Camp Wawona, Part VI

I took the walk down the hill after the Friday night program with several of my co-workers who were afraid of the thick darkness. I did my best to reassure them, though, and by the time we neared the base of the hill, we were laughing, marching in time, and in a fit of complete and total silliness reciting the Pathfinder Pledge and Law and singing the Pathfinder Song. On Sabbath morning, I actually put a dress on for the first time in four weeks; I had to for my own sanity. It had been too long, and it felt wonderful to be in my church clothes, if only for about an hour.

After lunch, I packed up my camelback, took a glass of Inca Cola, and set out on the hike to the falls. I was glad I did: I found myself walking with Marshall, the archery director, and he turned out to be a treasure trove of information on medieval weaponry, the sort of things I need to know for the novel I'm writing. A group of the staff and I went off the trail and over many boulders to get to the falls. It felt good to go cross-country on solid rock, something I haven't done in some time. Later on, there were two baptisms at the river, after which I went back to the craft building. Wonder of wonders, the birthday gift I had made for my friend Caroline was finished, for which I was profoundly grateful.

When I went to do housekeeping the next morning, the vacuum cleaner I was using first refued to work for me at all. So, my supervisor came up and put a new bag in it, no problem--right? Wrong! As I was trying to clean upstairs in one of the messier cabins, it emitted clouds of dust at me and then promptly exploded, dust bunnies everywhere. You can imagine what kind of thoughts I was having about the Dirt Devil company at this time, as we radioed my supervisor once more to fix our "possessed" vacuum cleaner.

That evening, I went to campfire, ready to relax because I thought we weren't doing the play. Giselle, our programs director, came up to us about five minutes before the program started and told that yes, we were in fact doing the play. Although unexpected, it actually didn't turn out too bad. Our audience was much smaller than last week--there's only 15 families here for Family Camp, and it's been much easier on the kitchen staff, almost to the point where there's not enough work for us to do.

At breakfast yesterday, I discovered that one of these families was actually from my now former school, which was cool. The first part of my morning break was spent sending Caroline's gift, the second part, taking my daily hike up the hill and sopping on the way down to take an archery class. I actually hit the hay bale without problems on the first shot, to my surprise. Lunch went smoothly, and my afternoon break was spent productively studying music for the NCC's convocation this September. At dinner, I got to make churros, a very enjoyable process. The pirate play that night had some interesting glitches in it--a prop teapot actually had gatorade in it, much to the surprise of the actor who thought it was empty. He coughed and sputtered a bit, then moved on with the scene while the rest of the cast on stage struggled to avoid laughing. The pirate captian looked great in my jewelry, which I lend to them for this play.

After campfire, we had a pedicure party in the lodge, which was very relaxing and fun. I enjoyed not just fixing my feet up a bit, but just chilling with the other female staff. They really are nice, and I almost want to come back next summer just o be with them. . . but who know where next summer will take me? Just being here was a surprise, and a very good one. There's no telling what's next.