Camp Friedlander 2013

But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.

And camp is over. It’s bittersweet, of course, made doubly so by the fact that AHG is unlikely to have a regional camp there ever again. (I have my opinions on that, but I’m not sure I want to be removed from my volunteer position. Yet. So I’ll keep my mouth shut.)

Angie, LuAnne, and I have worked our butts off since this past fall. So it’s been nearly a year’s worth of work to make camp happen. As communications coordinator, I bore the brunt of pre-camp work with hundreds of emails (or more) and paperwork stuff. LuAnne had her hands full with programming—getting girls in the classes they wanted, coordinating things with the Boy Scouts, and working her network of AHG and BSA people. Angie definitely had a ton of work to do at camp as the point person for everything, and prior to camp she worked hard to verify information we sent out. During the month or so before camp, we were all three working like crazy. And then we all worked hard this past week, roping poor Karen from OH3210 into our craziness! (I’d like to say that we got to kick back at camp and enjoy it all, but that’s a stretch. We did enjoy it as much as possible, but we also continued to work pretty hard to put out fires, take care of paperwork, answer questions, keep things running as smoothly as possible, collect money for program changes, etc.)

Do we look tired? I look tired for sure. I was tired. I am tired.

We enjoyed a great working relationship with Herb at Friedlander, and the rest of the staff was also fantastic (Chuck, Tim, Jordan, et al.). Other than a crazy check-in snafu, things went pretty smoothly, I think. (It’s surprising, unfortunately, how jerky some people can be when things get crazy, and I’m not talking about Friedlander staff. They were terrific! I’m talking about AHG leaders. It’s a good reminder to me to keep my cool in a stressful situation, as it reflects badly on the entire organization.)

Anyway, in the midst of all of this, my oldest cat was dying. We knew it before camp started, so I made sure to say my goodbyes to her beforehand. And I made sure Sarah did, too. She took a sharper turn for the worse at the beginning of the week, and Craig had to have her put to sleep. I chose not to tell Sarah at camp, so that she could enjoy her week as much as possible. It certainly made for a rough day/night for me, but having so much work to do helped take my mind off of it.

(I am deeply grateful to my dear husband for doing this very hard thing for me.)

Well, what’s a typical day like at camp? It was up at 6:39am for me. (I like to pick odd numbers for my alarms.) This is if an owl doesn’t land in the tree above your tent and start carrying on at 6am or earlier. Then I'd gather stuff for a trip to the bathroom to get ready, hike to the dining hall by 7:50am for flag ceremony, and eat breakfast at 8am. Then I'd hang out and finish my tea while the girls got ready to head off to their programs. Often we ended up doing paperwork or camp business after breakfast until lunch. Occasionally, we just got to hang out, or I got to work on my family herbalist stuff. There was usually at least one hike to somewhere in here—rifle range, campsite, climbing tower, etc. Lunch was at 12:15pm. Siesta time afterwards often involved more camp work but, occasionally, it was free time. If I wanted to try to rest, I did it somewhere around 2pm or 3pm. I never slept, but I did rest. More work, more planning happened in here. We touched base with the girls at lunch and dinner. Evening flag ceremony was at 5:50pm and dinner was at 6pm. We usually had some free time after dinner, and I would go get my shower at 8:30pm when there wasn’t a line. (No line of people but plenty of gross caterpillar things lined up on the shower walls and massed on the shower floor.)

 After my shower, I’d head up to the Eagle’s Nest to get on the computer and have some downtime before bed and making sure the girls were rounded up and settled down. I was usually laying down at 11:30pm or so, but there wasn’t any night that I slept all through the night between raccoons and the like. My best night’s sleep was the night it stormed, and I fell asleep to heavy rain, thunder, and very loud tree frogs. (Oh! And earlier that night a tree frog was in the pathway and hopped onto my shoe!)

And here’s the summary of the week for the girls. Our older girls, including Sarah, participated in ACE in the morning and had badges in the afternoon. The other girls (one of our new Pioneers and 5 adopted girls) had badge work in the morning and afternoon. The ACE girls did ice climbing (with special Styrofoam pieces), climbing, and rappelling; took a long bike ride on the bike trail; did a canoe trip on the Little Miami River; spent a morning on the lake paddle boarding, kayaking, blobbing, etc.; and then spent a morning chilling out watching a movie (a bizarre anime something or other—somebody’s Castle?). They also hiked out to a remote location and camped Thursday night (while it stormed). Sarah did Home Care & Repair, which involved power tools and such, and also did Rifle where she scored at the Marksman level (2^nd rank in the Winchester Rimfire Rifle program).

They had open time in the evenings and enjoyed swimming, a scavenger hunt, playing card games, eating junk food, and otherwise hanging out and having fun.

The raccoons were relentless this year, though! Almost every night there was a raccoon incident. So there wasn’t a lot of sleep happening (at least for me anyway). I wasn’t worried about raccoons getting in my tent, but the noise kept me up.

What are the three things that wear me out about camp? No sleep, bad food (and it was better this year than last but still gross overall—processed, cafeteria-style food), and people 24/7. I average 8-9 hours of sleep per night at home. At camp, I got less than 5 hours of sleep a night. Add that up over a week, and that’s a sleep deficit of at least 20 hours. By Wednesday or Thursday, I was just plain weird. Jenn and Craig can verify this.

Wednesday, Angie and I escaped camp to go buy a movie at Meijer in anticipation of a stormy night. (We wanted an activity for the camp to do if it was raining. It didn’t rain, but that’s beside the point.) So we are driving around like idiots, not knowing where we’re going, and not caring either. We finally found Meijer. Then we’re walking around the store, and I think I must have looked like a homeless person. I had on cargo pants, a t-shirt, and my big backpack with my water bottle hanging off of it by a carabiner. And we bought pop, bag after bag of junk food, Oreos, chocolate, and the movie, Brave. And batteries. (I have no idea what the people thought of this.)

The next day my friend, Jenn, came out to spend the day with us. She broke me out of camp in the late afternoon, and we ate dinner at Panera. (Good food! Yay!) But, once again, it must have been an odd picture. “Oh, look at that nice lady [Jenn]. She took that homeless woman [me] out for a meal.”

(Seriously. My hair this week! I could’ve been a vagrant.)

Then there was the point at which Jenn found me staring off into the darkness. "What are you looking at?" "Sparkles! My flashlight is making sparkles! Through the crystal on my necklace! See?!" (At that point, she gave me a hug and said it was time for her to go home and time for me to go to bed.)

We had a blast on Thursday with Jenn. By Thursday, everyone was just plain punchy, and we definitely lived up to that. Jenn bought a “I Survived Camp Friedlander” t-shirt, which riled us all up. We tried to chase her down to get the shirt and write on it “8 hours at” between “survived” and “camp.” But she runs fast.

Friday, we were just plain giddy at the thought of camp being over. By the campfire, Angie, LuAnne, and I were dancing and hugging each other, saying, “It’s almost over! It’s almost over!” Yes, I got a little teary-eyed at the very end. I’m grateful that things went very, very well overall. We had beautiful weather for most of the week. We had storms and rain, but it was nothing severe. (And our tadpoles ended up with a huge puddle again after coming perilously close to dying in their drying up puddle!) Our girls all stayed healthy and safe (despite a few issues). They made wonderful memories that they’ll cherish for the rest of their lives. We got a lot of positive feedback about everyone else’s camp experience, too, which was very nice to hear.

But I am very, very glad to be home.

Link to all of the pics: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10201157420552079.1073741843.1066880835&type=1&l=d7bb9a35b0