tim’s thought property

After a week of campers, sunshine, mosquitoes, heat exhaustion, camp dramas, rain, deet and mud, part of me wants to shut down. This first week of camp was a little more than I had expected, yet it was quite rewarding. Through all the trials and hardships that could not be predicted, I would have to say that GOD brought me through quite well.

Leading the Ropes activity with Ben, we were faced with the advancement of the Assiniboine and the relentlessness of mosquitoes. You see, the river was slowly rising through the week, with the rain and runoff, and by Thursday, the course (shaped like a rectangle) was only half operational. Yet, remarkably, on Friday morning, the river had receded about fifteen to twenty feet from the night before.

With all the campers we had to come through the course and do the elements, we were lucky to have them all try out the elements. (An Element is a part of the course that is like an obstacle, be that the Clatter Bridge, Multi Vines or Vertical PlayPen.) On each final day for the activity group, we would use the Zipline, a ninety foot long cable that you slide down on, and the Flying Squirrel, an element in which we pull a participant up from the ground. As it so happened, we had a camper named Andrea, Andy for short, who has Cerebral Palsy. She couldn’t do the Zipline since she has limited motor capacity. So Ben and I, and Meagan her care worker harnessed her up and we pulled her up the Flying Squirrel. We raised her about fifteen feet in the air, and she was gently swinging and laughing, smiling the entire time. And even though she couldn’t talk, Andy conveyed her joy and excitement at being elevated into the air. It was a real rewarding moment, it was the reason why I returned to camp, the purest form: To see the light and joy in a camper’s eyes in accomplishing something new.