Hazards of Wilderness Camp

There are many hazards to working at a wilderness camp, most common of those hazards is illness. Kids get sick and when they get sick, they pass it around. At wilderness camp, they pass it to other members of their group, their chiefs, kids in other groups, it goes around and around. A few weeks ago, I had the unfortunate luck of being the chief in charge of taking care of the sicklings in my group. All of them. So naturally, I get sick too. It hit on a particularly rough day at work for me. The boys were being dumb and me and my co-chief had to call the MC's down to help us out. After a particularly long huddle in the cold, it hit me. BAM! I started running a fever. The next few days until I got off for mine and B's weekend was insane. I could barely walk I ached so much. B was an amazing caretaker, getting me whatever I needed, taking care of the dogs and making me stay in bed. I ended up going to the doctor and what do you know... I had a touch of the flu that had turned into bronchitis! Thankfully, after 10 days of medicine, I feel loads better.

The next hazard of working in wilderness camp is injuries. The most common way for a chief to get injured at wilderness camp is from restraints or breaking up fights. I, unfortunately, am a casualty of such type of injury. This past weekend was chaos. That is all I can describe it as, because nothing fits it better. My group was chaos. The day I got injured, half my group decided to go out of bounds for a good 2 hours. We didn't check out of tents until after 7pm and then all hell broke loose. I won't go into the details, but while an MC and my co-chief were in a restraint the rest of the group decided they were going to fight someone. While trying to break this fight up in the dark, my right knee twists, pops, and buckles. Because of all the adrenaline in my body, I didn't realize what had happened until things had calmed down and my knee just didn't feel right at all. One trip to the emergency room the next day, and I had a tentative diagnosis of a right ACL sprain.

B has been amazing through all of this and is such a gentleman (not that he wasn't before) but I guess I recognize it more since I have to ask him to do things for me. B continues to show me every day God's love through his actions.