Camp Arrowhead:  The Summer I Became  Who I Am

  Let's take a break from the pandemic, and take a walk back in time...This memory was awakened recently when my daughter  brought an author to my attention that has truly touched my heart.  As a result, I’ve been reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and listening to podcasts by Brene Brown and Glennon Doyle.  The topic of the book is self-discovery, and coming into one’s true identity.  I highly recommend this book.  It has caused me to think back on my life and the choices I have made.   It brought back some early memories, such as the summer of 1967 in which I began the journey of becoming my true self.

  This past summer (2019) my husband Rob and I drove home to Ohio for my 45^th high school reunion.  We spent two nights before that event staying in a simple cabin just outside Hocking Hills State Park, a place that remains sacred ground for me.  My father had once been ranger there.  I did so much hiking, camping, and growing up there.  Rob and I walked through many of my favorite places:  Rock House, only a mile from our cabin on a ridge;  Ash Cave, Old Man’s Cave, Cedar Falls.  Oh, the memories that flowed through my head and soul!

  After the two nights in the cabin, we packed our hiking boots and knapsacks into the car and followed our Garmin to the site of my first awakening.  Now Lake Katharine Nature Preserve, this beautiful site in Appalachian southern Ohio was once Girl Scout Camp Arrowhead, just outside Jackson, Ohio.  This was not far from Rio Grande College, where my grandfather was president in the 1920’s and where I attended band camp for several summers in the seventies.

  I had learned that the old camp property had been gifted to the state from a dear friend of mine, also a former Girl Scout.  Excitedly, I looked up the property, now called Lake Katharine Nature Preserve, and it looked like the same location I remembered Camp Arrowhead to be!  I have wondered over the years whatever became of that magical land, so much like Hocking Hills with its cliffs, waterfalls, rock outcroppings, and trails.

  Rob and I drove over back roads that became goat paths, unpaved roads in deepest Appalachia where I prayed the car wouldn’t break down.  Did I hear banjos?  It was only a few hours from our cabin.  At last we came to Jackson, Ohio.  We made our way through the small town out through half - abandoned strip malls. Then the road turned out onto the farm fields, and soon there was a turn-off onto Lake Katharine Road.  

  As we drove up the former camp entrance road, I began to feel

elevated…excited…tingling all over.  We were entering sacred space.  I had come here 52 years earlier for two weeks of sleep-away camp, an experience that had changed me forever.  For I had discovered who I was, really, and had ample opportunity to explore and delight in this new person.  I was 12 years old.

  We drove up the now-paved road and parked in the visitor’s lot.  I realized right away that this was once a huge meadow, with the dining hall straight ahead and the camp office to the left.  Our cabins were lined up along the meadow where it met the forest…I could almost hear the whippoorwills calling from the darkening woods as they did so long ago. The cabins are long gone, trees have filled in the old meadow, and the dining hall is gone.  Only the shell of the old office remains.  Oh, and the log athletic cabin, which we passed as we drove into the camp.  The memories began flooding back…

  I was the only one of us four kids who had the privilege of going to summer camp for a full two weeks.  My brothers were much older than I, and grew up before my mother went to work as an English teacher.  My Dad’s salary as a forester didn’t allow for them to go to camp, other than the occasional weekend at Boy Scout Camp Mingo.  I was the lucky one.  They had a lot to say about that! How well I remember that first drive up the camp road…  It was 1967.
   My parents drove me up to the drop-off point with my duffel bag full of carefully labeled clothing and my pressed camp uniform, a white blouse (!!), dark green shorts, and green knee socks with red flashers (garters) holding them up.  And of course, my Girl Scout pins.  I was decked out for adventure!  I don’t remember them leaving, but I know I didn’t cry.  I was free, Baby.  Bring it! This tame daughter was about to find out how to be untamed.

  I checked in at the office and found my cabin.  After lugging my gear across the meadow and claiming a bunk, I went off to meet my new companions for this 14-day excursion.  And so it began.

  I only remember a few high points of those two weeks, but I remember all of the unfettered joy I felt.  Who was this new me?  I had been a shy child.  Not so here!  I threw myself into the various activities with gusto.  Here are some salient memories:

·     There was no hot water for showering.  You had to really want to get clean to stand in freezing cold water that flowed from the rustic shower.  The shower perched next to the latrine on the edge of a sheer drop-off.  No railings.  Take your flashlight if you had to go at night…

·     Swimming that hot summer was only allowed during Red Cross Swim Lessons.  You had to hike a mile down the trail to the lake, swim your laps, and hike back up that $#@& hill to get back to your cabin. By then, of course, you would be dripping with sweat again.

·     There were no screens in the cabins.  We were mosquito meat.

·     There were mice in the cabins that tried to eat my cocoa shea butter.

·     We had flag ceremonies twice a day that involved the Pledge of Allegiance, singing, and wearing our camp uniforms.  We folded and unfolded the flag in the military way.  These ceremonies were taken very, very seriously.

·     Meals were taken in the large log dining hall.  There was a lot of singing, and of course, the following of chore charts. Everybody had a job to do.

·      I realized for the first time that women could love women.  It was clear to me that the director, a butch woman called Louie, was gay. I watched with amazement as the counselors interacted with each other, laughing and talking with complete affection and respect.  I took all of this in, accepting and wondering at this.  And no, there were never any public displays of affection…but we knew it was there.

·      I came to camp with a terrible reaction to medicine for horrific poison ivy, and the reaction put me in the infirmary for a day.  They asked me if I wanted to go home, or stay.  I wanted to stay.  I swear, once I made that decision, the hives upon hives dried up and went away.

·     In the evening, as the sun was setting, we would sit around a big campfire and sing songs like “Barges,”  “Blue Walking,” and others.  Some of the counselors played the guitar.

·     Off in the woods just behind our cabins, there were whippoorwills that would call out at twilight.  I had never heard them before, nor have I heard them since.  Those calls haunt me, and beckon for me to come back.

·     We took one overnight backpacking trip.  I remember hiking past the swimming area of Lake Katharine, walking on the bridge over a swift-flowing creek, and washing my hair under a small waterfall.  We must have pitched tents to sleep in, but I can’t remember where.  I do remember rumors of a boys’ camp on the other side of the lake, but no boys materialized.  Oh, wait – I remember some canoes coming in from the other side, that were swiftly redirected by our counselors…

·     Mostly I remember how at home I felt among these women and girls.  I wasn’t homesick at all, although I had asked my Dad to write “thick letters.”  I received a letter from him written in magic marker on paper towels!

·     My favorite memory was of Dad flying his Forest Service plane over the meadow one day.  I had told all the girls he was planning to do this.  When he buzzed our cabin, all the girls went running out into the field, waving.  He said it looked like an anthill exploding from the air!

  Looking back on these memories, I marvel at how rustic our experience was.  We were truly in the wild.  All too soon, the two weeks were over.  My parents came and collected me:  I was tanned for the first time in my life, covered in mosquito bites, and had lost about 5 pounds (I was a chunky kid.)  But the biggest change wasn’t physical…

  I came home a different person.  I was no longer tame.  Suddenly the walls of my house were too small, too constricted. For days I pined for camp, trying to spend every waking hour out of doors.  I couldn’t stand being in a house.  I remember looking at our claw-foot bathtub with contempt.   I had become wild.  I had found my soul-place, and it wasn't in town.  Most importantly, I had gained confidence in my ability to solve problems, I had built up my physical strength, and I had overcome the pain and itching of hives. I had become who I was meant to be…a budding, strong, beautiful young woman.  This was my awakening.  I was no longer tame.

  And now I was back, 52 years later. My husband and I walked toward the old camp office, where a maintenance man was working.  I asked him if this was the former Camp Arrowhead.  Yes, it was!  He pointed out the few remaining buildings, and directed us, at my request, to a trail that would take us down to the lake.

  Rob and I began the long walk down the trail to the lake.  It looked the same, smelled the same, and felt the same…the sun was heating up the hemlock trees, causing a wonderful incense smell to rise up out of the forest. Sunlight dappled the trail, and caught small pebbles of quartz in the light.  There was the rock outcropping on the left of the trail, moist, dark, and hinting of earthy mystery.

And then – the Lake.

  Lake Katharine looked mighty small. The old swimming area was overgrown with only a small length of grass where the beach once was.  No docks remained.  I had a fleeting memory of a tall counselor with a clipboard and a whistle, hustling us in and out of the freezing cold water.  We walked across the waterfront to the woods on the other side, and there it was…the trail into the woodlands with the outflow creek, splashing over that little waterfall where I washed my hair as a child.  I took a few photos, completely dazzled by the magic of the place.

  My heart was singing that day, as it had sung 52 years earlier when I first walked these trails.  A lot of water had flowed under that bridge – literally – that now led  onto the Yellow Trail (Pine Ridge Trail) of the Lake Katharine Nature Preserve.

We continued our hike for two and a half miles of thick forest walking…through sassafras, maple, beech, and hemlock stands. At times I wasn’t sure we were on the right track, but we figured it out. Finally we made our way up a very steep hillside with more rock outcroppings, and I recognized the small cliff where our outhouse once stood, behind the cabins.  (I hate to think of the hygiene and ecology issues of that “plumbing!”)  Sure enough, we emerged into the sunlight that led us back to the visitors’ parking lot.

  I looked back wistfully for the ghost cabins that I remembered, long gone.  As we returned to our car, I noticed one other car in the lot, at the far side.  There were two older women climbing out of their car.  They were about the age that my counselors would have been, now…I looked at them and wondered…Is that Louie?  And her wife?  Had they, too, come back to remember a magical summer?

  We drove onward, on to Chillicothe this time, for the high school reunion that brought me home.  I was filled with joy for having found my old camp. I felt filled with light.  The ghosts of the past receded into the forest, called back into the mists of time by the haunting cry of a whippoorwill.

  When my time comes to depart this world, I want to walk back into that forest of my youth.  It was once my heaven on earth.  There will be old friends waiting for me there, sitting around the campfire, singing the old songs…and I will join them again.  You can keep your angels’ wings, flowing robes, and pearly gates.  I’ll be wearing a white blouse, green shorts, green knee socks, red flashers…and of course, my Girl Scout pins.