That's what a camper said this week at Boys Camp when we told him it was time to get down from the stump he was climbing on and continue on our hike. That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?
This last week was Boys Camp, and I was fortunate enough to be given part of the week off to teach the outdoor class with Joel Thomas (our grounds manager). We shared the class responsibilities so that we could each have part of the week to get some of our regular jobs done too.
The theme for Boys Camp this year was "Beyond the Stars". Every 3 years the theme rotates between water, land, and sky. So we based our lessons around things in the sky. However, since there are some important outdoor skills to learn that don't have to do with the sky, we also incorporated things like knot tying and fire building. Cool boy stuff. If nothing else, Joel and i had fun being boys and coming up with our lessons.
On Monday I taught the boys about lashing and how that is important to the shelter building process. Every night of the week a few cabin groups get to spend the night in our rustic campsites on the east side of the lake. Joel and I both have fond memories of Dick Bishop teaching us to build shelters and then getting to sleep in our own lean-tos. We don't have the time in the schedule for that these days, but I at least got to show the boys how the shelters that they were going to sleep in were made. Then on beach day we helped them build some shelters on the beach with what they had learned in class.
On Tuesday Joel was the teacher, and he taught the boys about the different birds in the area and sent them out with binoculars and spotting scopes to do some bird watching. The interesting thing about this is that two hours before the first class, we thought he would be teaching about the stars. We had a couple projectors and some computer programs that could create star charts, and we were going to turn the basement of Hadley Hall into a little planetarium. Well, everything fell apart that morning and the computer crashed and the projector didn't work and our big projector screen wasn't working out. So Joel drove down to the Tillamook sporting goods store and bought about 20 pairs of binoculars. He went to school to be an elementary school teacher, so he worked a deal out with the store to buy them on a huge discount since they were for a camp and for a teacher. Pretty amazing.
Wednesday we took the boys for a hike up Charlotte's Mountain. Two of the best quotes for the week came during the hikes. The first I shared at the beginning of this post, the second follows. Along the way I was at the head of the line pointing out different berries that could or could not be eaten. On of the berries I pointed out that was edible was salmon berries. There are lots of salmon berries along the trail so I was letting the boys try them as we went. Joel was at the back of the line and one boy turned to him and said, "I think that guy was lying about the salmon berries being edible. In fact, I'm sure their poisonous!" Joel responded, "What do you mean? They're edible." The camper the told Joel, "Well I just ate one, and now my butt itches!"
It was also beach day, son the boys got to spend a couple of hours of free time at the beach where they were able to wave jump, booggy board, play in the sand, etc. Like I said earlier, we did some fort building with them and a group attempted to dam up Watseco Creek. It was a good effort, they even figured out to make a diversion channel while they were building. But ultimately, they ran out of time.
Thursday was the traditional "buddy fires" day. The campers get to go to the beach in the evening and spread out with partners and build their own fires. That meant for class I taught them how to build fires. It can be a challenge to build a fire on the beach when it's windy, but they all had success. (As a side note; in preparing for this class, I taught myself how to start a fire using a bow and drill. That means basically by rubbing sticks together. I was successful once in several attempts, but I'm pretty proud of doing it once.)
By Friday, Joel had finally gotten the planetarium up and running (well enough anyway) and taught the boys about constellations and stars and galaxies and things. So it all worked out in the end.
On top of all the class teaching, we also spent each night from about 10-11pm stargazing with the boys. We were blessed the entire week with relatively clear skys. The problem, however, was that the moon was at it's fullest on Wednesday. That made it pretty difficult to find many stars out. We had two telescopes though, and one we put a filter on and were able to look at all the craters on the moon's surface. The other spent most of it's time focused on Jupiter, which was out every night and was bright enough to be seen through the moonlight. We also had some other cool devices let the boys learn about the stars with; like a GPS system that actually pointed out space objects in real time as you pointed it at the sky. It was really cool.
So in the end I had a blast this week. I was a little worn out by the end, not as much as a counselor would be, but isn't camp supposed to wear you out? I can't wait until next year!
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