My days at camp were very full, and each taught me several lessons. It might be hard to follow all the mentions I make in the following posts without knowing some context, so here are some outlines of camp life and what I did in the days.
Course Days
- Day one: Start at the base near Baltimore, Maryland. Pack gear and get to know the crew. Drive to the launch site on the Potomac River. Learn how to set up camp. First dinner and first night.
- Day two: Learn how to paddle the canoes and then paddle down to site two. First lunch stop, learn how to make a quick lunch out of very little. Go crazy in the river. Second Night.
- Day Three: Paddle to site three. Play in the river. Build crew relationships and learn more about how to work well together.
- Day Four: Paddle to site four, work on team-building games, and gain more experience.
- Day Five: Paddle to site five, do the solo and some team-building exercises, and gain more experience in general.
- Day Six: Paddle to the transfer site, take canoes out of the water, switch to backpacking gear, and drive to the Appalachian Trail. Hike the first mile uphill to the first site. Sleep under a tarp, not in a tent for the first time.
- Day Seven: Backpack to the next site. Learn more about backpacking,
- Day Eight: Backpack to rock climbing site, rock climb, sleep at site.
- Day Nine: Hardest day of backpacking.
- Day Ten: Last day on the Appalachian Trail!
- Day Eleven: Leave the Appalachian trail and drive to Boston for public service at a community garden. Drive to our last campsite in a state park. Play on the playground and enjoy our last night sleeping in the wild.
- Day Twelve: Drive back to base, clean gear, shower for the first time in forever, and fly home.
Gear
- On the river, we slept in tents. Since I was the only girl camper, I got my own tent.
- We used Canoes on the river with 2 people per canoe except for the “party canoe,” which had 3 people
- In the canoes, we used “water-tight” buckets to store food and plastic bins, and a cooler to store gear and more food.
- Each person had a large backpack for their personal stuff with a plastic bag inside to keep stuff dry. We gooseneck the bags to seal them, but most of the boys did loose goosenecks and ended up with wet stuff.
- Each person got a sleeping mat that was rolled up and strapped to the bottom of the backpacks.
- Each boat had: 2 people (with one exception), 2 backpacks, and tents, food buckets, or boxes.
- While Backpacking, we had to carry everything on our backs, so we brought fewer clothes and gear.
- Each person on their back had their personal clothes, 1-2 food bags, and a group gear item, e.g., a tent, rope, stove, pot, or other things.
- We slept under tarps on our sleeping mats on top of plastic sheets. I personally did not like the tarps because I am very afraid of spiders, and I found a lot in my hair, on me, or trying to go in my sleeping bag.
- For rock climbing, extra volunteers hiked up with the rock climbing gear for us and one other crew, so we did not have to carry that.
- Some people were stronger than others, so some people carried more than others, which was very kind.
Daily Flow
- 6:30-7:am wake up
- Get dressed. (some days, I wore the same outfit to bed because it was kinda useless trying to keep a set of clothes clean enough for sleeping. I told myself, “Embrace the dirt” because there was no way to keep dirt off me.)
- Pack up a sleeping mat and backpack.
- Either collapse tents or if you are the cook or leader for the day, go to respective jobs.
- Eat breakfast: breakfast usually consists of grits, cereal, sandwiches, or eggs. Our favorite was the grits because we also got sausage with them, which was cooked in honey. The honey was pretty much the only sugar that we got, so we went crazy over it.
- Clean up camp and move out: Whether we were on the water or on the trail, we always had camp sweeps and then moved on to the next place. Some days, we did have a game before we left, but not always.
- On the river/trail: going down the river was nice because we moved fast, only had to paddle, and could go for a swim by floating alongside the boats. On the trail was hot and sweaty and hard work. We took breaks whenever people needed them and wished we were on the water again.
- Lunch: Stoping for lunch was fun on the river and the trail. On the river, we would search for a place to land, and then the cooks would make lunch, and everyone else would go into the river or hang out on land. On the trail, lunch was the best part of the day because it was the longest break, and it had food involved. Everyone on the trip was between 12 and 14 (except for the instructors), and we ate a lot of food. So much so that our instructors had to get more food on the day we went from the river to the trail because we were always very hungry.
- Lunches pt.2: lunches were salad wraps, PB and J’s, or sandwiches of some sort. We never cooked food for lunches because we did not have the time or the stove fuel.
- Afternoon paddling or hiking: In the afternoon, we paddled or hiked to our next campsite and took breaks when necessary. Nothing super eventful took place every single day but there were certain adventures that happened.
- Arriving at the campsite: Every day, when we finally arrived at our campsite, everyone wanted just to sit down and rest, but we had to set up camp. So, every day, we got camp set up, and then we had a little bit of freedom before dinner. Unless, of course, you were the cook, then you had a job to do.
- Dinner: Dinner was the best meal of the day because it was filling and tasty and longer than the others.
- After dinner: After dinner, we usually had hang-out time, but some days, we went straight to the group meeting.
- Group Meeting: In the group meeting, we talked about our day and gave shout-outs to people who did good things, and we discussed issues and made rules. We talked about the next day and jobs and also did some icebreakers.
- Sleep: Ahhhh, at last! Sleep! Actually, most nights, sleeping was hard for me. Either I was wet or worrying about bugs. The sleeping mats were also very thin, about the thickness of 1 and a half iPhones. And the width measured the width of my notebook times 3. I measured it. It was not comfortable, but it was not meant to be comfortable, and I had to tell myself, just like with the dirt, to embrace the discomfort because doing hard things like that can build character. For me, it did.