Never a Dull Moment a Camp

Hey guys! I know last week I slacked off, but not to worry this weeks is going to be chock full of adventure! Last week nothing real major happened it was a semi regular week at camp besides a kid pooping on the floor of the hall during carnival, and two adult women lighting fireworks off in the parking lot during family camp. So the only thing with this weeks entry is no pictures :( (The other ones in here are from Google). I know, I know I am sad about it too, but if you keep on reading I guarantee a good read!

This week started great! My daygroup on Wednesday were really good, everything went smoothly and away they went. Carnival was good, the slushie machine had a bit of a fit at an inopportune time, but no one shit on the floor. Thursday was good too. Had a good daygroup, things went well, grand council went well and we made some sweeeet Reese's smores for our weekly staff fire. Then came Friday..........this was the beginning of a series of unfortunate events.

Friday started off a little dreary with some light rain as the week long campers packed up their stuff. We jammed them all into the hall and I helped the arriving families find their children and soon enough they were on their way. After the campers were sent off I had a daygroup for the day before starting prep for family camp. The daygroup that I had was a group that I am very familiar with, we host different groups from their organization several times a week. They showed up a little early and not worried about rain at all. They had a great attitude and came equipped with rain jackets, and before long we were up on the sports field playing kick-ball in the light rain. After lunch they began their scheduled activities which included horses and a pontoon boat ride. Their group split into two and I was going to be driving the pontoon for the afternoon for both groups. The rain started to pick up a bit while the first group was having their pontoon ride, but it was still manageable. The rain picked up to a steady rain when the groups switched, but they were okay with it, so I went with it. The second group got on the pontoon and the rain got harder and harder each minute. Only a few of the kids got a turn to drive the boat when all of a sudden there was a bolt of lightning in the sky and a huge clap of thunder right above the boat. The rain was coming down in sheets and the air around the boat looked white from the hard rain. The one thing about the pontoon is that you can't drive it in the thunder and lighting because it is a metal boat sitting on the water. It might as well be a written invitation for lightning to strike! So I had the lovely job of docking the boat in the pouring smashing rain! This proved to be a bit difficult, but before long I got it tied up and everyone was unloaded. We all got soaked to our skivvies walking up to the hall for them to wait for the bus. Soon enough they were on their way and I was able to take a break and get changed into dry clothes.

Friday evening we had family campers arrive for the weekend, and I was assigned 3 LIT's to shadow me for the weekend. LIT stands for leaders in training, so they are teens learning how to be counselors. I was lucky, and my LIT's were great, and did well all weekend. Saturday was a pretty good day. The weather had cleared, the sun was out and we had a good group of family campers on site this weekend. I worked canoes and pontoon with my LIT's all day and enjoyed the sunshine. Then after dinner we have campfire for the families and a marshmallow roast. Lemongrass and I were manning the marshmallow roast and Dragonfly and Diesel were on their break. Previously Diesel had said she was going to go for a run on her break because it was such a nice evening. We didn't really think anything of it until around 6:30pm over the radio came, " (Huffing and puffing) Code brown (huff/puff) on the ropes course (huff/puff) really close encounter!" So for those of you who don't know, a code brown means a large animal sighting (a cougar or a bear). My first thought was, "Oh fuck, I have a family from my section that told me they were going for a walk after dinner!" So Zaza and Diana took off to go make sure everything and everyone was okay and to scare this thing off. So here is how the code brown went. Diesel went for a run on her break and once she got to the edge of camp she sat down on a rock in the sun for a few minutes. After she caught her breath she got up and started running again,

and only after a min or so, (for whatever reason) she glanced behind her. Only to see a cougar chasing her, and gaining speed in order to leap on her back. She whipped around and stopped and the cougar skidded to a stop about 3 feet away from her! She said that she didn't really know what to do so she started walking slowly backward and speaking to it in a stern voice as if it was a mean dog she had just encountered. The cougar kept going to her side, trying to get her to turn her back to him, but she didn't. There were no families around and she couldn't see people that were close so she just kept walking backward into camp. The further she got into camp the more the cougar backed off a bit (more people noises traveling across the lake) until finally it slunk into the bushes. Diesel took this as her opportunity to run, and she turned and booked it as fast as she could to the cabin, then grabbed the radio and called the code brown. Diesel deserves a round of applause for her calm collected response to a effing scary situation! Good for her to be able to keep it together and get outta there before it grabbed her!

The next part of my evening involved going to each family and telling them that a cougar had come into camp and that they were no longer allowed off camp, their children must be in eyesight at all times, and if they didn't listen to us the first time and had food in their tipi they absolutely needed to take it up to the hall right now. Of course people get freaked when you mention a cougar is around so this put a lot of the families on edge, and it was important that we stayed calm and professional to set the tone for the crowd. I did however tell the LIT's that if they pissed me off I was going to put some hamburger in their pillows! That shut them up :). Although the cougar was indeed lurking around at night time we didn't have any other incidents, and the family campers left the next morning without a hitch.

On Sunday we had a company BBQ to host. So here's the deal. The camp I work for is a non profit organization but is privately funded by a corporation here in Calgary. This multi billion dollar corporation donates a few million dollars a year for the camp to run and be free for all who come. So a couple times through the summer they have their corporate BBQ's at our ranch and the families of

the people that work there get to come out and do whatever the fuck they want. I mean if you give me around 4 mil a year I will let you go just about anything you want too. So at 11 we had close to 300 people come on out for a BBQ and some ranch activities. I was manning the pontoon boat for this event. So I take families out, let the kids have a spin of the wheel and take them back in again. This one time I had about 15 people on the pontoon and was just heading out on a run with these families. As I rounded the corner around the island I see a canoe flipped over, a young woman slumped over the canoe and a man that I can tell is conscious holding her up on the canoe. I tell the families on the boat that we have to make a pit stop and help these people and everyone was cool with it. I aimed the boat straight for them and put it on full throttle, then popped it into neutral so we would just drift up to them. As we got closer I could see that the woman was conscious but spitting out some water and was very shaken up. When we were about 5-6feet from them I asked the man if he could swim to the boat. To which he replied, "No, neither of us know how to swim." So I told him that we were drifting and the possibility that we would drift right over him, if he didn't grab the boat, was there. I instructed him that once we got to them I was going to grab her and pull her on the boat and he was to grab the boat so we didn't go over top of him. We coasted up to them and one of the dads of the families I was pontooning came and helped me. We reached down and grabbed her life jacket and hauled her backwards up on the floor of the boat. The man grabbed the pontoon and then we helped him up. My first concern was to make sure she was breathing and okay. The man said, " Her purse, her purse was in the water." I told him it was probably on the bottom of the lake by now, and there wasn't much I could do about it. He kept going on about her damn purse! After I made sure she was okay I went to grab the canoe and tow it back to shore. When I flipped the canoe over low and behold, there was the damn purse! It got trapped under the canoe. I grabbed the purse to hand it back to her and when I did a little black pouch (containing a camera) fell out and plopped into the water and sank to the bottom of the lake. I handed the bag back to her and said, "Here's your purse........minus one camera. But hey, it's a small price to pay." I tied the canoe on the back of the pontoon, radioed Diana to come have a look at this girl, and headed back towards the dock. On the way back one of the women that was on the pontoon asked what had happened. The man said, "Well that was our first time in a canoe....." Then I stopped listening because I was thinking, are you SERIOUS!? So neither of you can swim, and you have never been in a canoe before and you thought it was a great idea to head out in a canoe unassisted!? Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.......oh wait! And accident did happen!! People are dumb! They are lucky I came along in the pontoon because apparently she had gotten trapped under the canoe and panicked and that is why she took on some water. Idiots!

Lets just say I was glad to start my days off at 3pm and proceeded to come home and have a few beers! Like I said, never a dull moment at camp.