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Published: August 26th 2008
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Dear Father, and Mother and Aunty and Siblings and fellow co-workers and friends and random internet people who are reading this.
It has been far far too long since my last entry and I am feeling very bad about it. However I have not had time to scratch myself since the onslaught of 24 hour workie people style summer camp which began what feels like years ago, I think it was mid..June?. At summer camp, about 7.30 am the charming bugle toots (I never got up right away) I'd teach during day, have meetings or work on horses in non teaching times, dinner for nearly 200 people was always an energetic affair and then there was an evening activity till 8 or 9. Then try and get insomniac teenage roommates to go to sleep and if you are lucky you are on duty so you walk around till 10-10.30 pm with a torch gun telling kids to be quiet and go to sleep.
So on some or many of these days I was pushing it to run off for 5-10 mins to jump in the shower. Literary aspirations went effectively down the toilet during summer camp so I do apologise once
again.
The first couple of weeks the riding program was led by myself and a girl who had been there 5 years, then she left and my new partner arrived. My new partner in crime was not a first timer like me but there had been a 20 yer hiatus, and there was a horse show we were hosting that weekend so that was a rather busy time indeed.
The full on nature of camp both inspired and smacked me in the face with a lot of pressures, realisations and learning experiences. This was highlighted by the several situations when I felt it was all too much and I was about to blow my top, thankfully I kept my top on and I continued forward, one day at a time, as the pressures and the drama unfolded throughout the 7 weeks of camp with 7 staff to manage and 9 horses. One day a horse impaled herself on a stable door, another day we think the barn may have been struck by lightning, but I had a great time teaching the kids and loved them smiling and their enjoyment of learning about horses and riding. It was great
when they learned to trot on their own and we had heart failure when they were catapulted off (yes it was a catapault).
On hot days I could go swimming in the lake in our lunch hour, I saw moose footprints on our back delivery road. On days out I explored the lovely old town of Portland, I also went rural and visited the American version of Hastings, where we played pool in a dirty pool hall and drank cheap vodka, then went rope swinging in a roadside lake. I also tried frozen custard for the first time, OH MY GOD, I LOVE CUSTARD.
A group of us had a long drive up to rainy mainy moose country where we accidentally went 4wd adventuring in a camp van(not advisable) then saw 2 live moose! Oh have I mentioned that since being in Maine I had become obsessed with mooses, mooseys, moosei? Well I was and still am.
On another day out I saw a comedic and musical theatre performance in the quaint town of Brunswick and I went to a wildlife park and saw a magnificent bull moose close up, it was very very cool.
My kids
in my cabin would sleep walk and sleep talk.and one of them grabbed my foot in the middle of the night 'to check that I was still there'. She tried to calm me in my startled state, I asked her is she was sleepwalking and she abruptly said 'NO' before muttering sleeptalking gibberish and following my instruction to go back to bed. It was a very rainy summer and when I think of the cabin I am reminded of the lovely mould smell, everything was damp most of the time and many things became mouldy, including Salty my beloved stuffed sea otter. I put him in the washing machine and he smells nice but still has mould spots 😞
Finally there was the finale horse show, and the horses had had enough but the show must go on and every girl had to ride a horse in this horse show and it was a hell of a job setting this up with stroppy neddies and beginner riders but we did it in the end, no one was bucked off. My partner in managing the riding program was the most wonderful person to work with and know, and the people
I worked with were great and the kids had learned to ride and had fun and the horses left in the twighlight of that last Saturday of the summer and I sat on the step of the barn, incredibly hot and dusty as usual.
Awards were given to kiddies at the end of the summer and I was captain hook in our Disney themed presentation night (I am a kick arse captain hook btw) Then we get kids packing and we sweep out the cabins, the tracks outside had become mud due to extreme rains, which we had to walk through to go to the bathroom or take a shower. My feet were muddy most of the time.
There was the camp farewell ceremony and the kids cry and or bawl as they said their goodbyes, letting candles go in the lake by the moonlight and some of the staff cried with them. The staff cried every emotional Sunday mushy staff meeting but I didn't because I must have no soul.
The kids leave Tuesday morning and they are bawling again and I am still not (awkward) I go to small staff post camp gathering which is
in a magnificent mansion, just like American college parties, and we drink out of large plastic cups just like in the american college parties and our enthusiasm for drinking is waaay high and our tolerance is waaay low. There are lovely hors douvers and bountiful fresh blueberries. We took the speedboat out on the lake with lovely beige leathe seats, whilst feeling giggly and adventurebound, the spray of the water was sooo refreshing.
Quite a way into the evening and there are drinking games, I sensibly decide not to play with beer because beer makes me sick, so I use bourbon and a splash of coke, which then led to me giving praise to the porcelain goddess to the tune of bourbon and blueberries. The next day I am dropped back at camp a bit hungover and by speedboat and I stay for some packing and organisation time before I hop on a greyhound and head up to Vermont to see one of my riding staff palys compete in a big show.
The following day, with my bags packed and chaos subsided, I said goodbye to the lovely people that ran the camp who had lived and worked
and loved me for 10 weeks. Here I started to cry, the first tears they ever saw from me. but I managed to get it together and into the van off to the bus to go forth adventurebound from the secluded world of camp and out into the big wide world once again.
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