CONTEST: Finalist for Summer Camp stories – Slip ‘n Slide

BY HEATHER PERRIN OF MARIETTA

Every summer growing up, I attended Camp Cherokee at the Cherokee Retreat Center near Cartersville. One of my fondest memories was years ago when I was a counselor.

That year, our interim camp director was somewhat less than involved in the day-to-day activities and liked to “manage” from afar. This was OK with us counselors for the most part, but we ended up planning and directing all of the activities for the children, electing a “head counselor in charge,” and generally leading the best way we knew how.

Because almost all of us had been counselors before, it worked just like clockwork! We built the best team environment I’ve ever worked in to this day.

That summer, though, it rained every day for weeks because there was a hurricane remnant sitting over the state. Being a camp, most of our activities were outdoors, so this seriously crimped our style.

Enter the creative genius of us counselors! What’s a fun activity you can do outside in the rain and not worry about getting wet? Slip ‘n Slide!

We didn’t have our own, so we made it out of a big blue tarp. Off we went to the field, where we and several other counselors proceeded to make a “mud pit” at the bottom of a small hill, placed the tarp so that you would have about 15 feet of sliding area, and grabbed all the dish soap we could find from the kitchens.

The kids had a ball, and we spent the better portion of that afternoon getting completely muddy and soapy — 40 kids covered in frothy mud with their counselors right beside them, covered in equal amounts of mud, is a sight to see.

To wrap things up, we all walked down to the lovely blue pool, where we happily jumped in to clean off the mud, and ended up turning the water green.

The caretaker was none too happy about the condition of the pool, and it took about a week for it to stop looking like the lake, but I will never, ever forget that experience!

To all my co-counselors that summer, if you’re reading this … “MUD!”