Camp Chuckling Falls*

Chaperoning the boys’ camping trip this past weekend was like being a guest at a wedding. You don’t have to plan. You don’t have to organize activities. You don’t have a motivational role. You get to take part. You are encouraged to hang out . You are asked to be there for them. The structure is set by others and it was so great to do what was set out by someone else. However, unlike a wedding, the children’s cabin smelled like sweet milk and dirty puppies.

Highlights from the trip: Never having played Capture the Flag before, I was frustrated with how deadlocked that game can be. And yet the children were not as interested in the final outcome just the process was thrilling for them. Serving food lunch-lady style-- getting to see how they asked for what they wanted, how some didn’t. Watching them be on a trip that is an extension of their classroom. Playing the board game" Life" with Manny and his friends: “Manny, you can choose College Career or just plain Career.” Serving cheeseburger-sized s'mores to them for a post-breakfast breakfast. Having a thunderstorm with forty-some children in bunks. Being there for Benicio’s Feedback and Cleansing Ceremony the morning after many of them had been away from home for the first time. It would feel like to much disclosure to share too much about that. But I will say that it’s like watching kids pray, closing their eyes, their kid-belly jutting out, so little armor, so incredible.

*I like to tell hypothetical stories to the kids. A less preachy and indirect way of teaching morals, fears/shames, and in some cases, exclusion, tattling, sarcasm, things like that. So in the weeks before the trip, we discussed a hypothetical camping trip and its possible scenarios, whose campground went by this name.