The week before

On June 21^st at 4.25pm I walked onto the dock and shouted “if I get hit by lightning and die, I swear I will haunt you for the rest of eternity”. Sophie looked up at the black clouds, “its fine, we can swim partway then come back, and it’s only thunder, no lightning”. I joined Sophie at the end of the dock and we both looked down into the dark brown water, I jumped in, Sophie then followed. Team Swim was ready to go.

Then there was a clap of thunder and a camera flash of lightning. The flash could well have been god taking a picture of two stupid people in a lake during a thunderstorm. We looked at each other, turned and ran for dry land.

And it was lucky that we returned, because the students arrived at 4.35pm, earlier than we expected. By this time the storm was overhead and the sky was pure black liquid. One by one students exited the bus and ran for the dining room; the first session had officially started.

A week earlier the weather was slightly more pleasant, camp began to fill up and my isolation with the caretaker ended as quickly as it began. Sophie, Tony and I sat round a dining table with eight new sleepy members of staff. The first thing I talked about was how a large duck was seen to be pulled underwater and killed by a giant fish the previous day. I then told them that a bear had recently been spotted near camp. I was not intentionally trying to scare them but in retrospect I should have kept my mouth shut.

The following day staff training began. The students who attend camp often come from disadvantaged or difficult backgrounds, so specific training is required so staff can teach students good social skills and behaviors. The training and the approach we take is interesting, but not worth recalling on a blog, so I will move on to the visitation of the Alumni.

THE VISITATION OF THE ALUMNI

Imagine a school reunion crossed with a mental asylum and you have experienced an Alumni weekend. Alumni are previous students of the school that our camp is connected to. These old boys kindly organize themselves into a small pack and descend upon camp to tell endless stories about how things were better in their day. They also prepare the camp for operation, and this is a big help, but a few of them need to relearn good behaviors.

The best way to survive an alumni weekend is to keep your head down and try not to laugh. It is a given that some old men will flirt with the young female staff, some will have an ego the size of the entire camp and most will tell ridiculous tales. One story was about how a group took canoes across the lake to a local bar, came face to face with a bear and then journeyed back to camp in darkness.

THE BEAR, THE CANOE AND THE DARKNESS

In England we have a comedy television show called ‘Absolutely Fabulous’. The theme of the episodes usually revolves around a couple of women who drink too much and get themselves into ridiculous situations. I thought of this show as I watched Amy and Jess in a canoe. When they wanted to go forwards, they ended up backwards, sideways or diagonal to the way they wanted to go. It was incredibly funny to watch because they were trying so desperately to communicate and work together, even though they were both a canoeing calamity. I was crying with laughter as we all paddled across the lake towards the bar, and when we finally made it to shore it was decided that the Ab Fab girls should separate for the journey back.

When we arrived at shore we had to walk ten minutes up a gravel road. On the way I heard gunshots up ahead, coming from the bar we were walking towards. The bar currently has a competition where you can win a hunting rifle, perhaps someone had won it.

Finally we reached the bar and the place was buzzing with reports of a bear that had just wandered onto the property. Apparently it was only a baby, and it had been chased away by fireworks, which I had earlier mistaken for gunshots. Sadly we were told that we had missed seeing the bear by only a few minutes, we ordered our drinks and watched a team playing horseshoes in the garden. However, within half an hour though the baby bear was back!!! And with alcohol in our systems it seemed an ideal opportunity to go outside and see how close we could get to it. In real life the little creature was quite cute, and with no scary mother around I got within 30ft of the brown ball of fluff. Sadly it got chased away by fireworks within about half an hour; It was still amazing to be so close to such a wild animal.

After more than a few drinks we made the long journey home. We walked to the canoes in total darkness then floated back to camp. The stars were bright, the mood was good, and the weather was perfect. If the camp operated a risk assessment policy our nighttime activity would have shot through the roof, but we all made it back alive and were soon tucked up in beds ready for another day of training. None of us knew at that time that we were about to experience the floods and storms that marked the arrival of the students.