A Brief Report Of Camp

Well, camp is officially over for the summer (for me, that is...all the camps I know are still running at least one or two more weeks!) Fairhaven was a bit different this year. Normally that's my "vacation week" (the camp tells their speakers "We can't pay you to come speak, but all we ask is that you speak 4 times during the week, and we give you a cottage on the lake to vacation in for the week") But there were a couple things that made it not quite a vacation...one was that they didn't put me in the cottage on the end of the lake...they housed me on the boy's side of the camp, which meant when I step out my front door, I'm right in the middle of camp life.

The other thing is that I had 99 math problems to write, for a competition league in Maryland. I have them all written, and I've written up solutions to 2/3 of them, so I'm almost ready to send them off to my proofreader. Writing 99 math problems actually took most of my week (although I can't say I worked steady at it!).

The campers were quite attentive - better than some years at Fairhaven - sometimes they get campers who just aren't interested in listening. But they also had some mature young men and women as counselors for the teens, so that was a help.

Yesterday we went to the ocean. It was a Beth-and-Nate-day. Here's what I mean by that. As we were heading for the ocean, we drove through the Camden area, and drove by Maiden Cliff, and I thought "Oh! Beth hiked that a couple weeks ago!" (Soon there will be a report of that hike at Amateur-Hikers.com.

Then as we continued on, we drove through Rockland, where the "Lobstah Festival" was happening, and I thought "Oh! Nate volunteers at this every year...I wonder if he's around here today!"

Then as we continued on, I thought, "Why, this beach we're going to must practically be in Nate's back yard! I should have emailed him and asked him to join us."

Then as we continued on, we arrived at *ahem* an intersection. Beth...you know what intersection I'm talking about.

The ironic thing was, the guy driving couldn't figure out whether to go left or right. I wanted to say: "Just go straight...that's a quick way to get to the ocean!"

For anyone who cares, we ended up at Birch Point State Park (I think that was the name of it.) It's either in Owls Head or Spruce Head, not sure which.

Then, as I was talking to the counselor who supposedly knew where we were going I asked him if he knew Nate. Why, sure enough, he did. Then, since I found out he lived in Union, I asked him, on a whim, if he knew Beth and Laura and Emily. Why sure enough, he did.

I took Jeorge out for the closing chapel at camp (the teens and younger kids were together for the first half of chapel). I had several people tell me "I couldn't see your lips move at all," which everyone thinks is the best compliment to give a ventriloquist. Actually, the best compliment to give a ventriloquist is this one:

"Is that bird real???"

As I was getting ready to head out, one of the program directors thanked me for coming, and said they'd never had a teen speaker as involved with the campers as I was, which I thought was fairly ironic, considering I spent most of the week in my cabin, and at other camps I'm with the campers practically from sunup to sundown!

Next week is Vacation Bible School in Lovell/Stow. Then I'm all finished with VBS ministry for the summer as well. The week after is going to be my vacation week (I hope). I'm going to hike Sugarloaf one day, and I don't really know what I'll do the rest of the week, but I'll probably figure out something!

Posted On Aug 5, 2006 at 5:19 AM

On Aug 5, 2006 Beth wrote: They really should put some kind of sign up at that intersection....