As usual for Wilderness Adventures, we had 2 trips during the week. The first one was a kayaking trip down the Hocking River on Tuesday. We even got to play with Camp Otterbein's new whitewater kayaks at the end. One camper was terrified at first, but I coached her through it and she eventually started playing in the waves with the rest of us, smiling. Some of us braved "The chute" (a small waterfall) too. No one tipped over! And it was exhilarating!
On Thursday, we went hiking at Old Man's Cave in Hocking Hills with another small group. I inadvertently took us on a much longer than planned hike, but everyone said they had a great time in spite of being exhausted. And the scenery was gorgeous!
On Wednesday, one of our activities was mountain biking. It was going great at first. At the end, I gave everyone the option to go down a hill for the camper that wanted the extra challenge. To my surprise, another camper also decided to try. He had done the rest of the bike ride without trouble, so we figured he could do it. The older camper rode first since he's a very strong cyclist and I followed. As we waited for the other camper, we heard a terrible scream and ran as fast as possible to help out. As we ran up the hill, we found the small camper laying down crying, surrounded by the 2 counselors and our program leader (second in command of camp), who just happened to be in the area at the time. They had already checked for more serious injuries (and found none) and started patching up his myriad of scrapes and scratches. We got the health officer who happened to be nearby to help out as well. Being the leader of the activity, I felt terrible. Fortunately, the camper was only scraped and bruised a bunch, nothing more. A bit later when I had some alone time, I just broke down, imagining how bad it could've been, praying my gratitude that our camper didn't get hurt any worse. That moment was not just a meltdown point, but also my spiritual breakthrough and biggest "God moment" as we call them for the week. It was amazing just how well protected that camper was. For the rest of the week, he was able to fully participate in activities and had a great attitude about the whole thing. The health officer just had to re-patch him a lot.
Thursday night was the Camp Otterbein tradition of Capture the Flag. As usual, we had a blast! I spent most of the game sneaking through tall grass at the edge of the forest. It was super fun, but I made the mistake of wearing shorts instead of pants. And I am still dealing with the consequences of this (I'll explain in my next post). We had time for 2 rounds of the game, and each team won one. Yay for everyone being winners!
Overall, that week went pretty well. And I could not have asked for better counselors to help lead the adventures!
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