Power Out

I woke up last night at 2:30am to crashing thunder. I thought something had exploded. I was out of bed and in my car before my eyes were fully open. The rain was pouring down and the roads had deep rivers cutting through and pooling in massive puddles everywhere. I shined my brights as I tried to look through the trees at the cabins. I was desperately looking for trees down or lighted up windows (indicating cabins filled with panicking, awake kids). I debated with myself if I should walk through the rain and go door to door, but I didn’t want to wake them up or scare them when I made their steps creak and squeak.

I know that when it rains, it sounds WAY worse inside the cabins because they are basically just wooden boxes. I knew there were probably some crying campers and frustrated staff members and there was nothing I could do to help. I was worried the rain would get worse or the wind would knock down a tree. Sometimes being responsible for everyone is the most terribly overwhelming thing in the world.

Once I’d seen all of the cabins and was reasonably sure there nothing terrible had happened, I returned to my house and went back to bed. I wasn’t really surprised when I woke up at 4am as the fan shut off, indicating that we lost power. I went back to sleep and assumed it would be back on by the morning.

But it was not back on when I woke up this morning. I took a deep breath and headed for the kitchen. Cook Z was much calmer than I’d expected. She was setting out cereal and cold breakfast foods and getting ready to re-plan the lunch menu in the event that the power wasn’t on by then.

We’ve had power outages every summer, but never longer than an hour or two. M&M and I quickly planned an activity rotation that kept all the kids in the dining hall since the rain was coming down so powerfully. As Counselor D lead morning prayer in the basement, I sent several staff around camp to gather supplies for the morning activities. I sent another group of staff down to the lake to fill buckets of water so I could flush the toilets, which, by that time were disgustingly full since the septic pump doesn’t work without electricity.

As I taught M, M and A the art of manually flushing toilets (a very useful skill that my dad taught me), the staff lead kids through paper airplane building, trivia, games and short relays.

When the power finally came back on AFTER LUNCH, I was proud of how well everyone- lead staff, cooks, counselors and even kids, had responded to the inconvenience. Everyone was patient, had a positive attitude and just made do with the situation. It wasn’t the catastrophe it could have been- it actually turned out to be a pretty great day overall.