The Last Day of Camp

Overturned dirt lies in a heap, damp from recent rain, still carrying the earthy petrichor of so many seasons. Empty bottles clutter a stump beside the fresh hole. An army-green ammo tin carrying your ashes rests quietly alongside. As your brother Kevin struggles through heavy words and the box is placed into the earth, hot tears streak behind my sunglasses, like August rain sliding down a dirty windowpane. I take my turn and toss a handful of soil over top. As hard as I try, I'm unable to bury the stabbing sadness in my gut under the same ancient ground.

When I got the call from Jeff about the accident this past March, I was stunned into silence. How could this happen? It wasn't possible – didn't make any sense. A tree dropping on you while you were cutting it down. Right here. The pine from this stump.

After enduring all the ridiculously reckless and stupid shit that should have killed you, it's a damn cruel irony that this is how you met your end. I still can’t wrap my head around it.

Though we spent most of our time together in the fall, our friendship was never bound by seasons. You were my buddy for over half of my fifty-one years. The humble title woefully understates the bond – it’s difficult to put words to exactly what you were to me. Since your passing I’ve struggled to define it. Given the age difference, big brother probably comes closest. You were the person I looked up to, who taught me things – about hunting, about the woods, about myself, about life.

You were someone I wanted to make proud. Someone I loved like family. Someone I laughed with around tables recounting our many mishaps and cried with around campfires remembering lost friends and lost dogs. You were always the "through line" in the story. The cornerstone. The constant. The connective tissue. Without you it's all cattywampus, like a shopping cart with one bad wheel.

I got brought into your circle close to thirty years ago now; I've honestly lost track. My entry into the club through Jeff, my best friend who I've known since little league days. I still remember showing up that first November, unsure – it's always tough being the new guy. I can picture making the trek up the big hill on the long, dirt drive and seeing all the trucks parked out by the barn. Then apprehensively approaching the door with my duffle in hand; nudging away empty bottles that littered the deck with my boot. As I was about to knock, a stranger rushed outside for a smoke. "Who the hell are you?" he tossed in my direction – more statement than question. Gratefully, in the awkward hesitation that followed, the rest of the guys followed behind: Gary, and Johnny, and Jeff, and then you. "Leave him, alone, Bart, this is Al," you scolded, while grabbing me in a bear hug. "Welcome to camp, brother." And just like that, I became part of the group. One of the guys. One of your people. An official member.

All the beds were already claimed, so that night I rolled my bag out on the floor and tried my best to sleep, but butterflies over opener, stifling heat from the stove, and the rowdy rattle of post-cocktail snoring made that task impossible. I could sense the weight of this special place that had hosted some form of deer camp for the last 20 seasons; where you and a few of your family and friends built this log cabin by hand on top of the pine-covered hill. Before the cabin you slept in army hammocks in a pole barn with dirt floors and an aged wood stove. I've flipped through the pictures and heard the stories dozens of times.

And camp has always been a place steeped in stories and traditions, many from our years together, and more than a handful that pre-date my time. It's where we hunted the vast public land just across the road. Each location earning a name inherited over time. The Pipe Stand. The Ridge. The Honey Hole. The Sniper's Nest.

Standing here beside your final resting place I, of course, remember the deer taken over the years. But what I really remember are those small moments with you and the rest of our buddies tramping through the woods, tracking, dragging, bullshitting, shooting, getting lost, getting in fights, driving two tracks, swapping stories, playing cards, slapping on shingles, assembling stands, cutting down trees, splitting wood, sitting by fires, and staring at the stars in a vain attempt to predict the next day's weather.

I remember the time Jeff and I got to wrestling after a few too many drinks. When we accidentally smashed up one of the bar stools, and you told us we better take it outside or you might shoot us both dead. I'm convinced you were serious. I remember the year of the triple sevens, when you and Kevin tracked that nice buck down into a thorny hollow and how you had to drag it back together, even with his bum leg. I remember the night we accidentally left Gary in the woods without his keys or flashlight and, after finally realizing he'd been gone a long damn time, driving back out to find him sitting on a stump waiting in the dark.

I still laugh about the time when I, in my excitement for opening morning, backed right over my gun case, rifle and all. I managed to kill a small buck with it that day anyway, but man, you guys never let me live that one down. Or the time that Jeff and I got horribly turned around in the dark looking for a deer and you had to drive up and down the two tracks blaring the horn, until we finally heard you and found our way back. I remember Bruce and Judy's party store just down the way where we'd buy beer and smokes and you'd always enter us in the big buck contest, despite the fact we'd never come close to winning.

I fondly recall those early mornings, shuffling around the cabin frantically trying to locate our gear while the TV droned the local weather, as if it mattered. I think of all the dinners we shared around the old table by the wood-stove – venison and real mashed potatoes, pizza casserole, or that god-forsaken chili you'd leave out on the counter all week. How you'd say grace, ask for safety and success, and give thanks for our time together for another season. And how on opening night we'd all eat pink cake that Jeff's wife sent along to celebrate. I remember those late-night euchre matches and how I'd always steal a glance at your cards while we played. You never were great at hiding them.

I remember how in later years the kids would join us at camp for the weekend after Thanksgiving, when the rowdiness of opener had passed. Mikala, and Kyle, and Blake, and Clayton. How you let Kyle hunt your favorite stand, "The Hilton" – the one you and your dad put up years ago together. The one his ashes are buried under. When you taught Kyle to properly field dress that first big doe he shot, because I was still out hunting across the street. I finally tracked down the picture of Kyle and Mik with their deer from that weekend. They look so dang young. Was it really that long ago? I think about how you welcomed others into camp too - Jay, Tyler, and Ozzy, my dad, my uncle, and Jake. How they became part of your circle.

And man, do I remember your stories, no one could tell them like you could. Looking out over your Coke-bottle glasses with that goofy grin. Stories about that bear hunt in Canada with Johnny, when you had to go down into the "Beaver Pit" to grab bait. Clamoring into the dark, rank pit, nearly retching, grabbing hold of a tail from the pile, and pulling, but only managing to slide the skin off the slimy carcass. Right off. All of it. Holding back the bile and running out, beaver tail in hand, before finally tossing your breakfast in front of all the other guys. Or that time when you were muzzleloader hunting in the snow with Gary and you jumped that big buck. Then you pulled the trigger and "poof" just a little fizzle as the ball slowly rolled out the end of the barrel and dropped at your feet as the buck loped away. Or the time you surprised that old-timer in his hunting blind, trespassing while "out for a walk." Not the first time. Not the last. There's no telling how many random trailcams hold pictures of you.

Among all those moments and all those stories, one memory stands out more than others. It took place down in the barn a few seasons back. Here it is in philosophical form from my journal dated November 15, 2020.

With the buck carefully hung on the camp buck-pole, we're out in the barn gathered around the sawmill. Cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the frigid air. The large fallen beech is running through. The blade is loud, almost feral. We can't talk. Instead, we watch sawdust fall, mesmerized.

Inch by inch the log travels, exposing a long cross-sectioned plank that will become a table around which meals will be shared and stories will be told. Butch splashes water over the top and then gives a quick wipe of his hand to expose the grain. The blemishes and flaws marking its real beauty.

Only then does it strike me how much this old tree is like our own lives. Oftentimes we find ourselves measuring them in terms of the crosscut – counting the rings, reducing the view to a numeric value. But when a tree is cut lengthwise a much more robust picture takes shape. Like that tree, a life is not simply made up of linear rings, counting years, but rather it exists in the long cut, revealing both beauty and blemish over decades. Hues and textures, knots and gnarls. The true grain of one’s existence.

The long cut is how I will always remember you, Butch. The through line. My buddy. Your loss is an irreparable tear in the fabric of my life. Sitting here, by the mound that marks your grave, I realize the camp that meant so much to me was never a place, it was a person. And today it ended the same way it began for me, with a few empty beer bottles on a pine-covered hill.

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Marvin "Butch" VanderBand

February 13, 1960 - March 10, 2025

"...bit by bit nevertheless, it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning...For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak. So, life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade."

- Antoine De Saint-Exupery, Wind Sand and Stars.