SeaToSea vs Camporee

I'd like to take a little digression from talking about the SeaToSea and biking and bike training and all of that to talk about the International Cadet Camporee 2008 -- but don't worry, I'll bring it back on topic soon.


Many of you already know this, but just a quick background: The Calvinist Cadet Corps is the boys' club organization that many CRC churches uses for their club for boys aged around 8-14. Every 3 years they hold a major get together - a camping week out in the bush somewhere for 1000 boys known as the International Camporee. This year it was in Ontario -- near Sundridge Ontario, if you want to look it up, west of Algonquin park. (google maps link)

Unfortunately, during the camporee week, the rain did not let up - they had 7 inches of rain over the course of the week, which resulted in an enourmous amount of mud making the camp almost impassible. In the end they made the difficult decision to evacuate the camp after only 4 days.

My son Gerrit, who is 11, had looked forward to this for months. He came home on this past Sunday night from camp, very filthy, very tired, but still in good spirits. In fact, one of his first words were of wanting to go again. All his stuff went straight into the washing machine. The next day, we turned around and threw it right back in for a second wash, and I think it might be clean now.

Gerrit's local head counselor, Len, who had driven him home, had to go back on Monday. His tent trailer was "stranded" in the staff area, due to mud, and he needed to go back on Monday to retrieve it, as well as help a bit in some of the clean up that was still taking place. I decided to accompany him, to help make the long drive (5+hrs!) a bit easier on him. As well, I admit, I was a bit curious about what it was like up there, as we had seen the photos and videos on the Camporee website.

We arrived late Monday night and put on our boots (mandatory) and hiked in to the staff area where we found still more than 50 camp leaders who were involved in the remaining cleanup.

I was already impressed by the leaders. Here were a bunch of dirty and tired folks with every right to be cranky and disappointed. Many did not have the gear for this type of conditions -- I saw several wading in mud barefoot, and more than one with plastic bags around their feet inside mud-soaked footwear. Yet they greeted me with a smile, offered me a chair at the campfire, and we all sat and fellowshipped. Was there griping about the mess and evacuation? No! Sure they talked about the job ahead, but they also talked about the Northern lights (one guy saw them at 3am when he was up), about the stars, about the fun the kids had when canoeing, and so on.

Tuesday morning I set out to hike around the camp grounds. I was confronted with a path like this...


Which didn't see too bad. However a counselor I bumped into told me that a lot of the water had drained away over the last two days in those areas. But imagine that path looking like this, with hundreds of kids trying to walk through it to get to the next activity area...


(See the website for many photos of kids dealing with the mud.) There was still a LOT of mud on Tuesday, even after two days of no rain. A few counselors still went in the mud up to their knees on Tuesday while hiking around. I walked very carefully, and in certain areas detoured into the underbrush to avoid the treacherous mud areas.

This is the redzone, where Gerrit was camping. He was in cadre Red-15 (8 boys + 2 counselors per cadre)


Their tents had already been cleared away. But some other areas still had not been torn down...


The boys build their tents as part of the camp experience, live in them, and then are supposed to tear them down at the end as part of the cleanup. Now the remaining staff will need to organize some work parties to finish the cleanup that the cadets could not accomplish.

Imagine trying to get to the bathroom and facing this mud blockage...



Yes, there are bears in the area, which is why it was very important to pack out all trash, as well as make noise when hiking. (not that 1000 boys would have had any trouble at all making a bit of noise...)


Gerrit's group missed out on riflery, archery, mountain-biking, and rappelling. He did get to play survivor games, went canoeing, swimming, campcraft, and of course helped build his campsite and met folks from all over the place. (the kids are purposely mixed up so no one knows anyone in their cadre.)


They had a great 30-40ft high natural rock face right in the middle of the camp for rapelling. (The ropes are still visible in the photo, as they were doing some rapelling for the staff on the day I was there.)

Tuesday, when I was there, was a gorgeous sunny day, and the staff camping area, which is open and receives sunlight, was gradually drying up. But there was still tons (literally) of mud all over the place. There was a guy on a tractor all morning pushing and scraping to pile up the mud out of the way, so that the ground could dry up, firm up, so that they could get their stuff out.

Still, it was a struggle. After spending an hour working on the entrance with heavy equipment, they still had to use an excavator to help pull in a semi-tractor to hook up to it's trailer. It got stuck, and they hooked a chain from the bucket to the axle and pulled the tractor back to latch it to the trailer


And then they still needed to tow it out


Once the three trailers were out they started towing out staff vehicles and trailers -- here goes Len's -- and we left around 2pm Tuesday afternoon, for the long drive home.




If you want to see more of this, I would encourage you to go to the camporee website, where they have many photos and several videos of the mud, the rain, and the whole evacuation nightmare -er- procedure.

When my son Gerrit came home, he was short one duffel bag. And so he lost his pillow, bike helmet, Aqua socks, swim gear, three towels, one sandal, plate+utensils, and I think some clothes. Heather and I were a bit upset at this, and when I went up to the camp myself, I was hoping to find his stuff ... somewhere.

I came home empty handed.

Yet, I was also much more at peace about the whole loss. From talking to several of the counselors, from viewing and walking the campground, it was driven home to me just how much a logistical nightmare this had been. There were 1000 boys with all their gear spread over 200 acres of mud-choked forest. They faced a lengthy walk over near impassible paths to get to the road. The leadership was hampered by the weather, by communications delays and mix-ups, by the sheer magnitude of all this. Frankly, I came away just amazed that it worked at all.

I was a little disappointed to hear, later, that some parents had already made inquiries about getting a refund. I suspect that they would reconsider if they learned all that I had learned through visiting the camp.

---

Over the course of all of my experience with this event, I really started to see a lot of similarities between a Camporee and the SeaToSea.

Both are large, and infrequent. Both require a lot of planning by a core of dedicated leaders for years. Neither would function at all without the generous help of many, many, volunteers giving of their time. Both required massive logistics to pull off. (eg: at camp they had to feed 1000 boys for a week, on tour they're feeding 200 cyclists for 9 weeks.) Both are at the mercy of the weather. Both face unplanned happenings.

Finally, both are fully dependent on the providence of God. Both groups need to trust God, need to seek him, and do not always know why things are happening as they did. While at the camp, I was told the story how during the midst of the evacuation the Camporee people heard from one Speaker/Chaplain who told them how God has a reason for this. We may not know what it is for the next ten years, but there _is_ a reason. This reminded me so strongly of the thoughts of SeaToSea rider Tyler Buitenwerf. He was a rider who fell and broke his Collarbone shortly after leaving Denver, and had to leave the tour. In his blog while writing about his accident, Tyler wrestled with his disappointment, but he also gave a great testimony when he wrote: "but I know that God has something for me to do the next 5 weeks that I would not have been able to do on the tour."

Just like the SeaToSea riders... what an adventure these campers and leaders had, what a memory the kids are taking home with them. And also, there is something they have to look forward to, as the Camporee comes every 3 years.

SeaToSea, does not come every 3 years.

At least, so far...