Nature Joe lived by himself most of the year about two miles from the camp, in a wooded area that didn’t belong to a road system. I met him when I picked “Walks with Nature Joe” to be one of my three electives at Camp Discovery, an evangelical summer camp high up in the Pocono mountains. Here by way of invitation, I felt mostly discontented and alien, but there was something safe and familiar about Nature Joe’s gray-yellow Spongebob bandana that he, as far as I could tell, never untied from his forehead.
Nature Joe’s musky gray curls spiraled down to his hips. Standing outside of his A-frame cabin, he entranced us as he held up two possums who dangled from each of his arms. He told us he was able to save them when they were babies, by removing them from their mother’s pouch who had succumbed to Pennsylvania Route 940. In his house; he kept reptiles, birds, mice, and insects in different sized boxes that were lit up red depending on if the animal was cold-blooded or not.
Even if Nature Joe’s obsession with keeping animals was misguided, I could tell he felt pride in being able to provide what he thought was a proper home for them. He introduced us to each critter, telling us what I assumed he himself had named them, describing their personality traits like “shy” or “athletic.” Once we met everyone, which took a little over an hour, we ventured out into the woods that surrounded his house.
Nature Joe must have done this walk a thousand times. He knew where certain squirrel nests were and where to find edible flowers, which tasted soapy and sugary at the same time. He explained that deer have individual preferences for plants, and that many owls resided in the forest but could only be seen at a certain time of night. For a little while, I forgot we were even at Jesus camp at all. There was relief from concerns of death and hell. Everyone was fixated on what was in front of them: caterpillars crawling all over one another in a silk nest, a garter snake sensing the vibration of earth worms squirming beneath it.
