The End is Near

Both Friday and Saturday were restful days, to no complaint of any of the counselors.

Friday Morning started with a totem pole dedication ceremony using the totem poles we decorated earlier in the week.

Each cabin had to choose a chief and dress them up for the ceremony. We chose Alex as our chief and with a little bit of war paint and a flashy vest to go along with it we made him look like a true warrior.

Each of the chiefs marched down to the fire pit, assisted by a counselor, and read their cabin’s speech about what it meant to be a camper here. For ours, we opened by using a speech from “The Hangover” about a wolf pack and changed it to a dog pack.

We spent the rest of the day packing and we said goodbye to Max a day early because he wanted to go to his Mom’s birthday party.

At night, we had our final council fire of the year and I was rightfully the archer once more. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as the archer here and I will never forget my only line, “We are the campers and staff of ITC who have proven themselves worthy of this council fire!”

After a relaxing Saturday with a lot of napping, we welcomed our final new campers on Sunday. Our cabin for session seven includes many past sheepdogs. Both Calvin and Seth are staying from session six. In addition, both Gus and Bob are back. Four new campers, Richard, Jason, Eric, and JJ, arrived on Sunday as well.

One day into the week, there has already been a lot of interaction among our campers.

We gave Bob a great homecoming by having the camp’s power chair that is so dear to him. We also told Calvin to give him a hug, which he did with pleasure and put a huge smile on Bob’s face.  

The funniest example of the interactions is Eric and Bob. Eric is a nonverbal camper who often comes up to us and points to his favorite stuffed animal: Barney.  For some reason, Eric took to Bob right away. He pointed to Bob and we quickly realized that he would go anywhere with Bob.

“He is infatuated with me,” Bob said as we lead Eric up to get his medicine (the only way we could get him to go.) “I now have a leech,” he added.

During the fire, I noticed Bob off in the distance by himself laughing very hard. I was not sure what it was about but then I realized that he had found someone’s flip-flop and was throwing it to make it harder to find. The look of self-satisfaction on his face was hilarious considering he did not even know anyone was even watching.

At night, Richard organized a miniature game of football in our cabin. It was funny to see him try to get Calvin to mimic his three-point-stance.

The only person who did not enjoy the football game is Gus. Richard spent a long time trying to convince him to play, giving him very specific instructions to which Gus replied “Here’s the deal, just go ahead and pretend I am playing because I’m going to bed.”

Overall, I think this is going to be a great final week of camp because we once again have such a wide variety of personalities in our cabin.