Week 2: Blowing in the wind

This week has been a little slow. With less than 100 participants at PTC and only forty of them in family program, half of the staff has been on what we call work crew. Essentially, we haven't got groups and instead we are doing little things around camp that need doing. What's surprising about this is how much we've found to do and how much of it actually needs doing. I'll admit, I thought that we would be put to busy work, and in a sense we have, but we painted signs that really did need a touch up, we finished binding the GLHs (which at least two group leaders have been doing without), and we went through the tents that we use for overnighters and fixed the bad knots on them. It all had to happen at some point, and better now than Wednesday morning.

Speaking of Wednesday, it was truly a day of adventure for us all. I gathered Jenny, Tayton, and Jerica and we went out on a hike to the waterfalls. The trail seemed to cease to exist in many places, but we finally found our way to a (comparatively) huge fall with a small lake at the top. We spent rather a lot of time staring at the rolling snow melt before I put on my swim suit and carefully put a foot in - I may as well have plugged it into a power line. Then Jenny told me to check it at the bottom of the lake. Those not familiar with the check it game (ie almost everyone) might be a little confused at this point: when someone tells you to check it on something or someone, you put your hands on or in front of it and pump your legs. Thus, if I told you to check it on your monitor right now, you would place your hands on the monitor, but if I told you to check it on the sun you would just put your hands up toward the sun and check it from there. Checking it on the bottom of the lake meant wading in to chest height in freezing water and reaching down as far as I dared. Fortunately, there is an advantage to being told to check it somewhere absurd: instant retaliation. Jenny got to check it on the fall feeding into the lake. Jeri and Tayton also managed to get out there for pictures.

The hike wasn't hard, but was very draining, and most of us slept away the afternoon. Then the wind picked up. Elizabeth from ETC was coming back from Raton at the time and said that it looked like a tornado touching down on base camp. To me, it looked like my tent ripping free of all of the nails holding it to its base. My gear literally scattered to the wind; I later found most of it wrapped around a barbed wire fence, including my exercise ball. For an hour we tried desperately to hold and hammer the tents down until the wind slowed enough to stop knocking them to the ground.

Then we had the mystery dinner: it was a costume party in the dining hall. I thought myself too exhausted to dress up, but after seeing some of the other costumes, I felt I had to make the effort. I threw on the Lemming costume from the super villains program and joined the others. And a good time was had by all.