudy gambling
casino strung with neon lights which glared in the stark sunlight on
the edge of the calm, shimmering lake.

Amid all the confusion of the discovery, many of the details

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