From August 14-16, I was up at Huron Forest Camp Cherith in northern Michigan, working as a cook with some family friends. They’ve been involved both with the camp, and with the group that had come up for the weekend, City Mission (an inner city mission in the Brightmoor area of Detroit), for about 10 years.

Cooking for close to 80 people is hard work! It’s pretty much a 14 hour day, and that barely seems like enough time to get everything done. Because you’re cooking for so many, you can’t do everything from scratch, which was hard for me. I have to admit, I’m a bit of a food snob, so it was quite the challenge to make myself use mixes and prepared foods and such. I kept reminding myself that it was only for a few days. But it’s also a lot of fun. Though the people I was working with are closer to my parent’s age than mine, things still got a bit crazy in the kitchen. It was like late night randomness, during the day, all day, in real life. Quite the experience.

I hadn’t been at the camp for over three years, so there were some changes since the last time. One was that I was finally allowed to use knives! I had been under 18 last time, and legally could not handle them. It became something of a running joke that I couldn’t use or touch the knives last time, so it was quite exciting to be able to. A random cooking tip for anyone who’s interested: ovens work better when you actually turn them on. The food happens to cook faster that way, too.

For anyone (Kevin…) who knows about my thing with the hanging rack for pots and pans, and the very specific order the objects must hang on it, and thinks I’m just a bit obsessive, I have been vindicated! (in a way) My order makes sense! In my kitchen, part of the order is that all the smaller objects hang in the front, making it less likely that I will hit my head on anything. This is necessary, as I have a bad habit of doing that very thing. In the camp kitchen, there is not any kind of order for the various cooking utensils to hang up, and because of that, I whacked myself quite soundly on a large pot hanging where I would not have put it, and knocked it to the ground. Despite the injury, I have the sense of a minor victory because I was right…although I do wish I hadn’t had to prove it in that way.

Despite the grueling hours and hard taskmasters, I was able to escape the kitchen for a little while Friday afternoon, and take a trip to the Au Sable river. It’s gorgeous. The special attraction here was a huge, incredibly steep hill of sand (they refer to it as a dune, though I’m not sure it really is one) overlooking a wide section of the river. Though many people raced down to the water as soon as we got there, I on the other hand never made it quite all the way down. I went about halfway, had to go back for something, returned, and made it about two thirds of the way down before I realized that I probably wouldn’t arrive at the bottom before I would need to be back at the top in time to get back to camp! However, 1/2 + 2/3 = 7/6, so technically I did cover the entire distance and I will not be persuaded otherwise!

Being in the kitchen until 9:30-10:00 at night meant missing the campfires with everyone, but I almost preferred the way things worked out. By the time I was able to get down to the fire, the campers had gone to bed and just a few of the staff and the TE’s * were left. Both nights, we had very special times of worship and prayer and fellowship. It was a more than adequate substitute for late night randomness , and probably the best part of the time at camp.

*TE = Team Elijah. The name Camp Cherith comes from the story of Elijah by the Brook Cherith, and reason all the staff have bird names is because of the ravens that fed Elijah there. (it’s kind of a stretch, but that’s the reason they have…) This is the only place where I’m known as Ouzel in real life! I was Ouzel there before ever being water_ouzel online. But anyway, the TE’s are high school age campers who, instead of paying to come to camp just for fun, receive a small stipend to come and serve. They do dishes (a Herculean undertaking!) help with the horses, and because we were short-staffed this weekend, helped with many, many other things. They are always a huge help, but I don’t think we would have made it without them this time!

Even though I was only there for a few days, in that short time I had many traditional camp experiences:

1. Sand everywhere and in everything–shoes, socks, suitcase, bedding, and everywhere else.
   
2. Sharing a shower with spiders *shudders*
3. Nonsense songs at lunchtime
4. Legs completely covered in mosquito bites
5. Freezing cold nights
6. 2 inch thin “mattresses”
7. Camaraderie
8. Disconnecting from the world outside. It’s really a whole ‘nother life up there.
9. Meeting God
10. Being utterly exhausted at the end of camp, sleeping most of the ride downstate–and still not being able to keep my eyes open that evening!

More to come soon! Also, I will add pictures as soon as I can make them work.