Knox Frank was a new counselor in 1997, my third summer at
camp. Some favorite counselors of mine had not returned from the previous year,
and I needed someone new to look up to as I made the eager, awkward transition
to an older camper. Knox and his long hair, easy smile, and comfortable
generosity made a big impression on me. He exuded Pasquanian ideals, but he
also had his own confident style that distinguished him from the mainstream of
camp.
Knox was the last word on cool as far as I was concerned. I
turned up to camp in 1998 with shoulder-length hair of my own and, finding that
we shared another interest – baseball – convinced him to be my battery mate on
Riely’s Ruckus (a role he reprised the following summer for the Riled Wildmen).
From this most faithful of positions, he guided me with gentle tact. During one
crucial game, I remember flying off the handle at a camper who was dancing
dangerously far off second base, but a well-timed, silent look from Knox
impressed upon me the absurdity of losing my temper. One evening in Mem Hall, I
bet that I could get ten strikes past him without giving up a home run. He
gamely accepted the challenge, and when he missed a homer on the ninth strike
by a foot, I thought I had him. With his powerful chop of a swing, he put the
very next pitch into the trees by Court 3. It was around that time that he
convinced Sam Madeira and me (Trey Winstead, the fourth in our cadre of
longhairs, held out) to cut our locks before reveille on Trustees’ weekend,
causing something of an uproar at Showers.
As I grew at camp and school, I began to develop the
interest in the relationship between humans and the environment that continues
to propel me in my job as a geography teacher. I spent more and more time up at
the nature building, which was unusually bustling during those summers. Knox, a
forestry major at Sewanee, joined me on several jaunts up the Lane, where we
set up a dozen or so plots to compare and record the species composition in
areas recently logged by camp with adjacent, still forested land. Undoubtedly
there were other campers clamoring for his attention, but he took the time to
teach me the rudiments of a systematic, scientific method for grappling with
startling changes to the landscape. Now, when I send my seniors into DC to
carry out their fieldwork, I am trying to accomplish the same thing.
I haven’t seen Knox since the summer of ’99. It is so easy
to fall back into friendships with Pasquanians, and I had been looking forward
to catching up with Knox. Another decade or two would have done little to
dampen the warmth of the reunion. Now that he is gone I can make no sense of
events except to be grateful for what he gave me during those three summers.
I took these photographs on a First Walk hike up Liberty in 1999. I believe that the boys in the top photo are Phil Harris and Peter Havens, while Knox's companion in the shot below is Allen Potts.
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