The Take-Away from Girls' Camp

We got home from camp yesterday and I have been doing laundry ever since.  It is hard to realize how dirty you really are until you get to shower--without a time limit--and all the soap you can use.  I feel do much better.

The Girl was terrific at camp.  She was a YCL (Youth Camp Leader) this year and, while I wasn't trying to spy on her, I had the chance several times to watch her in action.  She guided younger girls with kindness and gentleness and played with everyone enthusiastically and with little (seen, at least) judgement.  On our High Adventure day, she took my camera and harnessed herself to the top of the cliff with the repelling crew and photographed all the girls in their trips over the edge.  The photo are great!

The final night we had a closing Fireside all together as a camp and a testimony meeting for us stake leaders with our stake presidency and their wives.  It was a wonderful pair of meetings.  The Spirit was very strong as we shared our feelings about what had happened at camp.

I shared that I knew the purpose of Girls' Camp was not in the camping, hiking, or orienteering the girls learned--though that was part of the skill set each girl could possibly learn there.  The  real purpose is to develop young women; to build testimonies and strengthen individuals; to provide leadership experiences and confidence in themselves.

With that as our goal, I'd say we had a highly successful camp this year.

The Girl took my camera and shot all the repelling we did...off a 90 foot cliff...while she was harnessed to the top with the manly help we had with us.  This is a shot she took of our dear friend Nicole on her way over the edge.

Time Out

We (The Girl and I) leave for Girls' Camp this morning and will be gone this week.  So I am taking a little break from the blog--while I have my hands and heart full of 150 or so Young Women and their activities.  Wish us luck (and keep us in your prayers).  We can use all we can get.

Repticidal

This is EXACTLY how I feel about snakes too.  I can't stand to watch them--the way they move--is just creepy.

On our visit to a ward Girls' Camp last week, one of our just graduated YW showed me her battle scars following a near-encounter with a rattlesnake.

Rattlesnakes are my most hated of snakes.  But anything without legs is worthy of hatred and death, in my eyes, so there you go.

Kathryn had apparently been at the head of the group as they hiked one day and just as she glanced down, she saw the predator stretched out across the trail, with rattles shaking.  She had enough sense to stop the other girls from getting any closer and they careful made their way around the vile creature as it curled itself under a rock, coiled, with rattles rattling.

Somehow in all this carefulness, Kathryn slipped and scrapped up her arms and legs and hand pretty bad, but luckily wasn't attached by the snake itself.  In her recounting of the event, she told me she had a death-defying day.  I'll say.

Just seeing that snake on the trail, and not either a) hacking it to pieces, or b) screaming bloody murder to the point of passing out is success more than I would expect of myself.

But hearing about it again, doesn't make me any more anxious to mow the grass anytime soon.

Angels in the Outfield

We are off the Girls' Camp this morning. The Girl is a 4th Year this year. And is very excited, but still insisted on going to swim practice before meeting at the church for the ride to camp. She has 15 minutes between one and the other. Oh, to be that young and carefree. Anyhooo.

It has been a very stressful week preparing for camp. Looking at the pile of stuff in the front room this morning that I need to bring, you'd think I was going to be gone for weeks--not 5 days. I think I took less stuff for Trek last summer. But that is how it always seems to go.

As the stress was accumulating and I was getting more and more frustrated, I began to think that maybe this whole Girls' Camp regimen was overrated and I should just stay home. I jumped on the computer to waste time and avoid/ignore my life for a minute.

I mindlessly clicked on Facebook, the funnest waste of time on the Internet, and
it showed me that I had one message waiting. Oooh. That is less common a FB occurrence for me, so that was fun. I clicked on it, of course.

There was a message from a girl I haven't seen or hardly thought of in twenty years. Andera was a girl at Camp Ritchie, my home Girls' Camp in California, one year when my friend Heidi and I were Fourth Year cabin counselors.

With us single and in college, the camp ladies of my home stake always gave Heidi and me that group because at hte time the Adventurers when backpacking for 5 days & 4 nights and the "grown ups" didn't want to take that assignment. Heidi and I loved those girls. We loved taking them out and getting to do our own thing with them. Andera was one of our "girls" in 1989 or 1990.

She wrote that I didn't need to remember her but that I had been her cabin counselor that year and at the time, unbeknownst to us, she had been having a really hard summer when we got her. She wrote that she was facing some personal choices that had to do with her own faith and testimony, whether or not Girls' Camp was worth it for her, or if any of it really mattered. You know, the stuff more 15 or 16 years old go through at some point.

She wrote that she appreciated all that Heidi and I did to make the environment and mood of camp so fun and enjoyable for the girls, for her. With us, she felt we wanted her there and she knew we loved her as part of that group.

Then she wrote that that one week with us backpacking along the spine of the Sierra Nevada's made the difference for her. She decided that the Gospel was a good thing and it could make her happy if she followed it. She recognized that she was worthy of being happy and remembered again the way to achieve that kind of lasting happiness. She thanks me for caring and giving my time to serve as a counselor at camp.

Well. There you have it.

This is why I am going to Girl's amp again this morning. Girls' Camp has long been the place where I believe young women gain their testimonies. Testimonies of Jesus Christ as our Savior are strengthened and deepened as the girls experience life in nature, trying things they don't usually do, with people who love them outside of their families.

That is why I go. That is why I stress myself out and pack too much junk and over prepare with treats and skits and games and songs.

For reasons like Andera's; for girls just like Andera and all the other young women I have had the privilege of serving over the past twenty three or so years. I really wouldn't have it any other way.

My 3 Hour Pass

I'm home from camp for just a bit, on a GARBAGE RUN. For taking a Durango load of garbage down the canyon, our Camp Director granted me a 3 hour pass (and I chose to come home and shower)!

Someone who came up for dinner last night was supposed to take out the trash--and I don't just mean a little grocery sack of trash, but I had 5 or 6 HUGE plastic bags of yucky stuff--and they forgot. Some local canyon critters found the pile of refuse and had a wild party in the bags at the edge of our picnic pavilion.

So while the girls were on their hikes today (and before they heard about all the critters partying nearby) I was sent to take out the trash!

The first day Camp Report was a lot of drama in general (this is Girls' Camp after all), and one specific Girl who was unusually clingy. I know I should enjoy that fact that she wants to be near me, but it is a little weird to my thinking. I don't remember doing that with my mom those years we were both at camp together. I always enjoyed having her there and it was especially fun when I celebrated a birthday up there, but not because I sat with her and held her hand, and took her with me as my partner on a Faith Walk in the dark just before bed. I enjoyed watching my mom enjoy herself with her group of girls or staff or wherever her responsibilities took her at camp. I found myself trying to fade to the back as a casual observer, but The Girl just kept sidling up beside me. I do appreciate her affectionate nature, but I also want her to have an independent camp experience and she needs to do that with the girls her age or in our ward as they do activities together.

That said, all else has been fine. Mutual Dell is the name of our camp location and they have done some wonderful improvements over the past five or ten years up there. It is a beautiful place and just a nice escape from reality--though I enjoy my own bathroom here at home.

Well, my pass is nearly expired. We are scheduled for a full day of activities tomorrow and then clean up and head home on Friday. By the looks of things here, Genius Golfer and The Boy are having far too much fun...but I guess I did surprise them with my appearance. Maybe things will be tidy by Friday.

Snoopy goes to Camp