The Return of BullsEye

The week before we left for the submarine trip, as became a trend during production throughout that movie, the Navy changed the schedule, and the submarine shoot was put off until much later in the project.  I was actually thrilled, because it allowed me to head up to camp immediately, to attend staff training and help the first few days of Week 1.

 

I finished work at the end of that week, and drove north that Saturday, arriving for the beginning of staff training on Sunday afternoon.  Things were much different that summer, with a shorter season, and a smaller staff.  We only had one week for training, and five weeks of camp, with a two week break right in the middle.  So our only week of training was going to be intense.

 

We started with a trust building exercise first thing Monday morning, the blind walk.  Right as we were getting started, P arrived.  I hadn’t seen her in person since our intense Facebook conversation, and the strange feeling of vulnerability that left me with can’t be described with words.  I am grateful that she took the initiative, and came over to introduce me to her sister, who was joining us on staff that summer.  That broke the ice, and reassured me that we could still interact in person as comfortably as before.

 

There were a lot of new faces on staff, and unlike the year before, most of the leadership positions were had changed hands.  Wild Oak was run by a totally different group, and my boss was someone I had never met before.  The one positive change was that Nate, the new camp director, was a pretty close friend of mine, and my role on staff was usually flexible enough to allow me to help him out with whatever was needed.

 

And it was needed frequently, as there were a lot more issues than the previous summer.  With new people leading things in nearly every position, they naturally do things differently.  And I am someone who usually isn’t a big fan of change, so I was not pleased with many of the new ideas.  I tried to accept most of it, but at times that it became a question of safety, I didn’t hesitate to step in.  But due to the strange hierarchy of leadership, I am sure it appeared that I was going over people’s heads to get around them.  I value safety far above avoiding stepping on people’s toes, but it did lead to some awkward situations.

 

Eventually the staff was at least reasonably well trained, and our first week of campers arrived.  We had the usual adjustments to get people familiar with the routines, and actually having to do work, but things in many ways went better than I expected.  We usually felt like we were barely holding things together, but just enough so that the actual campers never had any idea that there were any problems being overcome.  It later turned out that I didn’t even know most of what was going on behind the curtain, and I was one of the ones holding the curtain up.  But I had to leave after we had gotten through the first two days, to head back down to LA, to prepare for the next movie shoot, this time in the backwoods of Kentucky.