Back from Camp

I'm back in civilization now after one hell of a time in the foothills if the Rocky Mountains.

I spent the last week sleeping on a cot and hiking for several hours each day at Camp Cris Dobbins at the Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch just south of Elbert, Colo. I'm still too tired after all of it to write it in a long story form, so instead I will deliver it in short vignettes, as follows:

-It's at about 7,000 feet elevation, has very little humidity and the temperature never went about 85 degrees the entire time I was there. Mosquitos were non-existent there due to the dryness, so the only bug-bites I got came from spiders, and those were but a handfull. It was really a lot better than it sounds here, but you wouldn't understand unless you spent a week at a Kansas camp and got so many bites you could find the constellations in them.

There were only the occasional drops of rain all week, never enough to get me to pull my rain poncho from my pack. I got a little moist once, but I was too stubborn to reach for it because I knew it would be a royal pain to stuff it back into that tiny plastic bag it comes in.

-The food was terrible. The meatloaf was a brick of ground beef covered in generic barbecue sauce. Breakfast was almost always lukewarm.

-The counselors were interesting people. There was a pair of high school students in the Crafts lodge who were fun to talk with, they were like the kids I hung out with way back when. One girl, Michelle I believe, made me laugh so hard I almost fell out of my chair. She told me about her brother, who is in the Army in military intelligence but volunteered to go to Iraq as a Humvee gunner this fall. What's funny is that she made him promise that, when he shoots his first Iraqi, he shouts "I'm liberating you."

Another interesting counselor was a college student who taught photography merit badge. Her name was Savannah and I enjoyed hanging out in the class as she taught the boys how to shoot, develop and print real black and white film. I've never been able to actually watch the process and it was so awesome to see real photography being done like that. Shame none of the scouts had really mastered exposure or compostion yet, they may just go straight to digital now without ever learning the joy of film.

The staff really enjoyed singing, and it was really moving sometimes when they'd pull off an great number. At the closing campfire Friday night, the program director took out his guitar and a few other staffers stood next to him and they sang "Georgetown" (a place in Colorado this time, not DC) and "Fire on the Mountain" (Marshall Tucker Band song about the gold rush). Their versions were soft, smooth and utterly glorious. I almost cried when they sang the words:

"We were diggin' and siftin' from five to five,
Sellin' everything we found just to stay alive.
Gold flowed free like the whiskey in the bars,
Sinnin' was the big thing, lord and Satan was his star.
And there's fire on the mountain, lightnin' in the air,
Gold in them hills and it's waitin' for me there."

-Shooting sports was freaking great. On Thursday night they have the Scoutmaster shootoff, where they blatantly suck up to the adult leaders so they'll come back to the camp next year. They let the leaders drop the energetic scouts off at a part of camp where they have lots of entertainment and learning stations set up. Staff members keep them under control, and the leaders have the evening off to go down to the shotgun, rifle and archery ranges and shoot all they want for two hours or so.

Camp Cris Dobbins literally has one of the best shotgun ranges in the country, it was donated by a multi-millionaire with the last name of Travis who heard they lacked a place to teach Shotgun shooting. It has luxurious ranges for both skeet and trap shooting, just like the one Mr. Travis has on his private island, they say. To top that off, he had his friend Pete Coors donate some guns for the facility.

The gun I shot was a stainless-steel-barreled, single-shot beauty -- made by Browning, I believe -- they said was worth $1800. I believe them, in my arms it felt like I held a masterpiece of a firearm. It was all I could do not to giggle from how nice it felt up against my shoulder.

I shot with three other men. We each got ten clay pigeons in sets of two. I was the only one who didn't shoot like a pansy and hold the gun at my shoulder before saying pull. I did it the proper way, with the butt off my shoulder and the barrel at a 45 degree angle to the ground. I got seven out of ten targets, and the range instructor was amazed at how far out from the thrower I was able to pick them off.

I also did rifle, .22s all around, which I did rather well in. Then the real fun came when I went to the Archery range. Bows and arrows werent' as popular that night, so instead of carefully doling out arrows the staffers in charge just handed me and the other guy a handful apiece and let us fill whatever targets we wanted.

There was the standard bull's eye, a bear, a deer, and elk, a bighorn sheep, some turkeys, and quail. I pumped each of them full of arrows. Especially the bear, he was looking at me funny.

Then I asked about a beat-up poster on the right of the targets that had been shredded to hell. The staffer showed me an unused copy of the poster: it was a dolphin with bull's eye over his chest, just between his pectoral fins. I laughed hard when I saw it. I knew what target I would be going after next.

It was a hard target to get, I'll tell you, the bull's eye itself was only 6-7 inches across; it was really a rifle target. That didn't stop me from trying though. I wound up missing the rings entirely, but I got two arrows in his beak, where I was aiming, and one in his tail. South Park fans will be glad to know that just before I made my first shot at flipper, I called out "It's coming right for us!"

-Hiking is great excercise. I've had several people remark how much thinner I look since getting back. With all that hiking, I'd better be a bit closer to skinny, damn it!

-I taught a lot of lessons, but learned a few, too. On Monday, for example, I taught about two or three dozen young Scouts several knots they needed to learn. The were in "Eagle Bound," a class for young scouts who need to fulfill requirements to make it through the lower ranks. I am known in my troop for my proficiency in the art of manipulating rope, and the other leaders suggested I do the class.

There was the square knot, the sheet bend, the timber hitch, the two half-hitches and the tautline hitch, and before I was done every scout knew them all. I made sure of it.

Some of the scouts were a challenge to teach. They liked to get up and jump about or use their ropes for whipping each other instead of practicing the knots. One Scout was expecially difficult to teach, but it was really an honor instead of a problem to have worked with him. His name was Derek, and he was blind. To teach him the knot, one of the counselors or I would slowly tie the knot in front of him, stopping at on each step to let him reach out and touch each part of the rope and discover where it went, and why.

And, by gum, he kept trying until he learned them all. I was so proud.

-The excitement didn't stop even after I got home. Two afters after my return I stepped out of the shower and got a phone call: there was a fire at a restaurant downtown. I dressed, grabbed my camera and went on down to shoot it, a week's facial hair growth still on my face. It was more than an hour of some of the most intense shooting I've ever done. Here's the gallery.