Above and Beyond

At this camp, we go above and beyond. We don’t just do the bare minimum, we do our best to make activities different, add small details to make sure that the week is memorable, create magic. Sometimes it means we spend hours crafting or stay up late preparing programming, but that’s why our programs are awesome.

It’s “fun with food” week, so the theme activities have a food theme. We did an activity with different stations where kids could do different activities based on the food pyramid (dairy= create a milk mustache pose, protein= doing exercises to build muscle, etc), did some crazy Olympic relays that involved food, built towers using marshmallows and noodles and yesterday, we cooked over the campfire.

Last year, one of my favorite memories was campfire cooking with a group of 9 year old boys. We made bannock, which is basic bread that uses flour, water, baking soda and is deep fried in Crisco. It isn’t something I would want to eat every day, but I let them cover it in powered sugar and they loved it!

I was a little nervous when PDS and PDP decided to make this an all-camp activity. We talked about having each cabin group do the activity separately, but I was nervous that staff wouldn’t be able to safely lead it on their own. We also don’t have enough fire pits for each cabin to be separate, and the bigger the groups at each fire pit, the more dangerous. So we decided to have everyone together so that we could have a counselor show going at the same time we cooked so the kids would be entertained and not mess around by the fire.

We started a nice big fire with big logs creating a frame around it and some metal grates across it to set the giant frying pans on top of. It was a very nice set up.

The first grease fire was small- the fire was a little too high and the grease that was heating in one of the pans caught fire. I pulled the pan off the fire and dumped the grease into the dirt and the fire went out quickly. I attempted to make the fire a little smaller by pouring water on it, but some of the water got into the second frying pan and that was when the SECOND grease fire started. That one was a little bigger and while the kids were QUITE impressed (some even suggested I should have my own cooking show), I was slightly terrified that I was about to start a forest fire.

I got the second grease fire under control and although my adrenaline was pumping and in my head I was wondering what on earth we were doing, we forged ahead. PDS, APDA and I sat in the middle of the fire pit, squeezing bags of dough (each kid got to go through a line, collect ingredients and mix them in a ziplock) into the pans. The fire was hot and we were sweating terribly. The grease was flicking out tiny painful drips that were landing on our legs. The bread itself was not worth the effort- the outside was either charred or covered in char flakes, the inside was runny, with a sandy crunch every so often. There was little taste to it, even with powdered sugar and, considering we’d had delicious pancakes for breakfast and lunch was an hour off, most kids weren’t interested. The counselor show was a hit! Kids were very entertained, and had there not been a flaming distraction in the middle of the circle, I think they could have sat there quietly and peacefully entertained the whole hour.

10 minutes into the activity, I looked at PDS ad she had the same hysterical look in her eyes that I was feeling and I said, “what are we doing?!” Why aren’t we playing capture the flag or something easy? By an hour into it, we were both manically laughing, verging on tears of hysteria and by the time the kids left, we flopped down, sweaty and exhausted.

In 12 summers of working at camp, I think that was the worst experience I’ve ever had. Perhaps sometimes it is not necessary to go above and beyond.