Outdoor Ed. Travel Log

I was a Cabin Leader. Everyone thought I was twenty-one.

2/1 Monday
The buses were early, which never happens; no one forgot anything that needed to be brought from home (one forgot a handbook, but it wasn't realized until everyone was at camp and he survived without it), which never happens; everyone who had signed up showed up, which never happens; and someone actually realized that my nickname was Wren with a 'W', which yeah.
My co-cabin leader (who was nice and a ball of energy--nice when watching 12 fifth-grade boys) and I met our naturalist for the week, who is basically the adult on deck. This was immediately followed by some productive time working on a skit we needed done by Thursday.
And I had a sudden fear of dying and being forgotten for no apparent reason. It went away after taking a break from the kids.

2/2 Tuesday
This was our beach day, meaning the entirety of the morning went wake up->get dressed->have breakfast->beach. I tried to pay attention to what I was smelling. That last was actually quite interesting, I usually just smell enough to vaguely identify and then ignore the scent or actively block it out. During this time, I found that skunk actually doesn't smell that bad. It's not good, but it's no worse than, say, burnt food. Different, naturally, but no worse.
And I had a sudden fear of dying and being forgotten for no apparent reason. It went away after thinking about what was bothering me and coming to the conclusion that it wasn't really as bad as my hype.
We went to the Earth Dance, which during the past few times had been crazy time, and this time was learning other cultures' dances. We actually ended up incorporating one into our cabin's skit, it was a dance that was used as an alternative to beating each other up. I believe that the belief is that the person who is able to dance it correctly for longer had the better precision/agility/stamina and would have won anyway. And hey, you don't have to send anyone to be stitched up, and probably no one dies! (Deaths by exhaustion are still rarer than deaths by being repeatedly hit over the head while still exhausting yourself.)

2/3 Wednesday
We got a giant sock for being quiet.
On our hike, one of the first things we did was look into treetops, and it was early enough that the sunlight filtered down through them without blinding us, giving that dappled sunlight look to the surrounding forest. We also learned that, in addition to the term family circles, another way to refer to those groups of redwoods is fairy rings.
Oh, and just to add to the world-upside-downedness established Monday, the boys' bathrooms were in better shape than the girls'.
This part is important, to me at least: I saw Orion. Not a grouping of stars making up a rough outline of his corners, or something like that, actually saw what would make someone look up into the sky and say, "Hey, there's a person up there." The trick is to realize that the stars are not markers of corners, but where the light would shine off his armor. That's why there's nothing around his arms, there's nothing to shine there. It was a pretty spectacular feeling, though I doubt I'm communicating it well.

2/4 Thursday
We got another giant sock.
We went to the Emerald Forest--a buckeye grove where almost everything was emerald, since moss covered what other plants didn't. Then we went up to the garden, a short but vertical hike, and I sang a bit to keep the kids from getting to loud and rowdy. There were mentions of American Idol, but I just told them I lacked a video camera and left it at that.
Then there was skit night, wherein almost everyone forgot their lines and quite a few people exited, pursued by a bear. Yes, the same bear.

2/5 Friday
I had to (temporarily) confiscate a small, black, stuffed dog named Scruffy. The owner kept yelling "Scruffy attack!" and throwing him at people. Even after being told several times not to do anything that could be described with the word "attack," he yelled, "Wood cookie attack!" Yes, it was a small, short cylinder of wood. Yes, it connected. Yes, it connected with the back of a kid's head. He got in trouble for that one.
We watched a slideshow of what had happened, and I got an odd sort of memory. One was the intended, remembering everything that had happened that week. Another was of the last time I had seen the slideshow. And a third was a vague memory from about six years ago, when I had been at Outdoor Ed. as a kid and watched the slideshow of my week.

Someday, when I've got some fans, I'll care enough to edit these things more thoroughly.

...

Nah.