An Agenda of Nothing

Posted On July 27, 2026

Windblown trees, ducklings, bear dances & a local author fireside book review.

A quiet week of reflection in camp on a remote mountain lake.

Just sitting. Doing nothing. It’s not something I’m particularly good at. As anyone who knows me will attest, I’m a busy guy, always on the move, up to something. Especially when I’m in camp, an agenda of nothing has never been part of my skill set. But with most family members departed , a healthy stockpile of firewood & a full week left in camp, I set my mind to change that. For the next seven days I was determined to sit doing nothing, embracing the sounds of the wilderness, becoming one with our camp.

So that’s just what I did. I strategically positioned my survivor’s camp chair setup & pine log footstool in an open area above our Bull Rush Bay lean-to’s stone fireplace, moving it to & fro by degrees through each day in response to the wind & the sun, catching the coolness of canopy shade while avoiding eye burning campfire smoke.

I spent hours just sitting there contemplating the trees, especially those post windstorm near-casualties now leaning precariously in and around camp, studying them as they swayed back and forth with the ebb & flo gusts of Middle Saranac Lake’s omnipresent breeze.

Close upon our arrival at camp, we discovered Bull Rush Bay was host to a mama merganser & her impressive clutch of newly hatched ducklings. To our best count her brood numbered twenty six!

I frequently sat there fascinated, watching those ducks. Each morning & afternoon they crisscrossed Bull Rush Bay, fishing. Every time one duckling caught a minnow, it went scooting away like it was walking on water, little half wings flapping, a posse of siblings in hot pursuit. I pondered life’s sibling rivalries as the ducklings sat with their mom soaking up the sun’s afternoon warmth on a bay’s end outcropping of rocks.

By the time our two week camp stay reached its end, those newly hatched ducklings had grown quite a bit!

As I sat in my camp chair exploring agendas of nothing, I decided to do something I had not, in fifty four years in camp, ever even once done before.

I read a book.

Lori Duffy Foster was born & raised in Saranac Lake. I knew her casually, but not really all that well growing up. I graduated high school with her older sister. She was a classmate within the close circle of friends of my brother Ray & his at that point in time unbeknownst to the rest of us someday wife to be, my sister-in-law, Saranac Lake’s “Dr. Patty”. To this day, the three of them remain close, to the point of Ray & Patty being mentioned in their lifelong friend’s “Spring Melt” acknowledgements.

I was aware, through my brother, that Lori was an accomplished author, with several novels to her credit. I hadn’t to that point, however, made time in my own writing career to read any of her work. Earlier this year I had made it a point to rectify that by pre-ordering a copy of “Spring Melt” when Lori first announced that it was being published. She was kind enough to gift me an inscribed copy, which my brother Ray had left for me on a shelf in the lean-to.

A flock of ravens had taken it upon themselves to serve as our sunrise alarm clock each morning whilst we were in camp. Somewhere along the line, one of the ravens lost a feather. As I sat reading with that raven feather as bookmark, I found myself wondering; “If a flock of crows is a “murder”, what’s a raven flock called?”

It turns out a flock of ravens is an “unkindness” or a “conspiracy”. As Spring Melt’s plot unfolded, both terms seemed apropos.

With a hometown backdrop, filled with familiar settings & scenes, I found “Spring Melt” an engaging camp read.

I read it from cover to cover in one sitting.

Somewhere along about day five of my camp nothing agenda, I was standing down by the lake on a rock watching the waves & the water,

when I was quite suddenly startled by my wife’s shout:

“Richard T. ! We think we just heard a BEAR! It was growling up just beyond the outhouse!”

Upon hearing the word “Bear”! I sprang from my agenda of nothingness into full blow camp action mode. I hadn’t to that point seen any sign of bear activity around camp, no bear scat, no claw marks, no bear drags or debris piles, no NYSDEC reports or warnings to that point, but it was certainly that time of year & we’ve had them before.

“Keep the dogs leashed in the lean-to while I go check things out.”

I made my way cautiously up the path past the outhouse. Listening & scanning for any sign of a bear, every one of my six senses on full bear alert.

I stood silently on the path overlooking the woods beyond the outhouse for quite a while. However, I saw, heard, sensed or smelled nothing indicating to me the immediate presence of a bear in those woods.

What I did hear was a loud creaking & groaning coming from a massive soft maple that was leaning precariously, hung up in the limbs of a towering white pine, that being the only thing preventing its fall. I returned to the lean-to with my bear in camp assessment report:

“What I think you heard were the creaks & groans of a massive maple hung up beyond the outhouse. It’s one good windstorm from coming down.”

Later that afternoon my wife & daughter confirmed that that was indeed the sound they had heard.

As I sat in my camp chair embracing the final hours of my agenda of nothing, I found myself wondering whether or when any of those precariously leaning post windstorm trees would actually succumb and fall. Would they still be there next year? Another half century from now? Would one of them come crashing down through Bull Rush Bay’s canopy tomorrow? Would there be more family camping trips under cover of our beloved Bull Rush Bay lean-to?

Or was this trip farewell?

In the end, I realized that those are matters for Mother Nature, wind, weather, Father Time and the trees to decide.

My role in that agenda being nothing at all.

**********

Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO