When I first moved from Nebraska to New Jersey I felt somewhat out of place. We had moved from a town of 25,000 to a church camp and conference center with a neighboring town of 167 people and twelve thousand cows. I might be slightly off on the count of the cows since I didn’t meet all of them, but Johnsonburg dairies sent seven or eight semi-trailers of milk to NYC every day. I am positive that it took more udders than it did people.

The camp was over 400 acres in size and I spent a great deal of time wandering the woods, investigating the swamps, the creeks, the springs, and the lake. I learned a great deal of nature and introduced myself to wild food harvesting. Once a year I would visit a spring-fed creek and collect a few mussels that the raccoons had not gathered. I cooked them in a broth I made from water cress and one small stewed fish. Ummmm… delicious.

I found I didn’t enjoy catching and eating fish as much as I enjoyed watching them. I thought of myself as a budding musician then. I’m still budding all these years later and no longer have my handmade 12-string guitar because I gave it to my son-in-law. But my first summer at the camp I had a wonderful Yamaha acoustic and then later I had my Maton 12-string.

I learned to modulate sounds and how sound waves traveled through the air, wood, and water. The camp had floating swimming cribs and floating docks. Many evenings I would sit on the docks and play my guitar and sing, and watch the fish. The sunfish would gather around me first and fan out like steel filings attracted to a magnet. Behind them the bass would form and sometimes a few bullhead would gather below the sunfish. A large snapping turtle would cling to the outer edges of the floating swimming cribs and not move.

They weren’t just immersed in the water, they were engrossed in the sounds. The fish in our lake preferred the minor keys and modes. If my chord patterns stayed in the major group too long the bass would slowly back away and vanish. The turtle would start looking around and the sunfish just disappeared. I learned to toy with my finned audience and could make some them move as if choreographed ballet. At times I felt as if playing for the fish healed my soul from the hurts of adolescence.