You see, Channah is a "legacy" she is following in my footsteps. I spent 2 weeks every summer at camp from the time I was 7 years old until I was 15. I looked forward to camp every summer. I would always go in July and I would always end up missing my mom's birthday. (Sorry Mom)
My first experience at camp was Camp Wood Haven, in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania. I can honestly say that my first experience was certainly nothing to write home about. It rained, the counselors were not all that nice, the girls were not very nice to me, and to top it all off I fall and cut up my hands so badly that I get little stones embedded in my palms and it takes 3 days to get them all out. Let me just tell you it was excruciating!
You know you'd think after that experience I would never want to go camping again, and that was true I didn't well, not at Wood Haven anyway. A friend of my mom's told her how much her daughter loved Camp Mosey Wood in the Pocono Mountains.
So, the following summer I went to Camp Mosey Wood and I was hooked! The camp was Beautiful! It had its own lake that was docked off to make a swimming area with a little beach and a boating area with a dock and boat house.
The Units were large and well kept and the staff was wonderful! I loved how all the counselors had "Camp Names" like: Jellybean, Turtle, Spike and LuLu.
I remember looking up to my counselors as a child. I thought they were the coolest girls in the world and I wanted to be just like them! They had the coolest job, they got to live at camp all summer and play with us campers, how cool was that?!
Camp Mosey Wood became my home away from home. I made friends with girls I will never forget, learned life experiences that I still apply today, and came to love everything that there is to love about Girl Scouting.
I was not in an active troop when I was younger once I got to Cadettes (6th grade) There was not a troop in my town and my parents just were not able to get me to the meetings of a troop that met in the next town. So, all of my Girl Scouting experience occurred at Camp. I think because of that, I have a different appreciation for Scouting. I saw a different side, the side that was not all crafts and games, but life skills and survival.
You learn a lot about yourself when you go to Camp, so long as you are willing to have an education. You learn how to deal with people, how to live with people, how to be tolerant of other people, and how to respect other people. Your ideas are challenged and you come to find out things about yourself that you sometimes are afraid to explore.
Camp for me was a lifestyle. It was what I became and what I was as a girl. It shaped my life and help me find the path to my life.
It was because of camp that I knew teaching in some way shape or form would be what I would do in my life, and I also knew that one day I would be one of those cool counselors with the neat names.
My dream came true my Junior Year of college, I got hired at Camp Mosey Wood as a Counselor or an Assistant Unit Leader. I chose the camp name Kit after my favorite character in children's literature; the Newbury Award Wining novel "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Spears, and for 2 summers I was Kit, the elusive counselor who could silence the girls with a glance, sing in harmony with the other counselors, shoot a mean bow and arrow, and teach the girls how to cook eggs in an orange. (if you want, ask me and I will give you the recipe)
When I eventually graduated from college, got my BA and MA, got married and had a daughter of my own, I passed on the legacy to her. I became a Girl Scout leader with an awesome troop, made many friends with some fantastic ladies, and have had the blessing to shape the lives of some extraordinarily beautiful girls, including my own daughter.
Now its my daughters turn, I have passed the torch on to her. She will soon be going to camp, not as a camper, but as a CIT (Counselor in Training) and then eventually as a counselor, taking with her the knowledge and love of Girl Scouting that I have been able to pass on to her.
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