Summer Camp in the Summer

As some of you might know, the past few weeks I have been working at a summer camp in the green trees of Oregon. It is a YMCA camp just outside of Gresham called Camp Collins. My good friend Colin also works there, interestingly enough, and he is also my boss. There is a river (The Sandy River) that runs through the bottom and a horse corral and a giant swing and a climbing tower and such things that make summer camps great.

I am a teen counselor which means I work with the teens, those between the ages of 13-19, with a certain look of angst in their eyes, and a certain amount of hormones in their developing, awkward bodies. I sleep on the front porch of a rustic cabin and there is quite possibly nothing better than spending summer nights sleeping outside (although occasionally I have to yell at my kids to be quiet because they are rambling on about high school things and quoting movies and laughing at fart noises, when I am trying to catch some z’s because I am sleep deprived and borderline drunk with exhaustion other than that it is good.)

We sing lots of camp songs and every second week with the teens, go on either a rafting or rock climbing trip. The last trip I went on we rafted the Deschutes River and one night a rattle snake crawled though our camp, forcing our raft guide to beat it with a paddle (for our safety of course) and then me and the other girl counselor, Caribou, proceeded to skin and eat it. Yes, that’s right. We skinned and ate rattle snake. I know, I am practically Bear Grylls. The worst part was that we cut the head off the snake and yet it’s body still writhed as we tried to peel it’s skin away from its insides. Right now Caribou is tanning the skin and going to make something out of it, perhaps a make-up case (that’s a joke by the way, because Caribou doesn’t wear make-up.)

It is good out here, although long days and hard weeks, and sometimes I feel apathetic and just tired in general. I am doing my best to breathe and unleash myself from the worries and distractions of everyday life and concentrate on the present moment. I am doing my best to be content and not get lost inside my head with all of these worries and philosophical dilemmas of existence. I am doing my best to be like the trees—growing slowly, planted by a river, letting the wind blow through my branches and not trying to be something I am not or rush the end result.