rivers_bend

Particularily for victorian_tweed, to whom I promised to continue the tales of my summers at camp, as a thank you for the beautiful necklace she made for me.


I can't remember how old I was when I first went to Camp Caz, but I think it was the summer I turned twelve. If not, it was the one I turned thirteen. The camp wasn't new to me, it's a Congregationalist Church camp, and I'd been going for family weekends each autumn since I was little, so the layout, the meal routine, the cabins, were all familiar to me. Whenever I went, it was at a time in which I wasn't very popular at school, but it was easier to make friends at camp.

The camp itself is in the rolling hills of Northern California, and occupies the top of one of them. In the centre of the property is a small hill, perched atop of which is the kitchen, the large main hall, and an outdoor dining area partly shaded by huge oak and pine trees. There is a large bell mounted on the side of the kitchen, which called us to meals and other activities. The cabins are arranged in a semi-circle around one side of the hill, and on the other side is the swimming pool. Off to the right (if facing the hill from the cabins), down a short but meandering path into the woods, is the outdoor chapel where evening 'vespers' was held. To the left is another hill, at the top of which is a large concrete pad on which we used to have square dances. Tucked in behind this hill is an amphitheatre with log seating and a large campfire ring. Between the pool and the dining hill there is a nurse's cabin, and next to the pool is Redwood Lodge where the art room and some other bedrooms used for 'Family Camp' are.

Most of the cabins are old dark wood, at least a generation older than me. My next door neighbour's mother remembers helping to dig the original pool one year when she was a girl, though I don't know how new the camp was then. The cabins have proper windows and a door at the front, but the backs are just screen from waist height up. The eves are deep enough that rain wouldn’t come in, but if it's cold outside it's cold inside. Fortunately, it rarely gets particularly cold in the summers.

They are rectangular buildings, long across the front, divided into three rooms. A long wall with a gap at the top divides the cabins in half front to back. The back room is furnished with bunk beds, three along the back screen wall and one on either side of the doorway between the front and back rooms; the top bunks of these afford a view over the wall into the front of the cabin. The front half is divided into two rooms. The cabin doors open into a space with another bunk, this was the counsellor's room, and then through a doorway to the left was the bathroom. This area had shelves and hooks for towels, a long mirror along the inside wall (teenaged girls need someplace to put on their makeup), a sink, a toilet room (this wall went all the way to ceiling height), and a shower room. It made for a perfect mix of camping and mod cons. There was the mirror for our makeup, electricity for our hair dryers, proper(ish) mattresses, but we slept in sleeping bags, with plenty of fresh air.

We were separated into girls' cabins and boys' cabins, they alternated around the semi-circle. Each girls' cabin was paired with a boys' cabin, and together we made up a family group. I recollect there being 10 cabins, and therefore five family groups, though I can't be held to that. By the end of the week, your family group really did feel like family.

We ate all our meals with the FG, and were assigned Kitchen Porter duty as a group. If it was your meal to do KP, you had to go up when the first bell rang and set all the tables. A second bell called everyone to the meal. Two people from each table were assigned to go up and fetch the food, but those on KP then stayed behind after the meal and cleared away all the plates and made sure the dining area was clean again. I don't remember much about the food except that it was generally pretty edible (this from a desperately picky eater), and that one night we had banana cream pie for dessert which hardly anyone ate, and the next day for lunch we had what looked like peanutbutter cookies and tasted like cookies made out of left over banana cream pie.

Your family group was also important for the Caz Olympics. We did all sorts of relay races, swimming tasks, obstacle courses and other odd things to become the family group with the most points at the end of the week. One year our family decided that competition in which there was a winner and a loser was against the spirit of family and so we boycotted the Olympics, refusing to compete. There was a fair amount of debate about it, and there was some talk that we were trouble makers, but we argued our points and in the end it was decided that we'd made good ones and didn't have to get involved. We did have to attend all the events however. Several years I was in the winning FG, because I often ended up with Ben and Dan, who were lived near the beach and were surfers and so were strong and fast swimmers.

Each day also had classes, which the counsellors taught. After breakfast we'd go into the large hall and there would be sign-up sheets for that day's classes. Whoever was teaching it would give a little spiel to sell it. There was a huge range of things. The ones I remember best: improv acting, massage, poetry, silk screening, calligraphy, singing, sign language, and one where we would get into pairs and sit knee to knee, holding hands, and try to read each other's minds.

One of us would build a wall in our minds, out of whatever we wanted, and the other would try to break through it, using whatever they felt was most appropriate. Sometimes you really felt like your wall was being breached, and sometimes it felt like nothing. I did that class several years.

In the afternoons we had free time, in which we could swim, go to the art building and do tie-dye or make badges or lanyards or other summer camp appropriate art projects, or just hang out in or around the cabins. One year I remember having my hair braided into another girl's. She had very dark, almost black, hair, and mine was very blonde then. We both had very long hair, most of the way down our backs. We sat on the steps of the cabin, back to back, and one of the other girls made a large plait out of our hair. I used to have a picture, but I haven't seen it in years and years.

One year we played strip poker (and by poker I mean each person was dealt a card and the person with the lowest card had to take something off) in the boys' cabin. We'd all put on as many of our clothes as would fit over each other. One boy ended up getting down to his pants, but that's as exciting as it got.

In the evenings we had Vespers. I've never been desperately religious, but if I were to believe in God, I certainly believe that s/he can be found in that place. Situated on a tongue of hillside with trees all around, pews made of hewn logs and an alter at the front made of birch trees, with the sound of the creek in the background, you felt suspended in nature. Evidence of 'creation' however you define it, is all around you, from the sky to the trees to the birds and squirrels, to the mosquitoes who dined on your arms. I can't remember a time in my teenaged years when I felt more connected to the world around me than I did during those services.

Congregationalism is not a desperately 'religious' religion, despite its origins with the Pilgrims. The main thrust always seemed to be adherence to the 'golden rule,' treat others as you wish to be treated yourself. This is something I think we could all do well to follow, no matter what we believe.

We would sing, read poetry, talk about how we could have a role in making society a better place for everyone to live. Not, all told, a bad message to give teenagers.

Night time we'd have social events. Every year there was a dance, I remember some other girls and I making up a whole routine to 'West End Girls' and we would sing along passionately to 'Hero,' 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' and many other 80s 'classics.' There must have been slow dances as well, but I don't remember any of the angst of the dances at Jr. High or High School when a slow song came on.

At the end of the week we'd have Talent/No Talent night, and people would sing, dance, recite, do puppet shows, magic acts, tell jokes, and whatever they did they would get cheers and a huge round of applause. One night we would have a root-beer float party at the pool, drinking ourselves sick on creamy sugar, probably good practice for college where many of us (not, however, me) would drink ourselves sick on keg beer.

There was also the square dance, and the camp fire. One year at the campfire someone read the Velveteen Rabbit and I cried so hard I couldn't breathe properly, another year after the square dance I broke up with my boyfriend, who had quit his job to come to camp with me, despite the fact that I asked him not to and wanted nothing to do with him, and he clung on to me, bruising my arms, had to be pried off me by two counsellors and be sent to the nurse because he couldn’t compose himself. I felt horribly guilty, and have blocked from my mind what happened the rest of that week with regards to having to see him around camp. I imagine we avoided one another.

One of the best things about Caz was the sleep outs. Once or twice during the week we'd all drag our mattresses out into the enormous field bounded by the cabins and the dining hill and sleep under the stars. And when I say stars, I mean stars. The whole of the Milky Way spread out before you, millions and millions of stars sweeping across the sky. A couple of years there were meteor showers, one year there was a total eclipse of the moon, and there was always that breathtaking dome of sky. Growing up in the hugely populous suburbs of San Francisco, I never had another opportunity to see so much of the solar system.

The summer I turned fourteen I had my first kiss at one of those sleep outs. A group of us were playing truth or dare, and I was dared to kiss one of the boys for three minutes while the others timed us. It was embarrassing, but it made me weak in the knees every time I thought about it for months. I don't even remember the boy's name now, how shameful is that?

One year we had to have a sleep in because of the weather. Our family group was in Redwood lodge. We played a variant of spin the bottle, with a flashlight. You spun and then turned off the light and kissed the person it pointed at. Then the next person would turn on the light again and move on. Ben, he of the surfer's arms, one of the most popular boys at camp each year, spun and it landed on me. Much to the embarrassment of us both, our kiss somehow lingered, and when the light turned on again, we were still kissing. I wanted to sink through the floor.

As much as it sounds like it, I was not the camp slut. Many of the kids were pairing up, making out at every opportunity, and as we got a bit older (I went to camp at Caz until the year after I graduated from High School), were sneaking into the cabins and having sex. I just had my two sleep-over game kisses, in the five or six years I went.

Barring the fact that I met my oldest friend at girl scout day camp, of all my camp experiences when I was young, Caz is the one I would be least willing to give up. I would like to go back and be a counsellor there, now that I'm returning to California, though the idea also makes me somehow nervous. I have so many happy memories, though obviously there were times when I didn't feel like I fit in, when I felt lonely, when I wasn't having fun, but on the whole that was a week I looked forward to all summer.