The Explorer's Club - Mim memory du jour

The Tog Valley School was one of many kid collaboratives that Mim came up with over the years.  I was just barely five years old when started crafting fun moments for her two younger siblings - Ian would have been around nine, Mim thirteen.  Soon, the other "Front Lawn Kids" - the Grubbs & Roses - were part of the fun, and finally other neighborhood scamps, including Lawrence Behlert (especially Lawrence - more on him in a later memory), were part of the weekly meetings & special events like camp & Christmas caroling.

She called us The Explorer's Club.  Strange - we rarely left the property, but it FELT like we were explorers.  That was one of Mim's great gifts - in a small space, over a few days each month, she helped us experience something big & special & life expanding.

Here I am, at 63, appreciating for the first time how varied our property was, how perfectly suited for Mim's magic.  The Front Lawn - stretching between "Aunt" Tryn's & "Uncle" Stanley's & our house - was perfect for every sort of sport.  Our back yard was wondrously self-enclosed & the over-sized wooden-frame tent Dad made Mim for her 8th grade graduation present was perched at the end of the property atop a small bluff that overlooked Linquist's & "Aunt" Olive's houses.  The one side of our house dropped down to Grubbs (now Lew & Mira's), while the other reached up into a majestic tall pines woods, just right for campfires & making fairy houses, for sing alongs & incredible rope swings. 

The Explorer's Club was open to boys & girls.  I don't remember that ever being controversial, having boys & girls camped out - about 10 of us, side by side - in the big tent.

Many years later, after a former camper remembered 3+ days filled with "spontaneous" fun -  Mim hauled out her notes from one of the camps, showing how she'd meticulously planned each & every activity, had each day written out with minute-to-minute time allotments.  What looked so "of the moment" to the rest of us was a highly detailed, well disciplined effort by an older kid who poured unimaginable time, effort & money into making special moments for a troop of neighborhood kids.

Quick memory - The end-of-camp show for parents & other adult guests included a rendition of "Chicken Little."  At the end of the play, the audience cried out "Author! Author!"  Now, as easy going as Mim was around kids, she was always & forever massively shy around her contemporaries & adults.  And here she was, with a crowd of adults insistently clamoring for HER to take a well-deserved bow.  In a stroke of comedic genius, she sent out Artie (Stan) Rose - ARTHUR - who cocked a hand to his ear & said, all cheeky fun, to the audience - "You rang?"  The adults ROARED with laughter & Mim managed to stay safely behind the scenes.