Claim Your Freedom

Tags

4th of July, 91st Psalm, Freedom, Independence

Happy Birthday America; land of the free.

Today I claim my freedom from the dark forces around us in this year of Covid, riots, and click bait.  I will turn off the news, ignore social media, and head outside for some neighborly greetings.  Never before have I seen so many walkers, runners, and hikers in my diverse neighborhood.  We always smile and wave at each other.  In our greetings, we feel unconditional love for each other.  We are all law abiding citizens enjoying our freedom in the greatest country on Earth.  What we don’t always know is that there are many more of us than the news reports.

Today, let us celebrate what the Psalmists promises those of us who believe this way:

A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.
Only with your eyes can you behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Unplug, take a walk today, because you can.

Because you have made the Lord, who is our refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come nigh your dwelling;

Our flag, a symbol of freedom for all.

Let’s start now in our own thought, which is our dwelling place, and know the dark forces cannot touch us.  Join me today, on this 4th of July, in celebrating our freedom and independence.

When You Can’t Return to Camp

Tags

Missing Camp

To this day, when summer rolls around I miss all the good things about camp.  There were a few bad things, and I purposely chose not to write about them in Memory Lake because for the most part they have fallen by wayside over the years.  You may already know I was not an ideal camper.  I had no friends among the staff or even the counselors.  I kept to my friends, chose easy activities, and never won an award.  It should have been no surprise when I did not get asked to come back as a counselor.  Still, I was completely miserable my 17th summer at home.  All my friends were Up North without me.  We did not communicate after camp had ended, or for many years after.  That took a while.  I missed the cabins, the lake, and my friends, or so I thought.  What I really missed, (and it took me many years to figure this out), was the ease of my faith and the peace it held over me while at camp.  Once I got busy finding my faith away from camp, the pain considerably lessened.   So now, even though camp has ended forever for me, my faith has not.  I find it in all sunsets, not just the ones over Lake Michigan. I hear it in all birdsong, not just the whippoorwill.  I feel it under all crescent moons, not just the ones outside my cabin screen.  And I hold it close all year-long, not just in the summer.  So, to all the young folks out there who are facing a spring that is leading to the pain of your first summer away from camp, I offer this excerpt from Memory Lake…

“This is my last year,” Maggie said.  “My parents don’t know it yet,” she added, in response to our gasps of surprise.  Her family provided active support to the camp.  We assumed she’d return year after year like the rest of them.

“Me too,” my sister agreed.  “I’m done.”

If it had been any other time, Susan’s conviction would have caused me to hyperventilate.  Instead, I accepted it.  “They probably won’t ask me back as a counselor,” I fished, peering askance at Linda, supposing she would know.

“You don’t need to come back,” Linda stated with factual ease.  “There are so many wonderful things you’ve never done, places you’ve never been.  I may not see the lake again for many, many years.”

We held a respectful silence, facing the surf and the horizon.  I wondered if the same would hold true for me.  “Most people have a place where they feel the Lord dwells,” Linda continued.  “This will always be mine.  And, I will carry it here.”  She pressed a hand against her chest.  “Decide what you want out of life, speak the words, and then let it happen.  Creation happens by letting,” Linda said.

“That’s right,” Maggie agreed.  “Let there be light’.”

“Oh, yeah,” I whispered.  By ‘letting’ myself be different, I had found the strength to break away from my friends.  At the beginning of every summer I had plopped down on my cot and sensed camp’s fleeting existence in my life.  Now I recognized its lasting presence.  These time-outs from the distractions of home had helped me formulate who I wanted to be.  Though still fuzzy and out of focus, the view had just grown clearer, and my faith in having the right tools, for me, had just grown stronger.  I only needed to enter the world and learn to use them in a productive manner.  Let my friends return as counselors, but I would move on.”

Welcome to adulthood! 😉

If you’re curious about a traditional camp experience or want to relive it…

Tags

Camp Edition, Old Bridge Observer

Reprinted from published article, Wednesday March 11, 2015, Vol. 26, Old Bridge Observer:

Send your kids on an adventure this summer!  They will benefit greatly from being unplugged for a few weeks.  They’ll learn to appreciate a beautiful sunrise and sunset.  They’ll bask in the vista earned from a mountain hike.  They’ll learn the satisfaction of building a campfire and the joy of paddling a canoe.  Friendships will thrive on a different level from the school year and faith will become more than a vague concept.

Opportunities await…

Yes, sleepover camp is costly, the logistics are challenging, and letting go is difficult; which, curiously enough, is the best reason of all to send your kids to camp.  They’ll learn to see their lives from the outside in, and will return home with a new perspective and a new found gratitude.

This happened to me and it changed my life, which is why I wrote “Memory Lake: The Forever Friendships of Summer.”  Over five summers, for seven weeks at a time, I entered a thrilling world of autonomy.  I gained confidence, meaningful friendships, and a glimmer of the adult I wanted to be.  I will always be grateful to my parents for taking this leap of faith and letting me go.  If you are curious about a traditional camp experience, or simply want to relive it, “Memory Lake” will take you there.  Please enjoy this excerpt…

The Majesty of Nature…

…By the time I reached Sandpiper my sand-dappled feet had completely dried.  I nudged my shoulder against the door, mindful of pinching my skin in the outer spring.  This coil spanned the middle and creaked in protest while rubbing a small groove in the wood.  I slipped through and it banged loudly.  I flinched.  My eyes adjusted and I searched about to see if anyone else had moved in.  The bunk above mine wore a colorfully striped woolen blanket tucked neatly into every corner.

            “Hi, I’m Nancy,” a voice said.

            I saw her silhouette against the screened window, mirroring my height.  She stepped into a golden ray of afternoon sun.  Her hair hung twice my length, with bangs, and traces of red among strands of black and brown.  Her smile boasted perfectly white teeth, newly freed from braces.

            I exclaimed, “My name is Nancy, too!  I’ve never met another Nancy my age!  Not in my entire junior high.”

            “This is my first time at camp.  I’m only staying three weeks,” she said.

I understood her hopeful undertone.  “Me too,” I gushed, equally relieved to know she would not be running off with some long missed friends from a previous summer.  “Have you taken the swim test, yet?”  I shivered at the memory.  “The lake is freezing!”

A stream of knowing laughter erupted from her chest.  I laughed along, believing I had found a friend in this strange place.

“It is cold,” she grimaced distastefully.  “I did the test in the river.”

“Did you get dressed in the cabin?”  I searched through the screens for stray fathers or more guys carrying trunks. 

“Yeah,” she said.  “If you hurry, the coast is clear.”

She watched the boardwalk while I changed into dry clothes.  I also ditched the rubber thongs in favor of my hip leather sandals.  “We drove up from South Bend, Indiana,” I said, hoping for more things in common.  “Where are you from?”

“Dryden, New York.”  She smiled wistfully.  “We live in the country.  There is a small lake in front of our house.  We have ducks, and geese.” 

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No brothers, only sisters.”

“Me too!” I exclaimed, astoundingly satisfied by our similarities.  “I have one sister in Driftwood.”

Nancy answered all the questions I put to her about Dryden while the other beds in the cabin filled up.  Their faces have grown vague over the years, as well as the face of our counselor, Leslie, but I still remember their names, Corrine, Mindy, and Franny.  Leslie coordinated introductions then herded us out the door to assemble with the rest of the campers around the flagpole. 

A creosote log, more of a telephone pole than an actual flagpole, anchored a thick cotton version of the ‘Stars and Stripes’.  It flapped noisily in the ever-present breeze.  Corrine, Mindy and Franny dispersed into the group to find friends from different cabins while Nancy and I stuck together like glue.  I counted roughly forty girls in our circle, some as young as eight and others as old as seventeen.  Without warning, a handful of them started singing.  They punched each note wildly and loudly.

‘The Cannibal KING with the big nose RING fell in love with the dusky maaaaid. 

And every NIGHT by the pale moon LIGHT across the lake he’d waaaade…..’

            “Who makes this stuff up?” I whispered to Nancy, loving her soft, encouraging laughter. 

My sister waved from across the circle.  She stood near the oldest girls.  I couldn’t take my eyes off them.  Infinitely above reproach, they whispered among themselves, casually at ease in their dangling wire earrings, painted nails, low hip huggers, wide macramé belts, skimpy triangle halters, bare tanned midriffs, and full figures.  I would be entering high school in a year and envisioned vast halls full of such girls.  I wanted to be one of them.  I imagined they protested the immature song.  So I held my silence and protested it too.  I loved music, all kinds, and had been told my voice was nice, but I didn’t believe anyone older than me would want to sing this blather.  It belonged in my mom’s pre-school.

The pandemonium expanded as more campers joined in.  Eventually my newly anointed idols added their voices to the fray, carrying on and having fun.  A couple of them actually dispersed through the circle to teach others!  Even Nancy joined in!  I couldn’t find a single scornful, arrogant protestor akin to the mute, cool kids in my 8^th grade chorus.  Happily amazed, I tried to sing along.

When the song reached its long, unnatural end it dawned on me; camp required a different sort of cool.

Editors Note:  When we were planning the 2015 Camp Guide, we asked Woodbridge author Nancy Kyme to select one of her favorite excerpts from her book about summer camp to share with Observer newspaper readers.

What are you doing to challenge yourself?

Tags

challenge, growth

Remember when you didn’t need a purse or wallet, when you ran everywhere, laughed at everything, and only worried about making it to dinner on time?  Remember when taking on a dare gave you courage and you spent more time on friendships because you had more time?

Some challenges are physical…

When songs and stories take us back in time with an eye toward recalling important lessons, I believe we can find the wisdom and confidence we need to face the fears of growing up, taking risks, and growing old.

Some challenges are more personal…. like getting her email address.

In preparation for a radio interview I gave last month, I was asked to list some of the lessons in Memory Lake.  Of course, I’d prefer readers discover them on their own because they are woven into the novel, but that would not make ‘good radio’.  So, to meet that challenge, I compiled the six main lessons of Memory Lake:

1)      We are only as good as the company we keep.

2)      A forever friend is a friend made, and kept, without pretense.

3)      Jealousy springs from a limited sense of blessings and a belief there is not enough good to go around.

4)      We all have been blessed with hidden talents and our task in life is to find them.

5)      Growth happens when we challenge ourselves.  If we only put ourselves in safe situations, we do not grow.

6)      It is important to continually challenge ourselves and to find something of value from every mistake.

Number 6 is the reason I get up in the morning and do what I do.   So, what are you doing today to challenge yourself?

 

Camp Memories and a Camp Reunion

Tags

Crystal River, Fishing, Keen, Kelty, Lake Michigan, Leelanau Outdoor Center, Mary Baker Eddy, memories, Northern Michigan, REI, reunion, Sleeping Bear Dunes

My Gear; sleeping bag, down coat, and water bottle.

I haven’t slept in a cabin in almost four decades since my last year at camp.  The prospect of doing so in late September in Northern Michigan did not appeal to me. But that’s how this camp reunion was shaping up and I had already booked my non-refundable flight.  I felt confident of a good time, even if none of my camp friends had signed up, because I traveled with ‘Lathe’.   We call her ‘Lathe’ because otherwise she’d be another Susan.  She coordinated our flights from Northern Virginia and made sure I shared her cabin.

Lathe is a board member, (one of those mysterious ladies behind the scenes), and we had attended camp together all those years ago.  Lathe looked up to me, perhaps, (probably not), because I had been a Counselor in Training when she’d been a camper.  Since she decided to sleep in an unheated cabin, and I look up to her now, I decided I should sleep in one too.  And, I wanted to prove to my husband that I could rough it, (never mind the actual bed and cabin), and I wanted to prove to myself that I really had learned all those great life-changing lessons in Memory Lake.

Lake Michigan; chilly but beautiful…

I bought a sub-zero sleeping bag from REI and a high-tech down coat and packed flannels and wool socks.  The first night, Lake Michigan raged below the cliff and a cold wind whipped through gaps along the shuttered screens. My nose dripped through the tiny gap of my zipper’s opening. I tried to fall asleep but mostly I held stiff and rigid on the plastic mattress covered in a towel.  I imagined snow drifted against the back of the cabin.

“Do I have to go to the bathroom?” I wondered, taking a body check in the dark. “No, I can wait.”  Time passed slowly and painfully. “No, I can’t wait,” I decided.  I unzipped the sleeping bag from toes to shoulders. Its high-pitched rip roared like an alarm clock.  No one stirred from the rows of bunks, but I imagined having awakened them all.  I donned my down jacket, which I had been using as a pillow, slipped into my Keens, and tried to tip-toe down the aisle toward the door in complete darkness.  I unlatched the metal hook, (more unbearable noise,) and braced for an arctic blast.  A balmy breeze hit me.  As I darted for the bug light outside the bath house, I wondered, greatly annoyed, why it seemed so darn cold in the cabin!  I repeated this same noisy routine two more times before dawn.

Posing like campers from the Fifties in one of the camp’s old photos…

Far too early, someone hit the cabin light.  “Dips,” a voice whispered.  My bed had finally become warm, cozy, and comfortable and I did not want to move.  When I emerged from my mummy bag, all the beds were lifeless except the one nearest the door.  Ellie stood beside her foot-high pile of blankets hauled to camp in her car.  She raised her eyebrows at me and the unsavory task ahead; getting into swim gear.  She rushed, so I rushed, because we couldn’t miss dips.  Lathe was out there.  Everyone was out there.  I wanted to ask her how many times she got up, if she had heard me, and if she had slept at all.

We stepped from the cabin into the rising heat of the sun.  Ellie deadpanned, “It’s winter on the other side of this cabin, you know.”  I laughed, feeling the same sort of relief as I had my first year at camp, decades earlier, when I’d met the other ‘Nancy’.  Except, Ellie was more like another ‘me’.  Lathe was her ‘Nancy’, the best friend and perfect camper who kept her in line.  As we stood on the cabin stoop and stared into the woods where the 100 wooden steps descended to the freezing lake, Ellie droned, “Well, let’s get down there so everyone can see us.”

There’s a Big Fish story here. Would you believe it jumped into our canoe?

During the reunion, I stuck near Ellie and she proved my theory; every perfect camper needs an imperfect friend to balance out the universe.  We were those imperfect campers.  Ellie and I had amazingly similar memories.  We dreaded council fires for not earning ‘beads’, though we happily watched our friends win awards. We always messed up in front of counselors or just missed that opportunity to be helpful.  Our similar stories made us laugh from pure joy and gratefulness because we knew even as mediocre campers, we had developed confidence, leadership abilities, and hidden strengths by attending camp.

Suzy, (another imperfect camper), suggested we had actually reached perfect camper status because we attended camp reunions. She offered this bit of wisdom as she navigated our canoe down the Crystal River. (Her mom had wisely put a ‘z’ in her name to differentiate her from all the other Susans, and it worked once you knew the ‘z’ was there.)  Suzy had been a camper in the Fifties.  She so effectively linked our camp experiences, I now feel connected to the old camp.  Suzy is how I imagine my mom would have been as a camper, and how she would be now, if she had lived.

My Craft Project…
(Photo of KT and Lilly in Seattle at the Chihuly Garden and Glass)

Marcia (aka ‘Robyn’ in Memory Lake) ran the reunion and tried to keep us on some sort of schedule.  (Josh, our talented chef, really appreciated that.)  Honestly, Marcia’s dedication amazes me and I’m still trying to live up to her expectations. “Since you’re the writer…,” she told me 15 minutes before ‘skits’ on the first night, “Write some dialogue for us.  Here’s the scenario….” I spent ten minutes locating paper and pen.  Frantically, I managed to eek something together and it actually drew laughter.  Phew!  I suppose such feats are possible at camp because expectations run high yet everyone is easy to please.

The rainy day turned out to be my favorite. We sipped hot tea and hung out in the heated arts and crafts shed amid a cozy atmosphere of creativity.  Lathe, Kappy, Deb, Murph, some Susans, Diane, and Lee Ann wove complicated, intricate bracelets to rival boutique merchandise.  Ellie and I hot-glued rocks to wooden picture frames.  We didn’t even gather the rocks ourselves, I’m embarrassed to say.  Except, I did add a few tiny pebbles as fillers, purposely gathered on my exciting day of canoeing the Crystal River with Suzy.

Taking it ‘home’….

Except for a deep longing to return to my heated bedroom in Virginia, I was sad to leave the company of so many confident, accomplished women who similarly credit camp for defining their strengths and honing their focus.  We are fit, optimistic, and not nearly finished with all we intend to accomplish.

Thanks ladies, you have reminded me why I wrote Memory Lake.  (Now in its Second Edition with an authentic cover depicting Lake Michigan from the top of the Sleeping Bear Dunes!)  Many thanks to the year-round staff of the Leelanau Outdoor Center (LOC) for making the week-end possible.

“Spiritual development… propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit….  Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love.”  Science & Health, BY Mary Baker Eddy.  (P.66)

The Powerful Legacy of Tangible Books

Tags

Emmet Fox, Flint, H. Emilie Cady, Lake St. Helen, Lessons in Truth, Mary Baker Eddy, Metaphysical, Michigan, tangible books, Truth

Inscribe your favorite books, underline passages, and hold on to them.  They will tell your children, and their children, more about you than any photo album.  Thank goodness my mother never met a book too intimidating to write in, to bend a corner, to underline a passage, or scribble a thought.

A First Generation book from the 1940s beside a Second Generation book from 1986. Both are user-friendly.

When she passed away in 2001, at 64, my step-dad boxed up her metaphysical book collection and sent it to my sister.  Overwhelmed by memories, Susan sent the box to me.  I hastily absorbed it into my collection of similar books Mom had given me over my adult life. Each one is packed full of wisdom.  Every book is inscribed and many contain Mom’s left-handed scrawl of a random thought as she worked out its meaning.

Mom had been raised Catholic.  I often asked her why we were not Catholic, same as Nanny, Papa, my aunt, uncle and all our cousins.  She confided a longing for something different at an early age due to a little book she had read as a teenager. She never mentioned the name of this book or where she had found it, only that it had changed her life.

The little black book with a history, and its compatible hardware.

Recently, as I waited for my laptop to perform lengthy updates, a little book beckoned from the adjacent bookshelf.  I marveled at its delicate binding and content pre-dating a similar book by the same author Mom had given me decades earlier.  As I read her inscription inside the front cover, I realized this was the book.  I had finally found it.  Mom had penned, “… found in the book-case of the cottage my father, A.R. Mason, purchased on Lake St. Helen, in Michigan.  This was approximately 1950-51.  It was my first introduction to truth and my constant quest to use these truths that make us free. Dorothy Ann Mason Lincoln.”

The little black book’s inscription.

Her father’s cottage is mentioned in Memory Lake as ‘Papa’s cottage’. This log summerhome on tiny Lake St. Helen, in Central Michigan, delivered a childhood of laughter, pranks, skits, and sunshine to my sister, my cousins, and me.  I still dream of its artesian well, woven hammocks, rocky flower beds hiding fat night-crawlers, and the steep hill to the lake.  Its musty interior held many more treasures; a deer mount, faded upholstered furniture, bookshelves of hard-bound classics, and a defunct player-piano.  When I was ten, Papa sold all of it upon learning he was terminally ill.  Soon after, my sister and I began our years at summer camp.

Fish caught from the night-crawlers dug from Papa’s flowerbeds. That’s me in the middle.

My mother was fourteen when her father bought the cottage fully furnished.  She hadn’t liked the place at first.  Bored and disgruntled to be spending the weekend at the lake, instead of at home with friends, I imagine she had knelt on the large woolen rug, wearing saddle shoes and bobby socks, to examine the bookshelf.  There she had found this little book and began reading.

Memory Lake is a ripple of this memory which continues to expand sixty-two years later.  The little black book is inspiring, but not surprising because Mom had succeeded in her quest for truth and raised me on it. Instead, the surprise lies in the book’s existence.  It held the capacity to sleep for decades without updates, conversions,  or electricity to reveal a profound window to the past. I wonder, will someone find an e-reader sixty years from now with such a personal impact?  Most likely it will not power up.

Inscribe your favorite books, underline passages, and hold on to them.  They will tell your children, and their children, more about you than any photo album. 

* H. Emilie Cady is the little black book’s author and she is affiliated with Unity.  This is not the church I attended, nor the church affiliated with the camp in Memory Lake, so it is a fun coincidence that she was from Dryden, New York, the same one stop-light hometown of my first friend at camp, and main character in Memory Lake, “Nancy Roman”.

The Legend of Sleeping Bear Dunes

Tags

Dapine, Great Spirit, Lake Michigan, Made in Michigan, Manitou Island, Memory Lake, Michigan, North Manitou Island, Second Edition, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Tate Publishing, The Legend of Sleeping Bear, Wisconsin

George Vieira’s interpretation of the old legend is well-written and faithfully crafted.  He has graciously allowed me to re-post it.  The dunes play a key role in “Memory Lake; The Forever Friendships of Summer.”  Tate Publishing is launching the Second Edition this month and the new cover is a view of Lake Michigan from the top of the dunes. You can see it on their website:   http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-62746-240-2

Please read George’s blog post below, or visit his page:   http://mishigamaa.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/the-legend-of-sleeping-bear/

The Legend of Sleeping Bear

Posted on August 10, 2013 by George Vieira

The wind breathes a song of ancient wisdom – only listen to the rattle of the ghost forest up on the dunes. It’s the story of Dapine, mother bear, proud parent of sharp claws and soft fur. Her cubs dancing on rolling Wisconsin plains, two brothers in the summer sun, animated by a boundless spirit. A bond unbreakable, unbelievable, takes us back to that terrible month when the sun hung too close to the Earth for too long.

Day after day, the leaves curled and the grass progressively turned orange. The forest was brittle and dangerous. Then one night lightning struck and set a dry patch ablaze. As luck would have it a fierce wind howled and blew the flames higher and farther, until the flames towered over the forest animals. Instinctively, Dapine ran for Lake Michigan, that immortal body, her cubs racing behind her, tripping over their young, clumsy paws. Though safe in the calm, placid waters of the lake, she saw in the thick black smoke the desolation and starvation that awaited her cubs once the fire died. Where they’d rolled and played and sweet honeycombs had bounded, charred nothingness would smolder.

So Dapine swam, desperate, one stroke at a time, towards Michigan. The journey was long and difficult, and the young cubs struggled to keep up, panting, tongues agog. On the second night of their journey, a great storm whipped the lake into a panicked frenzy. Hail pelted their thick coats; lightning made their fur stand on end. And somewhere in the wild waves she lost her cubs, their panicked faces illuminated by one last flash of light before being enveloped in permanent darkness.

Dapine swam against the tide for many hours in search of her cubs. She cried out their names, desperate, painful screams full of sorrow. But no answer. Exhausted, she turned back the following morning for the northwest shore of Michigan. Drenched and tired, she finally pawed her way onto the promised beach. At last. The sky was deep and blue, the green expanse of trees swayed in the wind. There was food, shelter, and water.

But no cubs.

All Dapine could think of was her cubs. She felt little relief or happiness in having made it alive to Michigan. Day and night, she faithfully watched the endless waves hoping to catch a glimpse of her lost cubs. In her many, fevered dreams, there they were, safe and warm in the old den, gnawing on the fish bones held between their tiny claws. She quickly grew wane and emaciated, her hair falling out in tufts on the soft sand.

Seeing Dapine, the Great Spirit was moved to tears by her story, from the veil of impartial observation to utmost mercy. As the earth shook and a hard rain fell, he raised two large landmasses above the waters of Lake Michigan in remembrance of Dapine’s cubs, North Manitou Island and South Manitou Island. He imbued the islands with their innocent energy, so that it would be a grand memorial to Dapine’s loss. She saw this, and like animals always do, knew right away what it meant.

And so with heavy sigh, Dapine closed her eyes and slept by the waves. It was then she felt a sudden lightness, her soul hovering over her own body. Carried by the force of the Great Spirit, she ascended up beyond the worries of the world, where in the limitless sky her cubs hopped from cloud to cloud in excitement, reunited with their mother at last.

Back down on earth, Dapine’s body turned to sand, more and more sand. In her place a great dune emerged, which from the Manitou Islands resembled a giant sleeping bear. The Great Spirit did this as a testament to the power of love, the story of Dapine and her cubs. Even today, the area is called the Sleeping Bear Dunes, and the story is written of on plaques and in books, never forgotten.

The Best Kind of Fireworks…

Tags

Big Dipper, Camping, cassiopeia, Crystal River, Draco, Fireworks, Independence Day, Lake Michigan, Meteor Shower, North Star, Recreation, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Tent, United States

The Last Day of School, Opening Day of Camp, and Pawn Tickets. Huh?

Tags

American Camp Association, Camps, Government, Labor Day, Midwest, Northern Michigan, Opening Day, Parenting Magazine, Pawn Stars, Recreation, Rules, Safety, Sheridan Mountain Campus, summer vacation, United States, Virginia

Summer vacation comes late to Virginia public schools.  Today is their last day; Tuesday, June 18th.  KT always missed these final days of school so I could get her to Northern Michigan for camp’s Opening Day, which occurred for Midwest camps over the weekend.  It was tough motivating her toward perfect attendance all year, knowing this conflict loomed. I always felt guilty about her missing school, although the only real lesson imparted these last few days is that government is inflexible.  Yes, I know we need rules.  They keep us safe, calm and civil.  But kids should have different rules shortly after Memorial Day.

Prince William County Virginia Crossing Guard. Thank-you Marietta!

When we moved here from Nebraska twenty years ago, I noticed an increased government presence.  The crossing guards impressed me most of all.  They are police department employees through the Crossing Guard Bureau.  They wear spiffy white caps, official badges, WHITE gloves, and they will not hesitate to put their lives in peril to stop traffic.  Some of the streets are quite busy.  All the commuters are angry and impatient.  Most notably, Virginia is HOT in June, especially when standing in the sun on asphalt. I assumed the guards vacationed over the summer until I chatted with Marietta yesterday.  She enters pawn tickets into the police department data base between assignments.  Hmmm… they never mention this on Pawn Stars.  Perhaps it would deter customers if they knew.  More government. More rules. More protection.  I forgot to ask Marietta if the gloves come off for this.

It’s not too late to rescue your kids from a summer of home rules, city dangers, and government protections.  You can still send them to camp, especially if you live in Virginia*.  Go to the American Camp Association website, search for the best fit, and have the fortitude to send them.  Pawn them away from your television and their game consoles.  Send them into nature.  They will be safe.  And, they will return to you much improved.

(You can read about camp, and journey there in your imagination by reading Memory Lake: The Forever Friendships of Summer.)

* Sheridan Mountain Campus’ summer registration is still open!