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This remnant of a hand-written letter was discovered in the COA archives. It was written in pencil on a few pages torn from a journal during the writer's first week at COA and is dated September 3rd and 7th, 1973. The letter is unfinished and unsigned. Can anyone identify the author?
Monday, September 3, 1973
Dear Mark, ...I am at school now. My mother drove me up from the island. My brother lent me his pack, frame and tent. I just learned today that part of the trip will be by canoe - at least I'll be by water so I can wash! I have a hunch I'll stink pretty bad. I had a good stay at the island. Sandy and Joshua, my sister-in-law and nephew, came with us. Joshua is such a delight. Sandy is getting the feel of the island. She is beginning to collect treasures: shells, bits of rock, and driftwood. I'm afraid I'm an incurable seashore beachcomber. I hadn't been here at COA for more than as hour and a half and already I'd been down to the shore and collected more pretty stones than my pockets could hold. So I limited my pick to the five most unusual and pretty. After all, I have nine months to collect rocks in. This is weird up here. I've now been here for five hours and I haven't seen one staff member. We are all so well behaved. We have one student who has a mandolin and a Korean pigeon. Or I assume it's Korean. He got it in Korea. One girl brought a dulcimer, a wooden stringed instrument. There are of course several guitars. One girl has a recorder (one of those flute jobs), another has a banjo. We had...
Friday, Sept. 7, 1973
Am now on COA's orientation program. Has been fun so far. We arrived Wed, aft. by canoe from a landing about mile away. Had to travel in a large U-haul van to get here. We stopped every hour or so because the CO fumes & exhaust were killing us. Wed. started out foggy but cleared up. I went out fishing with Norman, from Korea, who owns a pigeon called Ptarmigan. We were both poaching - he doesn't have a license and mine doesn't start til tomorrow. Steve Katona, one of the instructors, most fascinating to listen to, caught a good-sized chub or perch and we had fish stew. We had a camp fire at night and went to bed around 10:00 pm. Alice Leeds is my partner. She is quiet, which gives me more time to talk, ha ha. Tripp Royce and Enno Becker are two guys tenting near us. We have consolidated our food for most of our meals. Tripp is stocky with black hair and round wire-rims. He wears a Cub Scout bandana and looks like an Indian. Enno is tall and lanky and looks something like Duffy. He has round wire-rims, too. Thursday morn. dawned cloudy and windy and cold. We had to meet at the head of the lake at 10:00 and we didn't get up till 8:45 so we only got a ... |
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