Buttslides

People, places and stories.

There are so many campers, staff and stories that flood my brain as I try to think of 'Iconic" pieces of camp-ness. Rob's Christian skit, "I love a parade, Showboats "love potion number nine", or Pahoos' Buttslides.

Pahoo, a parrot named DNA, his teepee by the laundry, lights powered by a car battery. He was a, I guess, typical camp character whose evening activity of choice included Buttslides. Each evening staff would stand up and announce what they would do for an activity, typical sing-along, nature walk, a mixture of quiet and active. Buttslides appealed to a few of us. Hike out the Hendy Woods road and look for a likely place, steep, and slide on your bottom down the hill.

In most places the hill was not steep enough to create a spontaneous, continuous slide. In a few places, under dark redwoods, near the river, the slop approached 75 degrees.

One night we slide down and the maybe a 200 foot drop overall and we reached a point where it was clear the what remained was vertical—just not clear as to how far. We couldn’t really hear the river but it was below, no moon and, of course, no flashlights. That would be cheating.

I was in the lead next to Pahoo (I think his name was David Lincoln, or something to that affect) and we discussed the next move. Crawling up hill was out, horizontal didn’t really seem to be an option either. So we dropped.

It was maybe 15-20 feet to the gravel of the river. To this day I have the clear impression that he couldn’t see at night and had never slide down this, or any other, area near where we were. This was the rule of Buttslides.

I have for years wondered what made this make sense to me, at the time or later. There was something scary and foolish, I get that, but there was also another level of competence and confidence that played in here as well.

And Pahoo, from the Potch-en-tocious tribe, lives on.