My first season of treeplant was by far the best one, which is a comment I hear frequently. In some way we’re all mild addicts, chasing the dragon. One morning (ish) outside the HoJo after a town night we all decide to do LSD.
One of our planters, Dylan, was leaving later that day. He was a core staple of our team IMO. On nights off the chant of “Dyl… dyl… dyl.. DYL. DYL. DLY. DYL. DYL!” complete with table slapping and nudity had become a cultural tenant. So a few of us uncrinkled tinfoil on the sidewalk behind the only hotel in town that let us stay there (flashback to dread sex santa saying “I think one picture of a clown is a tab…” and the cooks dropping off a stock pot of still steaming, unpeeled hardboiled eggs for breakfast). The day unwinds in this way that takes a thousand hours.
It hits as we pass a garage sale. There’s a surplus of chicken decor, an electric mobility scooter and some potted houseplant cuttings. EGD wants to buy the scooter. (Everything is compared to the number of trees it would cost to buy it. EGD… that’s like… 20,000 trees!) So for $3 I buy a robust pothos in a plastic pot. (Take this in, guys… I just traded… 30 trees… for this ONE plant… how bizarre.) We strut back down the street parallel to the highway to the HoJo parking lot, a McDonald’s stop inbetween- I can hear every ice cube clinking in my cup, my Big Mac falls apart in my hands, the restaurant looks like a shiny silver space ship, everything is funny.
Dyl is sitting in the parking lot scavving (verb- to steal, to scavenge) wifi with the horde when we arrive back. I hold the potted plant out to him breathless with laughter. “You got me a plant?” he says. “I promise I’ll take such good care of it!” but I have to tell him, no, no. This is your replacement. This is the new Dyl. In my memory this is roughly the first moment I meet Filthy, as well (soon to be surpassed by him boat racing so hard he threw up and had to stuff a tampon up his nose to stop the flow.) Somebody has a helium balloon on a ribbon tether and it’s bouncing around uncontrollably smacking us in the face and I have the plant and human Dyl gets on the coach bus and the rest of us get on the shabby schoolbus and head back to camp.
The plant goes everywhere with me. Dan indulges me on the bus and takes Dyl’s numbers. He sits in the drivers seat. He’s in our Dan or Die crew photo on the log deck. (I’d do anything to be that happy again. ANYTHING.) Dyl lives on for a while at the camp by Jay Dee lake until another town day off- naked bus day. When we arrive back in camp after town errands we kick everyone who won’t get naked off the bus. Diaper Deck (it’s not an inside joke if you don’t get it) starts to pull Dyl out of his pot by the roots. “PIPER!” I say. “He’s a plant! The pot is his house, not his PANTS!” so Pipes tenderly pats him back into the soil, but I think it’s too late by then, anyway. We play drinking games and Pipes pours entire beers into Dyl’s pot while I scream “You’re killing him!”
Blond curly Clara arrives in her gold Bug. We lie under the mouldy snack cupboards on the dry bus watching it zoom back and forth like a Benny Hill Sketch. I swear to god Yakkety Sax is playing in the background as the Bug comes in and out of frame like a clown car, every time with more people, until eventually it rolls to a flat tired stop in front of the bus doors. “Make it stop! Somebody has to make that car stop!” Once again, I am screaming.
This must be the night Neeko and I race the keg, limp legged along the rim of the gravel pit, ‘strollin’ toward the distant promise of a fire. It’s hard to tell these stories because they’re all tangled together. I have no recollection of carrying Dyl under an arm as we strolled, but I must have, because at some point, I hold him out to Tony with desperation. “His leaves are limp! Somebody stole his glowstick!” Tony pauses from a retelling of the story of Jose Manuel and plucks at the limp leaves. “Best to put him out of his misery,” he says, with the dread sex santa wisdom I’ve come to rely on. So we furiously rip him to shreds and throw his empty pot onto the fire while Neeko screams “You’re killing him! You murdered Dyl!”
Fuck I love camp.
