A Summer Solstice Hodgepodge

Welcome to summer and this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. If you've answered the questions, add your link at the end of my post, then leave a comment for the blogger before you. Here we go-

1. Hello Summer! In the northern hemisphere anyway. What's something on your summer bucket list? Do you have an actual summer bucket list? If not, use your hypothetical list.

It's currently raining cats and dogs here and we are so ready for summer to get with the program weather wise. On my (hypothetical) bucket list...cowabunga off the dock with my grandsons, make home made ice cream, snap one photo of the whole entire crew together, hike to a waterfall, and host an outdoor dinner party. 

Hmmm...maybe I'll make an actual list. 

2. What for you is the defining scent of summer?

A lit charcoal grill and freshly mown grass. 

3. What's a (music, food, wine, or flower) festival happening in your part of the country that you would like to attend if tickets/travel/timing was no object? 

There's a nearby foodie fest called Euphoria held in mid-September every year and I'd like to get tickets for the Michelin starred dinner. The festival also features winemaker dinners, tastings, cooking demos, and singer-songwriter events, but I'm sure the Michelin dinner would be over the top. 

4. Apparently a military whistle blower claims the US has a UFO retrieval program. What say you? Do you believe aliens are out there?

This is honestly not something I've thought too much about. Not something I'm all that interested in. My initial thought is not likely, but I wouldn't say it's outside the realm of possibility. 

5. Besides your wedding day and the birthdays of any children you may have, what are three of your top experiences in life? 

This is tough. Do I go with three big events or three small moments that I treasure? A bit of both...

• Lunch in the House of Lords as a guest of David Cameron
• Standing beneath a California Redwood
• an 8-day hike on the AT when I was fifteen years old

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Inspired by the Hodgepodge last week I did make a strawberry shortcake on National Strawberry Shortcake Day (June 14th). I tried a new recipe and it was delish. The cake was made in a cast iron skillet and you put cut strawberries on top before baking.

I sliced mine and layered with more strawberries, then topped with whipped cream before serving. 

Yum! The recipe is linked here-Skillet Strawberry Shortcake

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Throwback Thursday Summer Camp Style

I'm busy. Always it seems, and I accept that. 'Tis a season, and when this season ends there will be another season, because that's how mid-life goes. Not at all how I imagined it would be, but life is full of surprises and I mostly like surprises.

Anyway I have a lot on my plate today, so in the interest of time, I thought I'd join the Throwback Thursday Revolution and post something light.

That's me on the right, wearing braids and a blindfold and brushing someone else's teeth. Good Morning Campers!

They know who they are. They read here.

This weekend I'm headed back to camp. The place I spent many a summer first as a camper, later as a CIT, and then eventually a counselor. We used to on occasion have something called a counselor hunt, which was essentially a ginormous game of hide and seek. The way it worked was the counselors would hide from the kids and the kids would try to find them.  Relax...we weren't hiding to get away from the kids, we were hiding to avoid being caught, because if you were caught there was a penalty.

I was never ever caught. I had a most stellar hiding place and at age 18 was not afraid to squeeze myself under a building to avoid capture. Some counselors were always caught. Some didn't try very hard to hide, especially if they were with the younger campers, because they knew how much the kids loved finding their 'chief'.

Me, well my campers were teenagers, and I was all about not being caught. What can I say? I've always been competitive and teenagers love a challenge.

They never ever caught me.

Okay, I was caught once along with another counselor, and the picture above was our 'penalty'. We had to stand on a table in front of the group, I was blindfolded, and had to brush the other girls teeth.

I admit as a mother my first thought now is more along the lines of ewwwww, and picturing myself lying in the dirt under that building with all the creepy crawlies kinda makes my skin crawl, but...this is why camp is so awesome.

You do things like crawl in the dirt beneath a building and stand blindfolded on a table with a toothbrush in hand while campers cheer you on. You laugh and smile every single day, not because you're brushing someone else's teeth, but because you're just ridiculously happy to be in a place where you can spend your days outdoors, share life with friends, sleep under the stars, talk about the deep and not so deep, swim-sail-ride and pray.

Christian camp for kids and teens, and for the mostly college aged people who work there, can be life changing. For me it still is. We started these reunion weekends in the summer of 2010, and imagined they might happen every few years. As it happened though, that first one was so much fun we've made it an annual thing. It's a weekend I look forward to, and one I now view as a retreat. A time and place to reconnect not only with the people who knew me when, but also with myself.

Some of the buildings have moved and changed, and it all looks a little bit different not different. It's still the best place I know to sit in the middle of God's glorious creation and remember His goodness all those years ago.

...and His goodness still.

Five Minutes of Song

I'm giving Five Minute Friday a try again this week. The instructions are simple-write for five minutes flat for pure unedited love of the written word.  Link back to Five Minute Friday and invite others to join in too.  Consider yourselves invited.  Finally, be generous and leave an encouraging comment for the person who linked up before you.

Today's prompt-Song

It's that time of year where something in the air assures us summer is just around the bend. Growing up I spent my summers at camp, first as a camper and later as a counselor. I remember the welcome hush that fell over a cabin at nighttime. Girls in my care, full of words and laughter and questions, finally drifting into slumber.

Days were lived outdoors in the summers of my youth. We swam and sailed and paddled, made the uphill climb from the waterfront and ran to capture the flag. We yelled 'red rover red rover come on over' under a sun drenched Chesapeake sky.

I remember the exhale at the end of a day. Crawling in to my sleeping bag, the sound of night all around. Sometimes I slept on top because this was camp, and the only air conditioning was a warm sticky breeze inching its way through a tightly woven screen. The only night light, a summer moon.

It was a good tired.

I closed my eyes and let the day fall away. It was always in this space between wake and sleep that her song began.  Not a softly whispered lullaby suited to the quiet place where day ebbs into night and back again.  Her song was loud, clear, distinct...a single line repeated over and over, winging it's way over and under and through a night forest.

Whip-poor-WILL....Whip-poor-WILL...Whip-poor-WILL...

It seeped into your head and before you knew it you were singing it too.

There is no mistaking the song of the whippoorwill. She's a bird named for the song she sings.  Onomatopoeia. A lonely sound, ethereal... she calls but no one answers.

Mostly though, it was aggravating to an exhausted nineteen year old girl trying to sleep in a cabin in the woods. I'd pull my pillow tight around my ears, trying somehow to block the unblockable.

Whip-poor-WILL...Whip-poor-WILL...Whip-poor-WILL

Decades roll by and memory piles upon memory. Every once in a while she calls to me still...different woods, same sad song. When I hear her sing the years fall away, and I go back to that place where dreams were planted and roots took wing. The place where tall trees kissed the bay and God felt close enough to touch.

Where the whippoorwill sang on a moonlit summer night.

With Eagles Wings

I forgot I wasn't 19 still and stayed up gabbing long into the night Friday and Saturday both.

Ooops.

As it turns out I'm actually middle aged.

Not in my head of course, but the rest of me is saying that's true.

I spent the weekend with old friends from summer camp and when I say old I'm talking about the good kind. The kind of old that means a long long time and not the kind of old that means crows feet and small bladders.

Is this all too much for you today?

It's feeling like it might be too much for me.

I think I mentioned I'm tired. And middle aged.

Last year a reunion was organized on the property of our former campground and it was so much fun we decided a sequel was in order. The campground is still a campground but the girl's camp as we knew it has moved to another property site. The grounds have changed a lot since the 1970's, but when we're all together we fall right back into our old vocabulary. It's the Dining Hall, the Craft Shop, and the Lodge just as it was 3o-something years ago.

All my life I've struggled to explain how I feel about this place and these friends to people who were never there. It's a piece of my heart that remains tender, that when pricked spills out in both laughter and tears.

I've written a couple of posts in the past (here and here) in my attempt to put thoughts and feelings into words, but the finished product wasn't very satisfying. So here I am again-full head, overflowing heart, the right words still just out of reach. Perhaps there are some things in this life that aren't meant to be described, only felt.

Some forty years ago many of us were campers. We sailed and rode horses and ate in a dining hall. We sat on dusty cabin floors or atop sleeping bags laid across a bunk as we shared things weighing heavy on our young hearts. Moving into the college years we became the listen-ers, camp counselors to cabins full of campers unpacking their troubles along with their tennis shoes. We taught canoeing and John 3:16. We laughed and sang and prayed. We wrote letters to many of these campers throughout the school year and we pray for them still.

Thirty+ years have somehow come and gone since I was a camp counselor. The pool may be new and improved, the buildings painted or moved, our bodies older and our everyday lives separated by geography, but that thing that made camp camp?

It remains.

Camp was always a refuge, a safe place to learn and grow, to speak without fear from the deepest part of your heart. We united as staff members way back when and shared life in all its multi-layered glory and despair.

We still do.

Cleaning Latrines and Other Life Lessons

This heat has made my brain feel a little bit like mush. Or maybe its the cleaning products? I've been scrubbing woodwork, emptying cabinets and drawers, scouring my frig, matching Tupperware containers to lids...that last one will turn your brain to mush quicker than anything, won't it?

Anyway, it's hot and it's Thursday and since I'll be spending the weekend with friends from my days as a camp counselor I thought I'd link up with Thursday Thirteen and post a list. Do those thoughts add up? I don't know if Point A + Point B = Point C but I said it was hot and I've inhaled a little too much Murphy's Oil Soap so here we go...

Thirteen Life Lessons Learned as a Camp Counselor

1. The proper way to execute the Draw stroke, J-stroke and Forward Sweep in a canoe

2. Alllll the verses to Madalina Catalina

3. The essential ingredients to the world's best campfire stew

4. How to make a candle in the sand

5. That bug juice contains no actual bugs...most of the time

6. Cleaning a latrine builds character

7. How to cultivate and nurture friendships that will last a lifetime

8. Money doesn't equal happiness

9. Dough + stick+ fire+ jam=deliciousness

10. How to step outside my comfort zone

11. Poison ivy is wretched

12. The song of the whippoorwill

13. Jesus Never Fails

Accidental Winter Camping

The questions on my blog yesterday sparked this memory. The Hodgepodge is its own form of therapy because I'm pretty sure this is a memory I'd successfully blocked.

Way back when, I was a girl scout leader for Daughter2's troop. Once upon a time we attended a camp out on a gorgeous warm spring day and although we were booked into a cabin for sleeping, the girls clambered to switch to the platform tents instead. Me, being the great outdoors woman that I am, said okay. It was April and we were in shorts all day long. The sun was shining and some of the girls even got their feet wet in the river.

Flash forward a few hours to dinner. We ate with some of the other troops in a central location and as we were eating the weather began to change. We decided to gather up our belongings and head back to our tents which involved a bit of a hike in the suddenly deep, dark, scary and slightly wet woods. Now that darkness had settled in the girls were terrified unhappy at the thought of being spread out into several tents so we piled everyone together into just two. There weren't enough cots so I, being the great outdoors woman that I am, said I'd sleep on the floor because I can stand anything for one night.

Or so I thought.

The rain that started off as a sprinkle had suddenly turned into a downpour and it was lightning in that spooky, Friday the 13th sort of way. Next came the winds. I can honestly say I have never in my life been outdoors in winds like these.

Have you ever slept in a platform tent? For those of you who aren't in the know, the tent is tied to the platform all the way round, but there's still a gap of several inches where a little bit of light gets in and a whole lot of wind. At one point I seriously thought the tent was going to lift off the ground ala Dorothy in Oz.

It felt like we'd been in our sleeping bags for hours when a couple of the girls awoke and were sniffling, aka sobbing. My co-leader and I said reassuring things like, ' Just close your eyes and before you know it, morning will be here.' One of the girls asked me what time it was and I made the gargantuan mistake of looking at my watch. I replied, 'Almost morning-try to go back to sleep'. The other leader said she knew better than to ask for the precise time since she figured if it really was almost morning I'd have said it.

It was 11:55.

Not even midnight.

Oh dear.

One mom had taken her daughter to the car to sleep early on in the evening. We should all have done the same but have you ever been so cold you can't even entertain the idea of moving even when you know you should? Pretty sure that's how people die in the woods.

I slept that night wearing every article of clothing I'd brought with me. I tucked my knees all the way up to my chest and pulled my fleece over them and shivered and prayed. When I woke up I was literally frozen in that position. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to unfold my legs. I told my co-leader that I had never in my life been that cold and we both said the air had that same feeling it gets when it snows. It was the middle of April and had been 85 degrees the day before so no way did it snow.

We peeked outside.

Hello white winter in April while I'm sleeping on the floor of a platform tent in hurricane force winds. We learned later that there were tornadoes spotted in our county. It was kind of like The Perfect Storm except we weren't at sea and of course there was no George Clooney.

I bet right now you're wishing I'd been your daughter's troop leader.

And I don't know how much time you've spent with tween girls but wet, tired, hungry, and frozen does not a happy camper make. Pun intended.

Everyone involved in this little weekend still speaks to me.

Just sayin'.

I'm not sure they've ever camped again but we are still friends. Nothing bonds you to someone quite like a shared near death experience.

Forced Family Fun in the Great Outdoors

It's a gray, drizzly Thursday here and the weatherman says we are in for some honest to goodness fall weather this weekend. Hopefully DRY fall weather as I'm pretty sure this state is about to break off and sail out to sea.

I love the way God ordained the seasons. Just when we think we can't handle any more heat, cooler weather rolls in and the leaves begin to change. As the leaves drop and we grow weary of the bare brown forest we suddenly awaken to the beauty of a white winter snow. Finally, when we think we can't stand one more minute of the cold and damp, a spring breeze sweeps in bringing splashes of color and a fragrance all its own.

When our girls were growing up one of the things we liked to do in the fall was go camping. I just lost some of you, didn't I? Some people hear camping and immediately turn up their noses and think ewww but when you camp with my hubs he pretty much does all the work so what's not to love?

We took a couple of trips with another family too and they also have a worker bee for a dad which was perfect (for the rest of us). We used to joke that they should sign up for the Amazing Race because they're like a highly industrious comedy tag team. On one camping trip an older woman and her daughter who were set up in the campsite opposite ours started a conversation with us. The older woman said she and her daughter had been watching our husbands and they couldn't get over the way our hubs never sat. She then added that she was heading off to give her lazy good for nothing son in law a 'talking to'. Uh-oh.

We tent camped and I know there are haters out there but I have to say there is nothing quite like having your whole little family lined up all together in sleeping bags in a tent. Sometimes we'd have the dog with us too because the more the merrier, right? I love sleeping tucked in tight under the stars.

My girls have always had very active imaginations and the family we camped with had two girls who were the same. They loved playing pioneer or what they called "poor". They collected berries for food, created homes in the trees, and one time they tied daughter2 to a tree-I believe it was their version of the wild wild west which I know is not pc but it was the nineties people.

Some of our favorite stories to tell and retell come from camping. We especially love the one where we pulled into a campground to check in, followed closely behind by our friends in their mini van. They thought the electronic arm of the gate would allow two cars to pass but unfortunately that was not the case as they discovered the hard way. When our friend went to the window to explain what had happened the guard casually grabbed the broken arm and tossed it into a big pile of other broken arms and said, "That happens all the time." He had a stash of replacements right there. It seems the simpler thing would be to repair the gate, doesn't it? To make matters worse (or funnier depending on who you are) this little mishap occurred mere minutes after the same friend had somehow managed to drive over a rake sitting prong up in the middle of the highway.

One year the two dads took the four little girls on a weekend camping trip. Vacation Bible School was kicking off that Sunday evening and I was involved in the preschool department. The plan was that the dads would return in time for everyone to clean up and come to VBS. I remember being in the church office and glancing out the window to see a pile of absolutely filthy children clambering out of a vehicle. I think I was even just a teensy bit judgemental in my head before I realized THEY WERE MY CHILDREN. Turns out they'd been having so much fun on their weekend away that there was no time to go home before VBS. I love that camping affords us the freedom to get a little dirty and wear a baseball cap now and then.

The dads of the girls in daughter1's scout troop got to be friends and they began organizing a father daughter camping trip every year. I think it's good for dads and daughters to do things on occasion without the moms around because let's face it...dads don't immediately run thru a mental list of all the dangers involved in a particular activity and then say no because in reality, a little bit of adventure is good for building confidence in young girls.

The first year they did this the girls all got out of the cars shouting, "We wrote our names with fire!!!" The dads had asked them to keep that on the qt but every mom knows girls are not really capable of that. Had I been on the trip would I have said, "Hey girls, let's all write our names in fire?" No. No I would not. I would have said, 'Now girls, that's dangerous..everyone stay back from the fire...and put down those sticks before someone gets hurt." Just keepin' it real. Dads on the other hand say things like, "Hey girls, watch this...I can write my name with fire! Who wants to try?"

I love hot chocolate and cats cradle first thing on a chilly fall morning.

I love the time and space to dream big dreams and little girls who furiously pen those dreams into a journal from the comfort of a camp chair.

I love cobbler cooked by the hubs over white hot coals.

I love the thrill of discovery.

I love making memories.

I love secrets told on a rock.

I love small hands getting an up close look at the natural world .

I love little girls who ask, "Daddy...how becomes______?"

I love a front row seat to the beauty of a setting sun.

And most of all-

I love life unplugged.