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April 15, 2009 in Features
Summer camp experiences last a lifetime
Memories stick with campers
Summer camp, of course, is about fashion.
When longtime best friends Patty Johnston and Mart Wissink were heading to Camp Sweyolakan on Coeur d’Alene Lake in the summer of 1970, the 13-year-olds knew what they had to do.
“We wanted to dress identically at camp; we purchased the trendier cut-off colored denims,” the former Camp Fire Girls wrote.
“We bought identical moccasins and a variety of T-shirts at J.C. Penney’s. Oh, the excitement in the air when we planned what we would wear each day for the various camp activities!”
And when they arrived aboard the Mish-an-nock, they said, “True to the plan, we were dressed identically, ready to greet everyone at camp and our new Camp Fire friends. We looked so good!”
Sometimes, summer camp is about faith.
“Over the past 12 years or so we’ve trucked our kids, foster kids, adopted kids, and now a grandkid back and forth from (Camp) Lutherhaven each summer,” wrote Nancy and Jim Plourde of Spokane.
“With smudged, tired faces and awe-inspiring dirty clothes, the kids nevertheless have always managed to muster the energy to serenade us with camp songs all the way back to Spokane.
“The way their eyes glow as they reminisce about their experiences, their talk about how God is involved in their lives, and the camp songs they sing us home with from the back seat of the car for years and years … it seems almost magic.”
And above all, summer camp is about friends.
Peggy Lewis of Mead recalls going all by herself to Camp Sweyolakan as an almost seventh-grader in the summer of 1968, “hoping to fit in. … That’s when I met Kathy, one of my tent mates. We hit it off immediately. So well, in fact, that we arranged to meet at Sweyolakan every summer through high school. …
“We remain friends to this day. When we do get together, the years slip away, we pick up where we left off, and never have enough time to tell each other everything. I’m in touch with very few friends from high school, but my camp friends are friends for life.”
Not that camp life is one big walk in the park. Fran E. Wicht, who served as a substitute nurse at Sweyolakan in 1978, gives this account of her six-day stint:
“At the end of the week, I tallied up visits to the health cottage and found I’d treated girls with these complaints: 16 earaches, two foreign bodies in the eye, one itching eye, 23 nasal congestions, three toothaches, one with pain from a previous tooth extraction, one with sore gums, 34 with sore throats, two with chapped lips, eight with coughs, 30 with unspecified cold symptoms, two with allergies, one constipated, two with diarrhea, 16 with nausea and/or vomiting, 58 with stomach aches, six complained of the flu, 13 had cramps, six with insect bites, five burns, two blisters, 16 cuts and scrapes, two needed splinters removed, and 11 came with existing wounds that needed to be redressed.
“There were also many complaining of muscle aches, one whole body ache, one back ache, two sore wrists, three finger or toe aches, one with leg cramps, two with sore knees, two with groin pain after running into someone or something, three with sore feet, two with side aches, one said she fell and just ached, and seven complained their muscles were sore all over.”
And that doesn’t include the 67 headaches (two migraine), 21 instances of slightly elevated temperatures and countless cases of homesickness.
Still, when you factor in all the swimming, and sports, and singalongs, and s’mores … well, camp’s a no-brainer.
Inside this section, you’ll find information on a wide assortment of camp possibilities this summer – everything from arts to athletics, spirituality to special needs. See what suits you, or your kids, and start building those skills and those memories.
So, in closing … well, let’s leave the last word to Ad Brooks Johnson of Spokane: “Hi-lo- inney-minney-kaka-m-cha-cha- e-wawa, Hepta-minica-onica- sonica-boomp-de-yanna- yoohoo.”
She says all you Sweyolakan alumni will know what she means.
– Rick Bonino, features editor
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pamhawley on April 11 at 7:33 a.m.
Thanks for just another example of how powerful the camping experience is for children and adults. I have been in the field of camping for the past 40 years - 34 at the same camp, Cali-Camp Summer Day Camp in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. I have seen the value of the camp experience and how it has changed lives first hand over and over. I have so many examples to share, but I’ll just pick one.
Evelyn and Jamie, (yes their real names) started in camp together when they were 4 years old in the Ducklings. They went through camp together all the way up to our oldest group. They were the epitome of “Friendship”. They lived over an hour from each other in the other 9 months of the year, but that didn’t hurt their friendship. Every summer on their first day you could watch them looking for each other, then they would run into each others arms and there ya go! It would be as if they had just seen each other the day before. When they became old enough to be junior counselors, they did so, counselors, they did. Then this horrible thing happens in all of our lives where “reality takes over” and we must get “REAL JOBS”. They lost track of each other for awhile as Evelyn went off to Washington and Jamie became an actress, but just recently we had a camp 50th Anniversary reunion and of course they both came. They have re-connected and spent hours reminiscing about their childhoods and all the great times they had at camp.
One of the greatest phenomenons has happened. I started an alumni group for Cali-Camp Staff on Facebook and hundreds of past staff and campers have come together again and are now sharing their lives, their children and their memories.
Thanks for making me tell this little vignette. I think I must write more in the blog I am about to create.
dianneanderson on April 15 at 7:50 a.m.
Regarding the story about camp Sweyolakan, I was 13 in 1970 and also went to camp that summer. The Mish-An-Nock did not exist in 1970. The boats that took campers to Sweyolakan was captained by John Finney and was called the “Danceawanna”(sp?), It was a motorless party barge which was propeled by a stern wheeler called the Seaweewanna (sp?), which is now at the bottom of Coeur d’ alene lake.