It’s difficult to describe the Bung porch. It lives in the pine grove, covered in old rocking chairs spiritedly painted green and white. It’s a great wide structure built from the very forest it has settled safely under. If one were to look upon it with unknowing eyes, it would seem just a very brown porch – the entrance to a room with threadbare furniture, and another with shiny picnic tables, and the kitchen, and the mysterious attic where counselors evasively disappear to. One might notice a rather aged woman rocking back and forth, and admire her pink lipstick and perplexing smile. If an explanation were desired, the received answer may sound something like this: “Bung is short for Bungalow! It was named ninety years ago, a very, very old building--”
When first constructed it was a curious collection of harvested trees. The first Waukeela women gave it life. But it is our feet that have named it, trampled over its floor for those ninety years – my own for merely twelve. We are the ones who have repeatedly broken its creaky screen doors with a careless slam, and called Ralph Mead to fix it.
When I look upon the Bung I feel its roots firmly planted in my eastern ground. Pine trees have grown around it, at a distance out of reverence, but grasping forearms under the earth. It welcomes little girls to pile on its steps and kick its walls and weigh down its floorboards. They are waiting for the bugle to blow, for the mail to arrive, to be lead across the road to Crystal Lake. They eat peaches before 3rd period, sticky nectar rolling down their chins and little fingers, all the way to the green painted floor. Clever girls hide the sweet mess with the toes of their sneakers. Thumbs pound fruit stickers into the wall under a white thumb tack. They run off, hardly aiming as their bare pits fly into the forest, devoured like a fleshy bone. The grove could have grown here for no better reason than to cradle our old peach pits and apple cores and scraped knees.
I find myself wishing to grab their little shoulders, spin them around and show them my home. Sometimes they are the unknowing eyes, floating right over the magic of the Bung porch. They see a rusty roof, covered in pine needles, and think of their white houses with shiny porcelain sinks. But summer will end, months will pass, green and white shorts will be put away in boxes and closets, and winter will remind them of its warm and welcoming rocking chairs. Perhaps after a good many years have gone by it won’t take winter to have them longing for the comfort of the Bung. 
I sit there, deep in summer silence, and watch the trees sway. I feel their reassurance, a tap on the knee from wind through great boughs. The floorboards creak as I rock back and forth, pressing a naked foot into one of the beams standing tall at the edge of the steps. There is an airy tunnel in the trees, like a tiny glass window cracked open to admire the lake beyond the grove. It’s mesmerizing, this little time piece of crystal water, a mercury pool emblazoned by the sun. Her lipstick voice appears like buttery corn bread beside me. A giraffe winks up at me from the front of her bedazzled beach shirt. She whispers stories of old camp, of dangerous traditions and simpler days. She loves the little childish string that pulls the light off in cabin ceilings. I love the copper color of her skin, white hair, pink lips, and her boundless apple toned hat. She loves the movie Secondhand Lions with a tremendous southern shriek. I love the color of her voice as she recites the weather. Her laughter is expansive and unrepressed. She isn’t waiting for the bugle to blow, or the mail to arrive. She’s been waiting for the Bung porch since she was fifteen, and camp was new.
Ralph comes bumping by in his brand new truck, designed to survive the roots and the rocks. He emerges with great power, slamming the door shut with a blaming eye in my direction. His booming voice erupts from an enormous belly, approaching my chair. But I smirk right back at him, and Stevie Ma’am chuckles supportively beside me. Without much more, the left side of Ralph’s face curls upward from the corner of his mouth and his old eyes. He turns with a wave and a guffaw, on to other young women to badger. As he walks away he sings back to me, “she’s got rings on her fingers, rings on her toes…” and I hope he never leaves the earth.
My feet have grown strong on these smooth green floorboards, little daggers that they used to be. The honor of the rocking chair once lived far above my tiny head, unattainable and considerably feared. The slim occasions I came close to relaxing in the woven seats were atop the laps of older girls, adoring of my shy silence, unaware of the truth of my terror at their magnificently tall bodies, smiles, and confidence. They had the privilege of experience, and with that came a great power I thrived to possess. But my body was not big enough. I was frustrated by my meager legs, frozen against those of the older girls, my toes only reaching the tops of their knees. Now I stretch my legs to rest my rough feet high up on the beams of the Bung porch while air wafts through the undersides of my own knees. The walk back to the cabin in rainy darkness is easy. The roots never trip, the rocks never scrape, I am all too aware of their old patterns soundly glued to the damp ground. A little cot and four sleeping girls await my return. I have perfected the art of opening a cabin door in the middle of the night – a silly thing to practice, but intrinsic to a counselor’s evening routine. It takes a quick jolting motion to open the screen door just a couple of inches, then a sneaky hand to dart in and clutch the screeching spring in order to safely widen the passageway. I am most at ease in this squeaky bed where I first learned to fall asleep without my mother’s calming hand. Rain clatters down on our tin roof, easily confused with a threatening hail. But I am reminded that the canopies are replenished tonight, after laboring to keep us cool and safe for weeks. The pounding raindrops and damp smell of wood lull me to sleep, to be woken by the bugle, wonderful and shrill, beckoning me back to the Bung porch for breakfast and another twelve years.
