I survived camp! This summer I worked at a Catholic summer camp. I had an absolute blast and yet at times I was extremely exhausted and down. Such is the life of a camp counselor. There are good days and there are bad days. I’m going to share some of the good with you.
I Hiked a Mountain!
It is true. I did hike a mountain. When I arrived at camp it was only me, the camp director, and the camp cook. The first thing I was asked was if I had eaten lunch. When I replied in the negative since it had been a two hour drive and it was just now noon, I was told to make a sandwich. Here is where I had to interject that I had food allergies and would make a lettuce wrap instead. Then I was told that they were going to climb the mountain and I was welcome to go with them. So I did. I climbed a mountain on my first day at camp and survived! Check out this awesome picture from the top:
It was just so gorgeous at camp! I loved that, because we were in the mountains, we had weather that would rapidly change. We could go from sunny with no clouds to complete cloud cover rather quickly. I love the clouds and so I got some awesome cloud pictures this summer.
Meet Bessie Lou
I have to start this section by saying that the camp director, the camp cook, and two counselors were from Kansas. They had never been to Montana before and it was fun to introduce them to the way things are done out here. Besides us Montanans teaching them things about Montana, we also learned some things about Kansas. One thing is that apparently all the animals are named. Seriously, every animal at camp was give a name. We had Sharon the chipmunk, Robert the rabbit, and Deborah the frog. So every chipmunk was Sharon and so forth. Until we got to the deer. Each deer had their own name and we could tell them apart. We had Walter Jr and Winifred and Bessie Lou. Bessie Lou was pretty tame. She would eat out of our hands and when we weren’t around, she would peer into the counselor house.
Sometimes she would even lay directly beneath the window of the counselor house which did manage to scare us a few times.
Besides just Bessie Lou, I also have a picture of Slytherin the snake to show you. We found him during one of our creek hikes. The boys named him, obviously. 🙂
Crafting!
Since it was a summer camp, you knew there had to be crafting included. Besides the obligatory macaroni art loved by one of our counselors, we also made God’s Eyes. During the second last week it was decided that we needed to find a way to make the biggest God’s Eye ever. Just imagine that much yarn for a moment! And so the project commenced. It was finally completed during the last week of camp and it turned out pretty nicely.
And the Faith!
Since this was a Catholic summer camp, we incorporated a lot of our faith into the days. During the first week of camp we even built a Marian grotto! It was such a fun project.
We were also so blessed to have a chapel at the grounds. They literally picked the chapel up, put it on a trailer, and moved it the few miles to camp. It wasn’t the best chapel ever but it worked. It was a place were we could visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and pray our daily prayers. We were also blessed enough to have Mass twice each week, Eucharistic Adoration, and the option for Confession. We used the chapel during camp more than it had probably been used in the last year.
So this was my camp experience. I had a lot of fun. I was often sleep deprived. I met some amazing people. I changed lives. It was so worth it.
I hope the rest of you had amazing summers. Tell me about all your adventures in the comments, I would love to hear them.
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