Trees!

More trees falling around here.  With the Winter retreat season wrapping up, Mike Baker and I are going after all the trees that are marked around camp.  Some of them are in prominent places around camp like the West Side Ballfield and the East Side Chapel.  This means there are signs and fences and tetherball poles that we need to avoid.  So we used the Skytrak to give some of the trees a push in the right direction.  Most of the time Mike just puts a notch in the tree and cuts it so that it drops right where he wants it.

This one is on the way down.

All this cutting creates a mess, but with the help of Dan Haines and Mike Alchin we make quick work of it.  The trick becomes getting it to burn in the wet/snowy weather we've been having.  We discovered a couple of good tricks.  The first one is right out of Tim Houston's Thursday night camp out book:  Start small, then work your way up slowly.  The second is to run into the woods, tip over a dead pine tree, and use that to sustain the fire until the wet stuff is cooked dry.  Then it just needs someone to shuffle it around every once and a while.

This is the big mess.  We get most of it pretty quickly, but the smallest of the brush is hard to gather.

The burn pit takes some work, but I think it's sort of therapeutic.

There was still a lot of small brush laying around on the East Side Chapel driveway, but about 6 inches of snow fell on top of it, effectively saving us the trouble of cleanup for some time.  With that snow came the assurance that our last two weekends would really be Winter camp.  Barring an abnormal amount of sun and warm temperatures, we should be ready for the last weekend now with a little bit of touching up on the tubing runs.

If we aren't moving snow onto the tubing hill, it seems like we're moving it off of everything else.  So instead of loading up trucks with snow, most of the staff spent Friday plowing or removing snow from their areas of responsibility.  For me that's the West Side of camp.  I share about half of that with Mike Baker, while Reuben, Kevin and Jon Ford clean up the other part of West Side.  Since we were a little scattered this weekend I just ran the snowblower all over the West Side.  Thankfully somebody (Danny VanOrman?) used the tractor snowblower on the main paths, leaving me to take pass around camp with the smaller snow blower.  In the meantime Mike cleaned up the buildings in our area, and we were able to make it much easier to traverse the West Side.

My view for about 3 hours on Friday afternoon.  Thanks for the Ice Armor mittens mom!

So I'm thankful for snow this weekend, and hoping for a little bit more now.  I finally can get my snowshoes out for at least a little bit.  One last cleaning this season, one more retreat, and then it's on to Spring at Camp Barakel.

As the Winter Passes

I spent the first part of the week in and returning from Chicago.  It was kind of crazy, but I think the trip was worth it.  I watched the Red Wings win their 20th consecutive home win with some friends and then I had lunch with Tim (Youth Pastor at Garrison Hills) on Wednesday.  Made it back just in time to join in on a staff potluck and then join in with Luke and Randy Harris at a Kirtland Community College basketball game over in Mio.

The rest of the week was a flurry of cleaning mixed with some tree cutting.  We also cleaned up the brush pile that's been piled up for a while.  A couple of the trees we dropped were right over the fence near the West Side basketball court.  With some help from the Skytrak and some crafty cutting by Mike Baker we made it work without much trouble.  Then we spent a solid hour tending the burn pile to get the wet wood going and eventually we burned it down to just about nothing.  Here's some low quality video:

This weekend was the first combined combined teen retreat.  That means that both sides of camp come together on the East side for a combined chapel.  The weather gave us just enough snow to keep the tubing hill going, and that meant a fast couple runs this weekend.  Don Jackson was the speaker this weekend and he's always a favorite of the campers.  I was excited this weekend when a package showed up from my Dad's house.  Inside of it was my first electric razor!  Dad put in some pre shave and post shave stuff along with some "English Leather" cologne.  I don't know about that part, but we'll see what happens.

English Leather.....

Two more winter weekends.  I'm looking forward to them, but i'll be happy to get some normal weekends in the Spring.  Plus some trips to the southern half of the state.  The Spring will also bring the end of the high school basketball season.  I've been running clock for most of the girl's home games this year.  Tonight was a crazy overtime game between Fairview's JV and Alpena's Freshman team.  It's pretty impressive that a Class D school would push a game into overtime against a good Class A school.

So we carry on here.  Pray with me for the campers, speakers and the part time staff that are coming up for the next couple weekends.

An Impromptu Trip

This is one of those weeks.  So much has happened I can hardly remember it all really.  What did I do on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday?  Well we spent time cutting trees near the highway, and trimming up an enormous pine tree that fell down near the West Side Waterfront.  I cleaned Pine and Tamarack cabins as well.  Mike Baker and I also replaced a 4x4 that had been whacked by about three different people.

We found a note on the pole reading, "Timothy G Houston- At your service"

On Friday the maintenance crew joined together with the programers to move snow from various snow drifts over to the tubing hill.  With three trucks we were able to thoroughly cover both of the tubing runs and the tow rope with something like 10-14 loads over 2 hours (someone could estimate better perhaps...).  It's one of the most grueling tasks that we have at camp, but if the weather pans out it can save the hill for the weekend.  This particular Friday it dropped about 3 inches of snow right on top of our work.  Just what we needed!

So the snow came just in time for the couples weekend.  The rest of the state also received snow on Friday, but it wasn't as welcome on I-75 where a large pile up of cars hindered many of the campers.  The chapel on the West Side (Teen Retreat) was actually delayed for the arrival of several groups.  The vast majority of campers weathered the weather and enjoyed the benefits of the fresh snowfall at camp.

Now for the reason I can hardly remember the early part of the week!  Some of my coworkers encouraged me to take a trip to Chicago.  Lately Chicago has been a good place for me visit because Rob and Elizabeth live just north of the city.  Makes it easy to stay here.  Between them and a couple friends at Moody I always know I have a lot of exciting things to do here.  Any other friends that happen to show up are also a bonus.

I left camp Saturday evening, joined in the worship service at Garrison Hills, then burst forth towards Chicago on Sunday afternoon.  Now I'm here and I'm having a great time.  Here are the pictures from so far:

The city from the 96th floor of the Hancock Building.

General Logan.  From memory I think he was a competent General from the army of the West.

My new favorite president.  He barely beats out John Adams.

Nothing!

Hijinks

This week was full of fun at Camp Barakel.  Mike Baker and I were moving more of the animal mounts around and that just seems to lead to jokes.  The story behind all this is that a man that loved camp passed away last year and left us about 8 mounts that we wanted to incorporate in several buildings.  The shuffling moved quite a bit around in the West Side Chapel with a couple changes in the East Side Chapel as well.  The most notable change was the addition of two white tail deer into the great room of Crosscut Lodge.  They fit in really well with the rustic look of the walls and saws.

The new addition to this massive bumper.

The snow here is the issue lately.  The programers spent a lot of time moving snow to the hill and it was just the trick through this long, warm week.  The result was one of the fastest weekends of tubing that I've seen here.  The icy runs developed some bumps that kids were catching some air from.  I thought I was going to fall off several times when I tried it out.  Now the hill is coming up against a long week that could scorch it.  We're hoping to save it, but there are a lot of other things that campers will be able to enjoy this week no matter the weather.

This might be the best the hill looks all week.  We'll see.

It's not all about hi jinks here, this was weekend number five for winter camp and now we're over half way done.  Now we have a Couples Retreat and then several youth retreats in the next weekends.  I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more friends come up, but more importantly there are over a thousand campers still planning to come this Winter.  Every single one will have the opportunity to hear the Gospel.

So join us in praying for the campers that are coming.  Also keep in mind our staff, especially during the cold and flu season.