Welcome to Summer Camp!

Well it's been a while since we left for Camp Steiner, but I'll try to recount what we've been up to.

We had intended to leave on Thursday, June 21, but on the 19th we got a call from Steve, the program director, who said that if we wanted to have our pick of cabins we should get there on Wednesday morning as other senior staff members would be showing up that day.  So after staying up until about 2:30 packing the van, we—well, I—got up at 5:30 to put the last-minute stuff into the van and we finally left around 8:00 or so.

I had hoped to leave a clean house behind us, but instead it looked like someone had ransacked the house and we fled for our lives.  >sigh< Oh well.

on our way

Camp Steiner is in the Uinta Mountains, at an elevation of 10,441 feet.  I did  not like the last part of the drive up the mountain.  I remember going camping when I was little and my mom would be saying, "Orlin! Slow down!"  While she did not like the winding mountain roads, I thought they were great.  Now that I sit up front and see the roads and not just the scenery I find I've turned into my mom.  I don't like it so much myself (not a roller-coaster girl).  I have found that if I can get the kids to sing with me, or if I watch the scenery and not the road I do much better.  And after making the trip four times now, I think there's some hope that I'll get somewhat used to it by the end of summer.

I don't like these signs.

Anyway, by the time we got there I was pretty exhausted, had a headache (probably from lack of sleep—and the altitude), was hungry, and just pretty darn all-around cranky.  Steve met us and showed us the cabins we got to choose from and I was not feeling so happy about it.  Then he proudly showed me the lodge where I'd be cooking for everyone, and it was dirty and I was thoroughly disgusted. I wondered why on earth this sounded like such a great thing to do in the first place. (Actually, the lodge and kitchen are pretty nice—for a scout camp lodge that is closed-up for eight to nine months of the year, it's really nice.  And it has a bathroom with running water, a bathtub & shower, and a flushing toilet! But remember, I was very, very tired.)

After we grabbed a bite to eat I jumped right into cleaning everything in that kitchen and bathroom.  Working settled my mind a little, and at least made me feel like I could safely prepare food, and use the bathroom without contracting a disease. 

Now, we thought that we would have to take care of our own food for at least two days and maybe through Sunday night, when the rest of the staff would be arriving.  So I brought food for my family for two days; home-made chili on the menu for Wednesday night.  Then Steve told me that more of the staff would be arriving that evening and it would be nice to put a pot of chili on the stove for them to have as they arrived.  Well there were some #10 cans of chili in the pantry, so I added one to the stuff I made, and hardly anyone ate at all—most of them had eaten before they came up.  >sigh<  We had chili for three meals that weekend. (And guess what?  Commissary brought chili for Monday's lunch!)

I did not sleep well on Wednesday night, and I woke up thinking that we were in for a very bad summer, and why did I agree to do this?

Thursday and Friday we all worked on setting up tents, and getting the camp cleaned up and ready for the rest of the staff to come and set things up. Well, everyone else did; I mostly worked in the kitchen.  We all got a whirlwind tour of the entire camp on —Friday? —the commissary arrived some time Friday with our food for the weekend (which was a little weird, since no one was supposed to be there until Sunday night,  but I'll tell more about the commissary later).

Thursday —or maybe Friday evening (after a while all the days blended together) we all went canoeing —even me!  

And one night when Bruce went to clean the staff showers he found a nest between the walls.  The big surprise was that the nest had five newly-hatched birds in it!

shower wall

shower surprise!

All the staff left on Saturday morning. That meant my family got  to have the place to ourselves for about 36 hours!  :-) So we went on a hike, and then we went back down the mountain to Kamas to buy milkshakes. 

When we got back one of the staff members had already arrived.  :-/ (He's a nice kid, but I had hoped to have a little more private, family time.) We shared dinner with him, visited a bit, and then went to bed. 

our home away from home

By the way, Michael, Jason, Lindsey and Brandon are sleeping in tents, while Bruce, the rest of the kids and I are sleeping in our little two-room cabin.  Our cabin has a small couch, a futon, and a queen-size bed! Yay!  The floor slopes down where two of the walls meet; you could easily roll a ball right down to that corner.  The bed is in that corner; Bruce sleeps next to the wall (we sleep with our heads up, not down).  By morning Bruce has rolled into the wall and I have rolled into him.  Cozy!

Now I have this stupid problem of having to get up to use the bathroom two to three times a night.  Usually it takes me about fifteen minutes to realize that that's why I woke up.  It takes me another ten minutes to get up and walk through the door from my bedroom to the bathroom. At camp I also have to find my socks, shoes and a flashlight, and walk the equivalent of going about halfway around the block to get to the bathroom in the lodge.  (The first night my flashlight died, and I still didn't know my way around camp; it was a long trip.  But the stars were amazing!)  One morning, around 5:30 or so, I saw a big deer on my way back from the bathroom.  We just stood there and looked at each other for a few minutes before she walked away.  I wished I'd had my camera with me, but who takes their camera to go to the bathroom?  (Actually I've started, but nothing picture-worthy has happened since then.)

Saturday night/Sunday morning I woke up around 1:00 a.m. for one of my usual potty trips, but when I finally hauled myself out of bed I was so dizzy that I couldn't stand up!  Now here was a terrible dilemma:  my bladder was in severe pain—I was going to burst if I didn't go pee, but I was going to fall down if I even stood up. There was no way I could walk all the way to the bathroom and back. I laid back down to consider this problem (as well as I could with my sick head —and now stomach, too), and finally decided that Bruce would have to make the trip with me.  So I woke him up, but I still couldn't stand up.  He rigged up a chamber-pot of sorts for me.  Embarrassing!  But I was really sick.

Sunday I stayed in bed until almost 11:00 a.m. when I finally decided that I could risk the walk to the lodge.  I was still dizzy and a little nauseous, but I had to eat something.  By then Steve and Stephen had arrived and they said I had altitude sickness. "Drink lots of water and it will pass."  I got busy making banana muffins (remember the commissary) which helped me feel a little better; having something to focus on made me feel better.  By evening I almost felt normal again.  The staff all arrived around 6:00 p.m.—all fifty-ish of them.  These are the kids I'll be cooking for all summer long. 

The next week was our prep time to clean up trails, cut down and haul off dead trees (just the ones that looked like they'd fall down and kill someone—in fact, a tree did fall down on one of our tents that week; fortunately no one was in it at the time!), set up the rifle and archery ranges, and generally get the camp ready for the 12-year old scouts who'll be visiting us every week this summer.

I mostly work in the kitchen and lodge. The kids thank me profusely for every meal, which is kind of embarrassing (commissary again; I promise I'll tell you).  I like them.  The kids, I mean.

By the end of the week (June 30) I was more than ready to go home for my 24-hour break.  If you can call doing 12 to 15 loads of laundry in 24 hours a break.  But I was very happy to sleep in my own bed for a night.

And that is the first installment of Our Summer at Camp Steiner.

Out of Time!

This weekend was ridiculous with running errands and doing all the laundry for the entire family.

Maybe next week you can hear about Camp Steiner.

Paid Vacation

My life is about to turn into one of those Disney movies from the 70's.  This summer my entire family is going up to Camp Steiner—the highest elevation Boy Scout camp in the United States—to work for the summer.

About three months (or so) ago we got a phone call from one Steve Honsvick, the program director for Camp Steiner.  A young man in our ward had worked as a youth counsellor at Steiner last year, but was not going to return this year; he recommended Jason to fill the job. Jason was in bed when Steve called so he ended up talking to Bruce.  It turns out that Steve and Bruce both worked at Hartvigsen School together (at least at the same time) a couple years ago; they had lunch together once or twice.  Steve remembered Bruce, and I guess he thought that if Bruce could do so well with handicapped kids then he could work with twelve-year-old scouts at Camp Steiner, too.  So he asked Bruce to be the shooting sports director.

Bruce thought this sounded like fun, but the pay was far from tempting, and being away from his family for six days at a time for the entire summer was even worse.  He said he just couldn't do it.  A couple days later Steve called back and told Bruce that he also needed a cook and I could go work there, too.  With Bruce's camp pay and mine we would earn more than Bruce is making now.  But Bruce told him that we have eight kids—we couldn't very well leave them behind.  Steve said he'd have a job for Michael as the ecology director, he could hire Jason and Lindsey as youth counsellors, and Brandon could be a counsellor-in-training; we could just bring the rest of the kids up to camp—in fact, while we're there Ryan can earn all the merit badges they offer.  Suddenly this looked too good to pass up.  Paid vacation for the entire family!

Well we've been to a couple of training meetings, we've bought some uniforms, and Bruce and Michael went to National Camping School a couple weeks ago to learn how to do their jobs.  (Bruce is now NRA certified as a range-safety officer, and NRA certified instructor for rifle, shotgun and muzzle-loading rifle, and USA Archery certified Level 1 archery instructor, and he's a BSA certified Shooting Sports Director.) This week I've been dyeing light-khaki pants to dark gray (no way am I spending $55 a pair for BSA uniform pants!) I hope I've got them pretty close to the right color.  We've been attempting to keep the house clean—at least I've been fussing over it; I've made pj's and floppy hats for the little girls (I wonder how long I'll keep calling those three "the little girls?"), and we are cleaning the van and gathering gear and clothes and bug spray and sunscreen.

Our big plan is to leave at 6:00 a.m. —before the sun gets too high and hot (no AC in the van :-{  ). And then the adventure begins!

The big questions are: What will the three little girls do while everyone else is working?
and What will we do with the cat while we're gone?

Wish us luck!

I have things to say but . . .

. . . TIME!

And I feel bad because my stats say that people keep checking up on me, but I haven't said anything!

Soon. (I hope.) Soon. :-)

Pride

I haven't had much to say here lately.  In fact, lately I rarely feel like I have anything to say at all.

In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby says of Colonel Brandon, "[He] is just the kind of man whom everybody speaks well of, . . . whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to."

I've felt that way. I like people; I like to be with them, I like to hear them talking, and be part of the conversation if I can. But I rarely feel like I have anything to add and I often feel that no one would notice the difference if I weren't there at all.  So I listen a lot; I am the fly on the wall.

In another story, Pride and Prejudice, Lizzy Bennett is speaking to Mr. Darcy. He says he doesn't have a talent for "conversing easily" with others, and she responds, "I do not play this instrument so well as I should wish to, but I have always supposed that to be my own fault, because I would not take the trouble of practising."

And Lizzy is undoubtedly right. But I am kind of . . . afraid?
. . . of people. How's that for a dichotomy? I like them and I want to be with them; I find them slightly terrifying—as if they will think that my ideas, my words, my actions are of no value. Or, worse, they'll just think that I'm downright stupid or annoying. Much as I'd like for people to seek me out, I think I'm more of a Colonel Brandon.

Lizzy probably is right—about practicing. But it is so much easier to learn the piano.