The Caretakers

The summer before my father died, I packed up the car, installed Brian Williams, the cat, whom I had just adopted, as my co-pilot, and drove to meet my parents at our camp. It had become tradition to spend a week with them for my summer vacation. We didn’t know then that it would be the last summer we’d all be there together.

Something happened on that trip that I’ve thought about every summer since.

My grandfather bought “the camp,” as we called it, in the 1960s. It was an old shack on a barren hill. The shack part is still true, but it’s surrounded by a forest of red pines he planted with the help, as the story goes, of the DEC. He cobbled the house together to keep the critters out. At best, it managed to slow them down. We got used to sharing the place with the occasional flying, stinging, or fuzzy thing. I will say the snake sunning himself on the kitchen window sill (a one-time occurrence, for the record) was a bridge too far. We watched in awe as my father put on his work gloves and, reluctantly but gently, relocated the snake outside.

“Sorry, old chap,” he apologized and made a swift exit.

Our family spent every July at the camp when I was a kid. I never really appreciated that as much as I should have at the time. Once we were all out of the house, my parents spent good portions of their summers there. When fall started to settle in, they’d fire up the stove to stave off the chill and then, in winter, they’d occasionally drive down to check on the place, dropping some apples in the backyard for the deer. My dad considered himself less of an owner and more of a caretaker.

Watercolors of The Camp by my father's cousin Joan (pron. Joe-Ahn) Rushworth, 1989

Go there now, and you feel the absence. The memories are somewhere under the moss on the shed roof, hidden in the shaggy grass. Everything is still there, but somehow, nothing is.

When things would settle down after busy days, my mother would quietly, almost conspiratorially, say something like, “Now, if only a few deer would walk by.” It’s the kind of thing you joke about when things are practically perfect.

It always felt like a treat to see creatures who wouldn’t typically stroll past our porch at home. While they usually kept their distance, that last summer we saw them all.

A chipmunk, I remember, served as the welcoming committee, waiting on the enormous rock my grandfather had stuck a flagpole in next to the driveway.

A great, big woodchuck lived under the tool shed for years. At a certain point, he went gray, and my mother took to calling him The Wood Charles.

“More distinguished,” she explained. She even used a British accent.

The raccoons came to investigate the bird feeder.

The deer came for dinner, the rabbits for lunch.

The porcupine chewed on the firewood stacked in the carport.

A rafter of turkeys wandered up through the pines. (My father would appreciate looking up what a group of wild turkeys is called, by the way. Tuck it away for your next trivia night.)

One evening, as we sat chatting in the living room, Brian the cat came racing past, practically flying behind the couch. His poofed-up fur made him look three sizes bigger than usual.

“What’s gotten into him?” My mother asked.

“Oh,” was all I managed, pointing outside at a dark figure.

“My goodness,” my dad whispered, and we all watched a black bear quietly pass like a shadow on the lawn before disappearing into the trees.

“What’s next?” I laughed.

The answer was a resounding “don’t ask” as we recalled the wayward cow I once found in the woods and laughed about the people over the years caught riding up through the backyard on horses and ATVs.

“I don’t think I remember a time seeing so many visitors,” my dad mused.

The next summer, my mom and I sat side-by-side in the yard as the sun started to go down.

“Very quiet,” she noted.

We started to reminisce about the summer before and I gathered some courage.

“Do you think they knew somehow and came to see him?”

“Who?” She responded.

“The animals and Dad.”

“The animals?” She was incredulous, but she gazed out at the red pines, and said, finally, “I don’t know.”

The quiet settled between us again.

My parents, I think, had a way of making all beasts, particularly their children, feel safe. I believe energy like that doesn’t go unnoticed. Since that summer, I’ve taken greater note of the creatures in my orbit. I hope to be a safe person to them. I am, after all, just a caretaker on this planet we share.

This essay originally appeared in my column in the June 11, 2026 edition of the Perry Herald in Perry, NY. Look for part two next week.