Jack and Jill Weekend

If you live in Michigan then you probably know about the wind we've seen this weekend.  Around here the wind knocked down so many trees that it would be hard to count them all.  Out of the thousands of trees that fell, we had almost no damage.  We had a couple close call like a tree that broke some fencing in front of Heritage Lodge (pictured), and another that landed on the West Side trading post.  I think the only thing that we had to fix was 4 lengths of split rail fence and a bit of retaining wall that we pushed a tree down onto.  Because of all these trees, the construction crew spent most of the time cutting wood.  We probably ended up cleaning up about 20 trees of all sizes before the week was over.  

All these trees ended up being a blessing as we had about 50 people coming to help out for the weekend.  It's called Jack and Jill weekend and we welcomed 25 former summer staff along with a work group from Five Points (a supporting church).  Camp organizes and assigns the work projects while providing meals and snacks for all the help.  My work group cleaned up and reset the targets on the East Side Archery range, seeded the range, raked leaves around the East Side cabins, and mauled wood to be shuffled to buildings all over camp.  I also took a small group of folks who fixed the split rail fence and the retaining wall that were damaged by falling trees around Heritage.  We also picked up a tree off of a walking path and dragged it back to the maintenance yard. 

  

I don't even know the complete list of projects that were completed in these 8 hours of hard work, but it's very evident as you drive around camp and it looks good.  Piles of brush have been dragged away, leaves have been raked, and all the buildings have big stacks of wood in them.  It's a huge help to have so many people come up and volunteer time for the weekend.  The work isn't all though because Saturday night and Sunday morning we are able to just hang out.  It's funny to think of, but even though we spend the summer working together we don't really get to relax together much.  Friendships are renewed over this weekend, and I think many people get a small bit of Camp Barakel that they've been missing since the Summer ended. 

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