CAMP DAD

If you have never been sound asleep in your van and been suddenly awakened in the middle of the night with the van rocking and rolling like the earth was shaking itself apart and seeing young girls and their leaders flashing lights and laughingly staring into the van from every window!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never had to drive into Reno, Nevada, to attend a 7 pm meeting at the Stake Center and then returning to Bucks Lake girls camp after midnight, only to find that your tent and sleeping bag have been lovingly transferred to the raft in the middle of the lake and then spent the next hour by star light retrieving your tent and sleeping bag balanced on a canoe and then setting up your tent in its proper spot and hurriedly getting a few hours’ sleep before the next morning!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never painted a pith helmet green and worn it for a week!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never had to search out the biggest and baddest squirt gun you could find for six straight years!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never had a sleepless night chasing bears out of the garbage because someone forgot to lock the lids on said cans!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never had your teenage daughter turn into your hero by removing a garter snake from your tent!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never been a sous chef and pot washer for six or maybe ten women ‘head chefs’ all in one kitchen at the same time fixing meals for 150 plus, always hungry, young girls!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never glue gunned your finger to felt or threaded your finger into a string of beads or jig sawed 150 plus pine trees!


Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never gone on a hike with 25 young girls and had to listen to constant choruses of I am hungry, my feet hurt, it is too hot, haven't we seen enough trees and rocks!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never had to help start 7 camp fires simultaneously at campsites 25 to 50 meters apart every night for 5 straight nights!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

I you have never had to do command performances of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in pocho (Spanish mixed with English) at the evening skit and talent show for six straight years!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If you have never been glad that the camp end campfire testimony meeting was held well after sun down and listened to 50 plus of the sweetest testimonies ever!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

If after 30 plus years have passed you don’t still have a green pith helmet, a sweat shirt depicting a tent on a raft in the middle of a lake, a three foot bear wood cut out with 150 signatures and best wishes along with numerous other keepsakes stored in your garage!

Then you have never been a young women’s camp dad!

There was a time when I worried about whether I would make it passed the pearly gates since I had never been a scout leader or worked in the nursery, but as I look back on the wonderful six years I was able to be a camp day for girls camp at Bucks Lake, I sometimes think I might make it past Saint Peter and be allowed to enter.


THOUGHTS FOR A SABBATH DAY – WILLIAM L. RILEY

EDITED BY – KATHLEEN W. RILEY