From 1969 to 1974 I spent a week or two at church camp, counseling before that I had been a camper. In 1975 I found my way to heaven and spent my first summer working at a camp and then year round the next year. The first two years at a YWCA camp that was co-ed the first few weeks and then went to all girls for the rest of the summer. It’s the only camp that I worked out that while being up in the mountains that camp itself wasn’t really in the forest. We really only had scattered trees in camp there rest of the camp was in a vast meadow. Our kids there were mostly inner city kids, many from foster and group homes, sent on scholarship from the Times fund and from donors with a few kids from local YWs. This always made for an uneasy mix in the older kids. The little kids didn’t really care. They were having enough culture shock just being in the mountains and not in the concrete jungle. Some had never seen a chicken or a pig or a horse or any of the other barnyard animals we kept at camp. I’ll never forget the little boy who announced he was never going to eat another egg ‘cause chicken shit them when he saw a chicken lay one. He was offended when everyone laughed at him but it did make sense from his 5 year old point of view. My second year I got promoted to Arts & Crafts Director.
When the YW ran out of funds the camp director and a few of the staff got hired by the Girl Scouts as Arts & Crafts Director at a camp in Big Bear. That was a culture shock to me after being a Camp Fire Girl through Seniors. That was a hard year anyway because the staff didn’t really get along and I ended up getting poisoned and ending my summer a few weeks early. I’d already been struck by lightning that summer so it wasn’t my favourite year. I returned 5 years later to be Asst Camp Director and that summer was pretty miserable too.
But the next year I landed in Singing Pines, another Girl Scout camp. I loved Singing Pines. It’s on the break between the forest and the high desert and the San Andreas Fault is near camp but not easily visible. That camp was magic. We slept outdoors in shelters. There were no cabins, no hot water, no electricity, high fire danger, a pool that desperately needed renovation and the best staff and kids. Not everything was perfect but somehow it was always magic even the years where they had a plague scare or when we had Peter Pervert roaming camp at night. We learned to have fun and a sense of magic and humor and adventure. We did tons of practical jokes but I don’t ever remember a mean one. I remember singing, singing at every meal, singing while hiking or working, singing at camp fire and singing children to sleep and hearing lullabyes floating on the wind from a unit up or across the hill. We had all kinds of wild animals and more colourful bird species than any other camp I worked at. Some years I was just A&C and some years I was also Nature Director.
My last camp was a Catholic Girls camp that an old camp director and friend called me to 2 days before camp because they still didn’t have an A&C Director. I went into culture shock that first summer I was there. I was raised Presbyterian and pagan and my mom was horrified that I was going to work with Catholic. The big family scandal growing up was my Great Aunt Annie who became a nun. It took some getting used to. They were allowed to drink at night in camp. Big no no in most camps. There were nuns. I had never met a nun except mom’s best friend growing up, Pudgy. She was head of an LA hospital and ran around in full habit across the street from my grandparents when she visited her parents. I think she was BVM and this camp was one of the Sisters of Providence orders. And to top it off I was embarking on my first formal studies in the Craft and hiding books around A&C and hoping no one would find them. It was a great two years and I loved that camp but I always felt like a fish out of water. I had no clue about mass. Presbyterian liturgy is completely different. I was raised to see religious statues as idols and even without that the human figure has never been something that was represented in much Celtic art. It’s always animals and shapes in knotwork even before Christianity hit the Gaelic countries. I still don’t have many goddess figures around now.
They also did things like have a badge for the best in each sport or activity. Girl Scouts and the YW didn’t believe in that. You earned badges or patches by what you did but no one was the best in anything. I used to pick the kid that tried the hardest in Arts and Crafts because there was no way I was picking the kid that was the best. I just don’t believe in it when it comes to children and art. And when I took art in the classroom for my degree, one of the things the professor used to do was walk around the classroom and tell people at what age someone said something about their art because that is the growth stage their art stopped at because of criticism. I’m glad I refused but I took crap for it.
Anyway, next weekend is my camp reunion at that last camp and it will be fun. Can’t wait.
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