Well, I'm slowly recovering from sleepless Girls Camp nights and a Mutual sleepover at my home this past week that ended in my near-passed-out-from tiredness at 2:30 in the morning (only two of the young ladies were asleep with the rest going strong) and continued the next morning with me making breakfast at 7:30am.
Anyway, as you know, Camp Ritchie's trails are really dried creek beds and not trails, and this year I was assigned to the Billy Goat Cabin. So named, because you need to be a billy goat, or similar rock climber, to access it.
Notice the large boulder in front of the cabin? Scaling the boulder is the most direct route to the cabin. I twice lost my footing and slid right down it, leaving a layer of my palms behind. (The other item that was left behind was my hiking boots. Left in the garage because I didn't want to wear them in the car--lame!)
This is the view from the front porch of our cabin with said-boulder in the background.
This is the view from the easiest, yet longest, route to our home for the week.
Doesn't this look like an inviting little trail? Yes, three young ladies did end up on crutches by week's end.
This was one view from inside our cabin. Have you noticed what color we were assigned to go with our given musical The Sound of Music? This picture captures the 4th level young ladies preparing to "heart attack" another cabin. Which leads me to a little tale...
Well, as most of you know, a love of a little bit of deceptive trickery runs through my veins. Wherever could I have gotten that from? ....Day one of camp, some 1st level girls (12 years olds) leaned over their balcony and called down to the 4th level girls out on our front porch. With giggles of triumph, they were attempting to draw our attention to the mark they had left on our cabin--a picture of Toto. Well, this seemed like a bit of a challenge to me, and in the spirit of fun camp shenanigans, we decided to color Toto green and add "Toto is in search of the green hills to hear the sound of music." After all, he was on our cabin.
Well, shortly there after while HIKING up to use the restroom, multiple Toto images accosted me. This seemed a little bold and brazen for 1st years, so we decided to launch operation Emerald City. (okay, yes, it was my idea, and yes, I did enlist the enthusiastic support of several of my girls) We colored every one of their Toto's green. (There color was yellow.) One picture showed a close-up dog with a surprised look on his face. We wrote, "What? Do I hear the Sound of Music?" In a display of daring, I walked into the first year cabin and struck up a conversation with the ladies inside, while two of my 4th years, colored the Toto right outside the door on the side of the cabin.
Honestly, I felt it was just done in the spirit of camp fun-ness. Well, my first mistakes was not realizing that these were first year girls on their first day of camp. They were not yet acclimated to camp fun. As they began to notice, which I must say took longer than I thought it would, we started to hear cries of "You fourth levels are so mean!" Oh, dear. Started trouble. I encouraged our young ladies to make peace, but the first years were feeling quite wronged and unforgiving. We were about to quote scriptures about the importance of forgiving, when they began to soften with the encouragement of their j.c.'s. My young ladies showed forth "an increase of love" and greater bonding occurred than what otherwise might have without Operation Emerald City.
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