tim’s thought property

As it so happened, last Saturday held two mighty thunderstorms that wreaked havoc on the poor little property of Camp Assiniboia. As some may know, the camp is dotted with many tall, old and wide Cottonwood trees, many close to two-hundred years old. When the storm came through, the high winds had ripped many branches from the trees, and strewn them about the camp. The wind also saw fit to uproot many of the majestic giants and topple them on our Old (and not used, and therefor abandoned) Ropes Course. Added to that, five trees of various size and type fell on the Zipline cable on the New Ropes Course and another tree felt like resting on one of the support cables. Lightning was also involved at knocking down a couple of elms and oaks. There was a lot to be cleaned all week.

Now, the Ropes Course being out of commission, and the Frolf Course being in a state of disarray, the options for the Ropes Activity ended up being “Playground” for two days. As things went about, we had an injury on the playground every activity slot, (four a day) and had to make special rules while playing tag, (four times a day). Rules like:

Climb in the tubing, and not on top of it.
No running on the clackity-bridge, since you will get hurt.
No hiding in the slide, since people will be sliding down it.
Careful while running on the dewy structure, for you will fall.
No playing Grounders, since I just told you that you will die on this monstrosity of metal and plastic.

After the stressful Playground times were over, Director AJ and I brainstormed some other ideas, and came up with the Egg Drop contest and the Boat Building Challenge.
The Egg Drop Challenge
I told the campers that the Kitchen Staff needed the campers to build some prototypes of a break-proof egg holder, since the kitchen stores the eggs in a dangerous place. I also said that the transport trucks drive down a bumpy dirt road to get to camp, and they need better protection. So, with cardboard, tape and paper the groups set out to build varying contraptions, not unlike boxes, to house their eggs. Surprisingly, only four out of the dozen eggs broke in the trials. We used the play structure to drop the boxes, covered neatly with pictures and clippings from National Geographic magazines. We told them that aesthetics were important to the contest.
The Boat Building Challenge
No fancy story, just build a boat out of paper to withhold the gradual weight of quarter-inch gravel, put on one piece at a time. The winner ended up having 273 rocks on their boat, again, all of them made with paper, tape and National Geographic clippings. Their prize, or reward for their work was Salt Water Taffy. Yes, the bribery does work. Here is candy for a little mind-numbing and boring activity.

I felt so useless as a Ropes Instructor this week. It was hard to continue going to the mundane activity slots. Many times I just wanted to sleep. If I wanted to do crafts, I would have signed up to be the Craft Lady.
But as it worked out, the builder of our Ropes Course, Peter Bailey, came on Friday to fix it, and it will be up and running next week. Interestingly enough, aside from the prayers I kept praying everyday, the couple earnest prayers of a camper seem to be heeded. One was along the lines of “GOD, please fix the Ropes course soon, so we can have fun at camp.”
And how.