Sam Lowry's Shaw Story

I think some stayed for one stint, some for two, and sometimes these partially overlapped meaning there was a day when friends left and new ones arrived. Those of us on the same schedule all rode up together in a clunky old-style yellow school bus with nothing like seatbelts or safety. Some campers were from MLC, some from Couch.

The central fact or feature of that trip, of that age, was, of course, hormones. That Spring I had, strange to say, begun a relationship with a very first girlfriend, in Portland, and was missing her, and wrote her, but meanwhile at Shaw I was surrounded by a huge number of older adolescent girls, engaged in what seemed to be mysterious inaccessible rituals. I was too timid and shy to have anything at all to do with them. Contact was inevitable however on the obligatory car-and-ferry trip to Sidney Harbor and Victoria, and the closeness messed with my head. In Victoria I bought a book of poems for my girlfriend, strange slightly sexual poems she and her friend later found a bit gross; I admired the book and binding.

Most everyone, it seems, remembers Shaw for the boats. Big boats, little boats, sailboats, motorboats. Except for the ferries I never set foot on one! Maybe one skiff ride someplace. So what the heck did I do those seven, or ten, or fourteen days? As I recall it, I kept to myself, and slept on my own in a teepee with anonymous other campers—but by default, I worked at exactly what one is called on to work at, at summer camp: trying to break free from shy withdrawal and make friends outside of one's standard circle. At this I actually succeeded, making two friends who have proven to be lifelong ones.

I discovered volleyball and remember feeling a kind of exaltation at the full-body flinging-about needed to go after every ball, high or low, close or far. There was an equally physical field-tag game with the somewhat silly name British Bulldog, which involved chasing opponents and trying to lift them bodily from the ground at which point they were "out" and your team came one step closer to winning the round. That is how I met one of my lifelong friends—who remembers it just as I do, she dropping into an ungraspable ball, me inserting my forearms under her taut midriff, picking her up like a haybale. Each of us was impressed with the other's physicality and 53 years later we still are.

The other lifelong friend I made was a loner like me if perhaps a little less so. We may have bonded on a group trip to Friday Harbor to see the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I think we usually did our own divergent things each day but found one another morning and evening to hang out and crack jokes. I recall we were often on rotating kitchen duty together. In a very recent conversation, reminiscing about Shaw even before all of us set our minds to do the same, he told me of boating across to one of the nearby islets, where an evening bacchanal ensued. He was so very asleep in the morning that all the others felt they ought to leave without waking him—which they did, leaving him to awaken completely alone, amused, to be collected a bit later by an adult in a skiff.

John Angell was the only adult-on-duty I remember, aside from Sylvia Wheeler—and Jan Taylor, with whom John was by then actively and obviously flirting, playing through his repertory of college fight songs. "Bull–dog bull–dog bow–wow–wow ...," sang John. One evening he led what was one of my own few group forays, singing camp songs in the common room. "Oh you can't get to heaven ... in the old hay wagon ... with twenty kids on it ... and forty feet draggin' ...," we sang. My new friend the loner tried haplessly to sing and play a George Harrison song; we soon switched back to camp songs. Christopher Dubay led us in a rousing and fun group version of the Four Door Ford song: "honk honk rattle rattle rattle crash beep beep."

Maybe John drove the hay wagon, a ritual every evening. Maybe he sometimes drove it. He was definitely always the one, the only one, to know exactly which tiny strips of brightly colored electrician's tape to wrap around the wrist-bands he made of dark-red nylon, ends melted together to make a loop, one or more for each camper. The tape in built-up overlaid color-bands created code-like patterns—thin-blue-thick-yellow-thin-blue, black-red-yellow-red-black, green-blue-green, etc., the possible combinations infinite. Each, once affixed, substituted for the "badge" of accomplishment one might earn at a more mainstream, less countercultural camp. Accomplishments that qualified included ... pretty much everything. It was a system encouraging widespread success. The only one I specifically remember, because it was utterly a first for me, was "Seeing the Northern Lights." These lights were not of the colored-curtain variety but just an intense white glow to the north—where no city lay ... except maybe Vancouver, but we didn't care to consider that.

On the way home, shortly after leaving Anacortes, I remember a box of cookies or crackers being passed around the bus. My loner friend and I were cracking wise, drawing attention to ourselves, and not long after the box passed through our hands it made its way back to my new athletic friend who discovered it to be nearly empty and we were blamed. I remember having had a total of maybe two or three crackers or cookies, and felt the burn of false accusation, but couldn't deny the evidence!

I truly wish I could join MLC classmates in calling time at Shaw and Cedar Rock Camp magical, or amazing, or transformative, or even memorable. Alas, I cannot. I was at a stage as awkward and uncertain as any in my youth, with little appetite for social adventure or tender discovery. Nevertheless Shaw was one small adolescent step away from the known, into the world—and friends are treasure. I have been back to the San Juans many times as an adult, and have created strong and precious personal memories, yet on every single trip I remain affected in a deep and positive way by the early mythmaking from my brother's trips. Strangely I have not felt interest in returning to Cedar Rock to revisit or regenerate my own earliest San Juans memories ... but this has never bothered me. It was what it was !!

— Sam Lowry, 2025

MY PERCEPTIONS of Shaw Island were first outlined and colored—as with so many things in my life—by my brother Pete's experiences. As I remember it he had been on one of MLC's very first field trips, to the San Juans, and although this must have preceded the MLC camp's formal establishment, he has to have visited Cedar Rock at some point for I recall he brought home tales of the steamship Oceanid, of Rose Hips the piglet, and of Turn Island. Our friend and MLC classmate Bill Wheeler, connected to Shaw through family and community, was also on the early trip and also sang the islands' praises. There exists a powerful photo of Pete, Ted Mick, Christopher Dubay and Jeff Blalock, standing together at the summit of Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island, having climbed from the bottom. Pete returned another time with Corvallis friends named Jack and Andy Culver, to go sailing. These were all worldly big-brother things to be doing. They made the San Juans mythical to me.

In Summer 1972, having just turned 14, I finally got the chance to visit Shaw, as a fully vested summer camper. How long were Cedar Rock stints then ... ten days? two weeks?

Sam Lowry's Shaw Island bracelets

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