It is one of my deepest desires that every child that would like to spend time at a summer camp would have the opportunity. I got to go as a child, with a passel of cousins, to Gimli Bible Camp, run then by the Canadian Sunday School Mission, now known as One Hope Canada. We slept in cabins, ate in the dining hall that doubled as the chapel and got to swim in Lake Winnipeg. The smell of water and the sound of the wind in the tall pines stay with me to this day. I can envision the path, crisscrossed with pine roots, dotted with rocks, that led down to the water front. Our parents drove us from home (Graysville) to Elim Chapel in Winnipeg from where we were all bussed to the campgrounds. We got home the same way but it could have been any of the aunties and uncles that picked us up — long before seatbelts and number regulations!
    I tried another camp, closer to home, run by the denomination to which our church belonged. The swimming was in a river, the counselors were not as adept and the attitude I found unfriendly. That was simply my experience there and many of my peers enjoyed repeat camping sessions there.
    Youth retreat weekends were truly enjoyable, for many reasons. Usually at Camp Moose Lake or Camp Koinonia, the time was spent with friends, study and singing sessions and just good clean fun. It wasn’t long after that season I returned to camps as a counsellor myself. Guiding a gaggle of early teens who thought my oldest son was the be all end all became a bit of a challenge! I became quite adept at intercepting unauthorised activities. There were some summers I signed up as kitchen staff. Mrs. Driedger made the very best cinnamon buns and as staff we could get a head start sampling.
    When we as a family moved from Southern Manitoba to the Riding Mountain area, we became involved with the Dauphin Bible Camp. There was the summer Ed was one of the cooks and the evening spaghetti was on the menu; he sterilized a canoe paddle to stir the cauldron. Kids wandering through the kitchen paused to stare and then laugh. We kept them all alive and well fed. I believe it was at that same camp that Carol and I heard the guys on staff order pizza to be delivered after curfew. We laid in wait, hidden in the shadows and the shrubs, and as the lads took the delivery we ambushed them. The pizza flew right out of their hands, like a frisbee, landed right side up, and amid much laughter — rescued. Those young men never thought two old ladies would do something like that! And I wasn’t even old back then!
    It wasn’t always summer camping. There was a father/son retreat in winter. I got to go as kitchen support. My son still speaks of fathers and sons breaking curfew to take the sleds out on the frozen lake, under a full moon sky.
    Camping allows one to read from the Big Bible, the wonderful creation. I wish every child who wanted to go, could.