The Village Center

Summer is busy and brief here at Holden. We wait all year to open up the village to a full service status for hundreds of guests and in less than three months it is over. The Village Center is a huge building right in the middle of Holden's main street. This building houses the bowling alley, the snack bar, the "Lift" (a late night music place) and a huge gymnasium area that we now use for our evening worship.In 1976 the white ceiling of the gym was deemed to not be suitable for what went on inside, so an artist maned Richard Caemmerer drew up a sketch of the painting that you can see in these pictures. He tried to capture the four seasons of mountain community in this wildly painted diorama.

My children grew up drifting off to sleep during worship gazing on this brightly painted scene. We worship here only in the summer and then winter retakes the building into its cold essence once again. Summer at Holden in the VC.

Prayer Around the Cross

Worship each and every Friday evening at Holden is the same, Prayer Around the Cross. This simple service of candle light and chanting hymns from Taize, a religious center in France, becomes the foundation of who we are here at Holden. As much as we love to try new and creative ways to worship, this service varies very little.

We enter the dark room in silence and sing simple chants as we wait for the candles to be lit. Around the cross are bowls and boxes filled with sand. We may pray in solitude at a box or if we choose to kneel at a bowls, we will be joined by others who will pray with us. Often a child will mistakenly kneel at a bowl and is very surprised when four or five people come and pray with them.

Most of us, as we live our lives, wear masks of happiness and contentment. This service is a place where the turmoil can spill out and we can unburden ourselves of pain. All of this is done in silence but the power of human touch can ease the heaviest of burdens.

I Can't Stop Taking These Pictures

Each evening the deer are outside my back door grazing on the clover and each and every time, I run upstairs for my camera to take pictures. The beauty of living this close to nature is both common place and awe inspiring. Knowing that this year is almost over and that I will never again (well maybe) live this close to so many living species, I feel compelled to document each siting.

Three mother does are now socializing their fawns with the village. The mothers used to leave their babies in the woods while the grazed the village lawns, but now they come along to experience the open spaces and the people who live here.

I know that this familiarity with humans has changed the deer living in the forest here. Most are very comfortable with us and we pass within feet every day. Whether this is a healthy thing, I do not know, but I do know that it is very humbling to live this close to another species.

A Warm Summer Evening with Aubrey

Capture the Flag

Imagine about 200 young people from the age of 7 to 25 all running and hiding in an 3 block by 3 block square area. This is what happens every Monday night here at Holden Village as they play a huge game of Capture the Flag. Everyone paints their faces the color of their team and then tries to capture others on other teams. If you walk through the village during their game, children can be seen under bushes, behind trees, almost any imaginable space. They will suddenly jump up and run as hard as they can across the village. I honestly don't understand all of the game but the freedom that Holden offers children is tremendous. They race till dark then off to bed.

Butch Thompson - Part 2

Now that I know who Butch Thompson is, he asked me to snap a picture as the llamas came through the village today.

Butch Thompson

Holden attracts some amazing people. Some come as guests and some to teach and and share their lives with us. Each week or two we have a new village musician who plays for worship, leads choirs and often puts on concerts. This week we have Butch Thompson a frequent pianist on Prairie Home Companion. Well I was unsure who Butch was but I knew that I wanted a front row seat at tonight's concert. I had friends save us seats in the front of the village center. When I arrived there was a man sitting right where I had hoped Art would sit. I asked him if he was expecting others to join him for the concert. He said, "no, I will be at the piano". Oh my, I was so embarrassed. I did not know that my seat mate was Butch himself.

Rag Time and Jazz are his favorites. He never had one piece of music in front of him all night. I was filled with his rhythm and fervor for the compositions.

At times, his hands moved so fast that I could not snap a picture of them. We Holdenites are very lucky to share our world with such talent.

Our Out - Stehekin

We arrived in Stehekin to catch our first view of the new park service buses. They are red and very nostalgic of the old Glacier Park buses. Very cool!!

Our friend Judy pickes us up at the dock in her little red truck and takes us to her home on the Stehekin river. She was a fantastic tour guide and treated Art and I like royalty. Below is a view of the river from her yard.

She has added a "loom room" on to her cabin, also making this space into a room for guests. After our mostly sleepless night, the night before, this bed looked so inviting.

We went out for dinner to the Stehekin Valley Ranch and ate in their sawdust floored dining room, complete with a huge fireplace. The blueberry pie for desert was to die for.

After dinner we were chauffeured up valley to High Bridge and Box Canyon and then back down to Rainbow Falls. It had been 25 years since we had been to Stehekin and we certainly won't let it be that long again.

Our Out - Lucerne

Art and I took some time away from the village this week. Just two nights but it was enough to revive us and get us ready for the last onslaught. We leave Holden on August 25th and the time is moving much too quickly.
We decided to camp at Lucerne the first night and then take the boat up to Stehekin to spend the next night with a friend. As soon as we got to Lucerne, our dreams of a calm night of camping turned into the reality of a huge thunder storm. We wisely decided to spend the night inside Holden's "A" frame cabin by the boat dock. I did a bit of cleaning on the porch, Art opened a bottle of wine and we watched the storm roll in. Lightning can be quite a hazard in the wilderness, so we kept out eyes out for strikes.

The next morning, after some very hard rain, we got up and took a walk around the area. We spied a couple dozen geese by the forest service cabin and then later watched the barge chug down the lake.

This is Railroad Creek, still quite full and fast, just before it dumps into Lake Chelan.

Finally we board the boat to head up lake to Stehekin for our second night out. When we were about half of the way up the lake, I noticed smoke up on a hillside. The boat company people had not seen it and so I alerted them and they, in turn, alerted the park service who then came down and put the fire out. I snapped a picture of the smoke as we passed by.

Ten Mile Basin Hike

I have been battling a cold this week and wanted to hike close to home on my day off. Art and I decided to hike up into Ten Mile Basin. Ten Mile Falls is a short hike along a handicap accessible trail that leads to a beautiful water fall. We had never climbed up the much steeper trail up into the basin before.

We had heard that there was an avalanche up the basin this winter, so we set that as our destination. This year's avalanches went down to bare dirt when they ran down their shoots. The took everything in their path with them, trees, boulders, brush everything. What is left now is a huge jumble of logs and debris. Here I am sitting on a downed log looking up the basin.

We hiked up as far as we could with out risking falling through the ice.

At the end of the basin is a long, glacier fed waterfall.

Almost back to the village we spy the twin fawns hiding in the brush. Their spots are almost gone.

Busy Summer

In the summer Holden goes from a staff of around fifty to a staff of 150. Guests no longer straggle in three days a week but come in bus loads each and every day. Above is a picture of a typical dinner outside. We often have a village of over 500 people in the summer. All of this means that my time for blogging and even quiet time is rare. Managing this many people is a huge responsibility for the village. Staff is often young an in experienced with the responsibility. Narnia, our summer children's program had over 90 kids under ten last week alone. Luckily the trails are open and the weather has been great and so far everyone is loving Holden Village

What Happened to Art's Plants??

Art is the gardener in the family and even at Holden he attempted to grow a few things. He thought that our porch would be a safe place to try a few nasturtiums. We were not at home, so these photos came from our neighbor, Paul Haines who caught the action with his camera.

4th of July Parade

Every 4th of July, Holden Village puts on a day of fun, food and frolic. We began with a huge brunch out on the green, followed by poems, speeches and tom foolery on the arc. As soon as the guests arriving today settled in we had a huge parade. Above are just a few of the entries. Not the wonderful man offering "repairs in any season". That would be Art, my hubby. Isn't he cute?