Back from camp

No pictures. But I will tell you what I have been up to this week.

I went to girls camp and ran girls down the river every day. Before and after my rafting gig every day, I would wander around camp talking to girls, laughing my head off, and having fun.

I love the river. I love rafting. I love girls camp. It was a perfect week. The sun came out and the rain stopped. There were not a lot of mosquitoes this year, either. I loved every minute, and I look forward to doing the same thing next year.

Each of the first days, I guided a raft full of girls down the river with another guide or two. The last day at camp we play "Survivor." This game is a brilliant creation (not mine) that combines all of the camp certification skills the girls have learned during the week into one giant Amazing Race. They get clues and have to use all the things they have learned along the way--first aid, cooking (this is where they eat their lunch), fire building, knot tying, hair braiding, orienteering and other things, including how to save someone who falls out of a raft.

This job required us to tow our rafts upriver about 1/4 mile. We had to walk up one shore as far as we could, paddle across the current, walk up that shore, and then once again paddle across a swift current and then walk the raft through a swifter but shallow current to get it to the beach where the girls got in. It was hard, but it was worth it. There were 6 Survivor teams and 3 rafts, so we had to do this raft-moving twice. My quads have never ever been so sore as they are now from walking against the current through thigh-deep water.

Once each team found us at the raft put-in spot, the girls put on life jackets, grabbed some paddles and hopped in the raft. Then along our short trip, one of the older girls "fell" in the deep water and the girls on the raft had to pull her back in.

Did I mention the river is 55 degrees?

The first four teams found us fast--so fast that they were standing there waiting for me to get back upstream from my first trip so they could get in my boat. I loaded up my second team and headed downstream. Then I pulled the raft up on the beach and laid out in the glorious sun. I thought it would be not too long until the next 2 rafts came in, and then we would load up and be done. But it was 2 hours before the other groups finally found the raft put-in. They got stuck on the orienteering, during which they saw me laying in my raft on the beach, and then when they got their rafting clue they just figured that they needed to come back to me. Those 2 teams were very sad to find out they had to hike clear to the other end of the camp in order to get to the put-in.

Anyway, my body got some much-needed sun. So much, in fact, that I actually had people come up to me and say, "You look tan!" I've never been told THAT in my almost 39 years. But I honestly have a tan line--right where my life jacket was. And my rafting sandals. Sure, I've had burn lines plenty of times. But tan lines are something I usually don't get.

One of my favorite things on the river was the run I made Friday morning when we saw a big bird sitting on a log on the bank. So I steered the raft over to the band, and saw that it was a bald eagle. From its markings, I figure it was a 2-year old. It did not move. We were within 3 feet of it and it did not move. As we came closer we could see that the eagle had a big, fat salmon it was eating. The head was gone (everyone knows the eyeballs are the best part, right?). We had come upon it mid-meal and it was more afraid of us taking its fish away that it was of us hurting it. It just sat perfectly still and watched us float. We stopped as long as the current let us. I've never seen an eagle's eye up so close in the wild. This trip also brought sightings of a doe and her 2 babies, a whole family of cute common mergansers, and several osprey, one of which was soaring right over us, hovering and diving in the river over and over trying to find a meal. It was honestly like I had pre-arranged these sightings, or that they were fake because they were so unreal. This particular trip was a raft full of leaders who had not been able to go earlier in the week, so they actually thought it was cool to stop and look at the wildlife. A raft full of 12-year-old girls would not have cared.

Anyway, I'm home, cleaned up and really tired. Early bedtime for me. It was so fun to be surrounded by all the kids from home who had so much to tell me and ask me when I got home this morning. I missed them all. But not enough to ever stay home from girls camp.