Working at Camp for the Summer

That spring I had been surprised to see a familiar table setup outside the cafeteria one day, from Wolf Mountain.  They were out recruiting summer staff members from Christian colleges, so we had a good talk.  After not doing anything of significance the previous summer, I was looking for something like that, so I ended up working there for the summer after my freshman year.  If I thought being the residence hall president was pushing the limits of my social capacity, being a camp counselor was even more so.  But on the positive side I was much more comfortable with the outdoor nature of the job, with climbing, horses, and paintball.

Everyone on staff had camp names, which were acquired at some point during staff training.  That process is an interesting study in identity.  By the end of that two week session, most of the Wild Oak staff had not been named, so we sat around a campfire late into the night discussing possibilities.  Given the preference, I was pushing for "Ghost" based on an incident that took place when playing Mission Impossible against Impact Staff during training.  But eventually Palm Tree, one of the female counselors, came up with BullsEye, based on an event during archery training, and that definitely stuck.  I have gone out of my way to keep that name in the years since then, and many of my friends still call me that.  It has definitely become an integral part of my identity, at least at camp and online.

Dealing with children was a new challenge, and as the youngest Sportsman Camp counselor, I was given the youngest cabins.  So I usually had eight campers following me around, who were all 11 or 12 years old.  It was quite the experience, and I definitely learned a lot.  I was in top physical shape, so I really enjoyed playing paintball with the kids, and facilitating the ropes course.  I spent much of my free time helping out down at the course, and took advantage of various opportunities to climb myself.  Paintball was a huge deal back then, and the program there was well-known.  I had never played before, but I became a fan.  The games against the staff were the highlight event of the week for the kids, which everyone else tried to get in on every Friday evening.  It was also my first serious experience working with horse program during certain weeks, and ended up riding every Saturday.

As a counselor, one of my jobs was to write and preach a campfire sermon.  I ended up doing that near the end of the summer, examining the concept of dedication and perseverance, primarily as seen in Galatians, if I recall correctly.  I figure perseverance is something I am pretty well qualified to speak on, so that topic was a good fit, and it went pretty well.

There were many other students from CLU working at camps that summer, primarily at El Camino Pines above LA.  One thing that I had noticed when interacting with that group, is that every single person who had worked at camp knew how to play the guitar.  It is amusing to look back and remember how I, with zero musical talent or appreciation, blindly expected to learn how to do that at camp.  That was definitely not to be, especially since we only had one guitar player on the whole staff, who had to bounce between services at various locations every evening.  I was ahead of the game if I could just manage to clap in rhythm properly.

The social aspect of being on the staff was a significant part of the summer.  About twenty of us worked in our part of the camp, and we usually spent our off time together and crashed at a different staffer’s house every weekend, going to church with their family the next morning.  So I went to a lot of different churches that summer, including the one I attend now.