The End is Near

The last week of camp is flying by.

We’ve had Braveheart Night, a camp favorite. At lunch, one of our counselors announced that it was “Wells Fargo” Night, a night that we’ve done in the past but isn’t one of the nights most looked forward to. The campers, who are usually so excited for all the evening activities, were pretty apathetic towards this. After dinner, we were instructed to go to the lodge for a meeting. Our Assistant Camp Director, Andrew Brooks (who is generally an easy-going guy) tricked everyone into believing that he was furious that campers were continuing to break dishes on accident during meals. We all headed to the Dining Hall, thinking we were going to have to spend the night sweeping the floors and cleaning. When we got there, the projection screen was pulled down and all of the chairs were surrounding it. We took our seats, and proceeded to watch an epic short film introducing the actual night, featuring most of the staff members (courtesy of our camp videographer, Andrew Schundler).

Braveheart is a game where shirts tucked into our shorts are our life-lines, and if they get pulled out, we “die”. There are two teams, like in the movie Braveheart, Scotland and England. We played a few rounds against our respective enemies, and then, at the end, joined in a circle and had “call-outs”. This gives us an opportunity to battle someone one on one, or take on our entire cabin, etc. (Yes, Braveheart is indeed so amazing that I had to dedicate two large paragraphs to it.)

Over the past few days, everyone has been working on their “hearts”. These are heart-shaped cards handed to all the campers, giving everyone an opportunity to write to the friends they were the closest to over the session. It’s a camp tradition.

We went to the beach yesterday, and though the weather was pretty foggy and rainy, we all had a great time playing card-games and soccer. Some brave souls even got in the water and went surfing. Many worked on writing their hearts.

It’s pretty much go, go, go until the end now. Tonight we’re going roller-skating, then to Freeport, then a banquet, then a camp fire, and so on. Everyone is excited for the fun to come, but it is also clear that we are all bummed the session is ending.