1. Lakeview Methodist Camp, Now Lakeview Methodist Conference Center, Near Palestine, TX, in east TX
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| Lakeview Methodist Conference Center, 400 Private Road 6036, Palestine, TX 75801
My first church camp was Lakeview Methodist Camp. I always wished that I would land in one of the screened cabins instead of the fully walled ones. Being rained on in bed sounded very exotic when I was in Junior High. That was back when I didn't really deal with consequences like wet clothes and wet bedding.
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Rain was quite a bit
warmer in Texas than it is in Washington State. The screening kept quite
a bit of the rain out. I checked it out with campers lucky enough to get into
one of the screened cabins. I never made it to one.
The consequences that
I learned to deal with at Lakeview, were getting my shoes on safely in the
mornings by first checking them out by thumping them vigorously in case any
lizards, centipedes, or scorpions had crawled into them for warmth during the
night, getting a top bunk because that was always safer than having
inexperienced campers climb into beds stepping all over you in the bottom bunks
and dropping covers and things on you in the night, and keeping my suitcase
closed, for the same reasons as the shoes.
I never came in close
contact with any of the creeping crawly monsters, but the stories of them kept me
on my checking routine. I often found, kept, and cared for a pet lizard
during camp, even took it home afterward. It seemed to be the rage for a
while, with whole fleets of lizards migrating to Houston from central Texas at
the close of camp.
The lizards were tied
to a button on our blouses by thick thread or small twine. It was important to
let them down for grass and to find them insects to eat. I wondered what
lizards really ate and if we took care of them enough for them to live. I
know that many mothers, mine included, probably returned many pets to the
wild. My favorite ones were the bright yellow green ones instead of the
commoner greenish brown ones. Chartreuse is still a favorite color.
Those lizards were definitely more vibrant than their dull counterparts.
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| A Hawk and Pine Tree at Lakeview |
I loved all the
activities and routine of camp, and wonder now at the variety of experiences that
we were given there. It was there that I first learned to braid in
several patterns, both leather and plastic, into key rings, long strips, and
now a variety of art adornments. I first worked with
metal, pounding designs into flat trays and even once learning to pound a small
bowl out of thin copper. I still work in copper. I thought that
going to the craft building was fascinating, and even though I can't clearly
remember any of the teachers, they gave me an array of skills and enjoyment
that were amazing. I remember that we took home what we made, key rings, lanyards, small purses, trays, and one bowl.
One of my stranger clear memories is of breakfast. At home we often had scrambled eggs, toast, hot oatmeal, and occasionally pancakes and maple syrup. My mother always cooked for us, having food ready at each meal. As I have grown older and talked with other friends about what their homes were like, I have come to wonder at how consistently and well we ate.
With little
appreciation of the feasts at home, I eagerly looked forward to church camp for
those small boxes of cereal that could be opened with two flaps on the side and
placed on the table like a small rectangular box bowl. I loved to pour milk
into the cardboard boxes. I felt like both a real pioneer and lucky beyond
belief. I thought that explorers or rugged campers took cereal boxes along. All those choices! There were 20+ kinds of cereal, things I seldom saw,
except at the store. Amazing! Even now, at age 68, when I see the small
boxes at the grocery, I think of camp. Breakfast like that was a rare treat.
The clearest sense
that I have of camp is of the music and singing. I always loved to listen
to voices singing in harmony and to people who could sing well. It seemed that many people who went to camp
were amazingly talented. My older sister, Linda, was one of those, and my
daddy was another, who often sang solos at camp, as he did in church at Sunday
night service from time to time. I could always hear their voices and
recognize them. Then I would listen for others, blending into the harmony
that hymns give, and the other songs that we sang. I have always enjoyed
singing, and could read music and hit most of the right notes, but my sister
and father had really memorable voices. Sometimes, I would just listen.
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| Beautiful trees in all seasons at Lakeview |
The nature hikes were
led by people who now come to me as if they were Henry David Thoreau or John
Muir at the least. We walked through the woods, especially around the
lake, listening to birds, sketching them, watching insects, noting their
sounds, gathering leaves, bark, berries, flowers and grasses. We kept
notebooks to see how the next day’s hike compared.
2. Devil’s Canyon Methodist Church Camp, now Canyon
Camp & Conference Center, Near Hinton, OK, West of Oklahoma City, OK
We moved to Oklahoma when I was in the ninth
grade. My church camp was Devil's Canyon. There, the canteen was a
focused treat. I don't think there was a canteen in Texas. Buying a
pop, candy bar or nuts seemed like the epitome of adulthood at age 14. My
sister Linda worked in the canteen one year, part of the magical heart of adult
nonchalance and choices, even if it only consisted of candy and Coke.
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| Canyon Camp and Conference Center, 31600 Camp Road, Hinton, OK 73047 |
Also at Devil's
Canyon, we learned to folk dance, with various styles from around the
world. I always waited and hoped for the ones from Israel, which seemed
full of dissonance and energy all at once. When I have seen actual dances
from Israel, in film or TV, I saw that we did very easy and basic steps, but
they carried the flavor.
I loved to play shuffleboard at camp. The cue that launched
the disk was impossibly long and could be lined up so exactly with the goals
that missing was nearly impossible. I was fairly good at shuffleboard.
I think over the years that I discovered that being blind in one eye has some
benefits, one of them taking deadly aim at a target that is straight off in the
distance. Those shuffleboard disks slid right to their aim. It was a game
where I felt powerful and skilled. That in itself was a rarity. I
loved playing with people and saw how other people set up their shots. I got to
know how other people felt about the game. Friends and shuffle board went
together, almost like a giant spread out living board game.
I remember that the men always played horseshoes and were
equally good at it. I can remember the clang of points made and the muffled
sound of the metal that hit the sand when the shot fell short or arced across
the goal too far. It was possible to tell the score while watching the
players without even looking at the results by listening to those sounds.
Canyon Camp Cabins
And then, there was swimming. Since I can't swim now, I
must assume that I couldn't swim then, either. However, going to the lake
was another hike that I enjoyed. We would get into our suits and take a
towel and march single file by the cabins and down the trail to the lake, very
orderly with a hum of excitement under the marching. After the swim,
probably a bobbing in the water for me, or wading, we would drip march with towels
trying to keep us dry and warm through the trees back to the cabins, again in
single file. Finally, all those wet things were hanging about the
cabin. Wet things dried quickly in Texas in the summer, including us.
When I was a Senior
at Devil’s Canyon, I went on a longer hike to the end of one of the lesser used
canyons. At the end was a cabin rumored to be a place where Jesse James or
Billy the Kid or some such questionable hero stayed. I felt as if I was
stepping into history, and hiking as well, a double pleasure.
Canyon Camp Swimming Pool
Early in the
mornings, extra hikes were taken up to the rims of the canyons. These
were very quiet and thoughtful times, with the walks and climbs a time of
silent meditation, broken only after returning to the open tabernacle for some
singing. It was a time of calm and color and noticing all the shades of
morning come up from the canyon floor and down from the tree tops to a point
where they would meet and transform all the rocks and forest around us. Light
can do so much in slant and texture out in a sparse Oklahoma forest on a canyon
wall.
While we became young and budding naturalists, we sometimes found snake skins on those nature hikes, a prize beyond belief, to be carefully taped into our notebooks. It was a rare occasion, but I found a snake skin, a nearly dry perfect one that was like parchment in its delicate thinness, and not from a big snake. It was a treasure. Once, the counselor found a snake skin that was large and patterned. He gave each of us a section of it about 2 inches long. That also was a prize. I wonder what became of those notebooks. They probably went the way of all the comic books I used to have that would have made me a bazillionaire had I hung on to them with their pristine condition.
Hiking at Canyon Camp
While we became young and budding naturalists, we sometimes found snake skins on those nature hikes, a prize beyond belief, to be carefully taped into our notebooks. It was a rare occasion, but I found a snake skin, a nearly dry perfect one that was like parchment in its delicate thinness, and not from a big snake. It was a treasure. Once, the counselor found a snake skin that was large and patterned. He gave each of us a section of it about 2 inches long. That also was a prize. I wonder what became of those notebooks. They probably went the way of all the comic books I used to have that would have made me a bazillionaire had I hung on to them with their pristine condition.
3. Lake Texhoma Methodist
Church Camp, now Cross Point Camp, near Kingston,
OK in South Central OK
Church camp is
probably where I learned my love of camping. When I was in college at Oklahoma City University, one summer I worked at
Lake Texhoma Church Camp. At least that was the intention. Originally, a
group of us OCU college students were to help with recreation and with food
service. When we arrived, the camp was still under construction, so we
helped with clearing bush, beating brush to drive rattle snakes toward the men
who caught them to clear the area, put in plumbing, spread concrete slabs, and
a whole list of helping that I never experienced.
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| 7310 Rock Creek Road. Kingston, OK 73439 |
We lived in covered
wagons, two to a wagon. They looked just like the wagons on
"Bonanza" or in the pictures of the Westward Expansion on the Oregon
Trail. We loved them until it rained. We
discovered that we had to rush outside to lower the canvas or get really
wet. The covered wagons only had the outer look of pioneering. Inside
they were equipped with four beds, dressers, mirrors and most of what would
make them livable. They had no electricity or water, unless the rain was
counted. They were a pale green. We lived in them almost all
summer. The camp was finally built by the end of summer in time for regular
camping and working in the dining hall.
Cross Point Camp's location at a geographical point
on the north shore of Lake Texoma in Oklahoma.
There was a Japanese
cook who taught me how to debone a chicken and to pull the bone out of pork so
that you couldn't even tell that it had ever been there. Those were good
skills. Every Friday, as we brought in the milk and ice cream, each of us
chose a quart flavor from the delivery truck to go feast on at the lake.
One of the stories
that the fellow workers probably remember best is when we lived in a nearby
motel for a time, between the covered wagon time and the finished cabin time. I
was asked to make coffee for the group. At home, my parents had a
percolator, so I assumed that when coffee was ready, it would stop
perking. I boiled the coffee until it turned to a thick syrup as I waited
for the perking to stop. Only one worker had a sip. I was off the coffee
production line for the rest of the summer.
Church camp was a regular and important part of
my growing up. There were the regular age similar camping experiences.
There were special music camps with talented directors, family camps where our
complete family attended, and leadership camps when I was in college where we
would take part in social action work. I have fond memories of the
Methodist camps.
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| Cross Point Dining Hall |
Llewellyn "Llew Cheyenne" Hollingsworth
March 6, 2012
Bellingham,
Washington
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