Camp Director for A Gaggle of Girls, Giddyap!

When I was a teenager an annual summer endeavor was to attend Girls Camp which hosted a couple hundred teenage girls, the older teens learning and exacting programming and leading nature and life skills and personal and spiritual development activities under the umbrella of my church.

I loved the sassy songs, the creative skits, the burnt food, the arduous hikes, the portaging of canoes, the mountain ridge trepidations, the glacial swims. I grew up in Alaska and had the grandeur of Kodiak Island, Alaska, Seward, Sterling Alaska to savor in the gifts of this grand, gorgeous earth. We did not have showers (hell, a lake is your shower) and no bathrooms (who needs 'em, not I!) The comradery, the introspective way that sunshine, rain-beams, the chill of a sleeping back with no pad can bring-- always, I would find myself all over again. I joyfully pour over my teen diaries of those times and see a young woman perceptive beyond her years and already a lifelong learner.

I remember and adult leader in Kodiak teaching me of a wild root rice and helping me find and grill fiddle head ferns. I savored their buttery, bitter delight. It tasted somehow like life, complex and nuanced with an aftertaste of self reliance and wonderment.

Well, world, guess what, this coming week I am THEE Camp Director of my areas teenage girls camp. For the last several months we have met weekly, fit in an overnight planning intensive and my bags are packed (where in the world is my mess kit?!) and many of my expectations and aspirations have been rerouted but in the furthering of youth development. Our young people really are our promise of a bright future. I have a larger than life personality that seemed equipped to project over the blaze of a campfire. But in Alabama, the roaring temps have a limited flame, unlike a dreary, Alaskan summer. And goals and visions of youth are different than mine.

It is my hope that I can inspire in each young woman the belief that she is empowered and capable to call of the powers of the most high to conspire for her benefit.

I pray she will realize she can make her destiny what she wants it to be. You has the power within herself to ask questions, to make something from nothing, to see wisdom in tree bark, to lend a hand to another friend through a plaited braid. I hope she will understand that she doesn't always have to work hard to appreciate goodness, be present in the wind and honor this grand earth. But other times you have to sweat, get gritty and be pushed to your limits to see the vista after summiting a mountain.

I hope they will feel the servant's reward of peace when they teach younger young women. I cannot hardly contain my excitement for the adventure ahead. A colleague shared a work life balance quote today in a Daily Huddle Process Lean meeting, "Work life balance is about creating a life that flows with you rather than a life you have to power through." - Jaime Marie Wilson. I am tying up work this week to leave all in a place that allows cohesion in my absence. I part grateful for PTO and for the opportunity to use my skills towards the betterment of community and youth leadership development. Life is good when you are outside.