Girls Camp

Yesterday I saw my cousin Amber come home and start unloading a trailer, then I remembered that this week had been girls camp, and she had been lucky enough to be the girls camp leader this year...hahahahaha. Girls camp has certainly changed in the years since I went. Oh how I loved girls camp, but I have a feeling that this new improved version and I wouldn't be terribly compatible.

My sisters were fortunate enough to have girls camp up on the Uncompaghre, my mountain, and all but one year, when there was a mud slide that closed the road, I had girls camp at Ragged Mountain.  Ragged Mountain for me is OK, I don't think I have ever felt the "exceptional spiritual feeling" there that others have. Maybe it's because I remember when they purchased the property and my Dad was on the high council.  President Cleghorn had all the high council members up there for the first camp out, and made the mistake of asking me what I thought of the place.  I gave an honest opinion that I didn't understand why with two amazing mountains within an hour of Grand Junction why we had to travel almost three to a place without a single flat spot.  Later that night my Dad laughed and told me to lay off President Cleghorn. (see I ticked off church leaders at a very young age).

But I digress, I had two of the world's best camp leaders, Aunt Lois and Maxine Klaich.  Back in the day, as they say, we actually had to primitive camp. That means, we hauled water from the "spring", cut our own firewood, pitched huge canvas tents that we borrowed from Kruckenbergs, trenched them, cooked all our meals over an open fire, built our own showers, and our "crafts" consisted of tying two sticks together and painting them.  I learned how a hot water tank worked by Aunt Lois using an old five gallon metal can sitting on the edge of the fire pit with a funnel in one end.  I learned you can actually cook a steak on a hike with a rock, I learned how a compass worked, how to find kindling even if it has been raining for days, and that when you put cold water in a hot cast iron Dutch oven it makes a sound similar to lightening cracking right when it splits in half.

We were not allowed gas stoves or cook tops, we didn't have cabins, we didn't  swim in the lake, we didn't have canoes in the lake, or a zip line over it.  We didn't have cool t-shirts and water bottles from the stake, we didn't have crafts worthy of Martha Stewart, and we certainly didn't have time for a lot of drama.  Yeah, that might be the one thing the stake over looked when they changed my beloved girls camp into summer bible camp.  When teenage girls have too much time, the drama increases exponentially.  Needless to say I am extremely grateful that I neither have a girl going to girls camp anymore, nor am a leader at girls camp. 

My daughter did attend three years of girls camp, and came home with exactly zero wilderness skills.  She did however come home with a whole lot of baggage because of the "she said" and "then she" variety. Girls all over our stake might be glad I'm not in charge of girls camp, on the other hand, I'll bet some of those folks stranded out in Long Island after hurricane Sandy might be wishing they had a few of those skills. See... those skills aren't just for camping people!