The Camp Tahkodah Oasis

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord... He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.                                                                                 Jeremiah 17:7-8

Tonight I'm cleaning the dust of -- not Canaan's Land (see March 21 post "The American Taliban Prequel") -- but Camp Tahkodah -- off my feet.  This afternoon Dan and I made the mid-session  pilgrimage from our new home in Searcy north to visit the banks of Salado Creek near Floral, Arkansas.  Since our oldest daughter was in third grade, we have brought one or both of our girls to Floral each summer to spend a week or two at their happy place, owned by Harding University.


We've come a long way from that inaugural year, when I took a month to pack Claire and paid too much for cute custom camp labels from a "Going to Camp?" website, which preyed on the separation anxiety of mothers.  Now they pack themselves in about an hour, and I just throw a Sharpie in their bedroom door and remind them they have a better chance of returning with possessions people can identify;  we have to decide each year whether we actually want all those items back anyway.  Camp Tahkodah dirt is a tenacious combination of sand and construction adhesive.  Whether it is embedded in the sole of a pair of Chacos or in the seat of basketball shorts, attempting to remove it gives pause.  We do a cost-benefit analysis, and sometimes the camp dirt wins and we pitch the item, a sacrifice to the Spirit of Tahkodah.


This year, the oldest has graduated to assistant counselor, which is a fancy title for someone who is allowed to wash lots of dishes and do other menial chores for the privilege of spending a little more time there.  She is also a lifeguard, a credential she sought expressly because she wanted a little edge on getting hired.  Our youngest, age 16,  is now in the senior girls cabin, and the idea that she might not return next summer is exquisitely disconcerting when she allows herself to think about it -- so she doesn't.


When we packed up our things to move to Searcy recently, we realized the girls had accumulated a handful of Bibles engraved with "Camp Tahkodah" and signed by former director Ross Cochran, souvenirs of the Bible Bee.  Although we are not especially athletic, our family tends to do well in competitive question-answering, and our children have won a handful of times over the years.  Occasionally we've lamented that we would have traded a ready recollection of the names of the twelve tribes of Israel for a decent jump shot, but it is what it is.  God gives us each our gifts and thank heaven there's a place in the Kingdom, and at camp,  for the less coordinated.


I realized today as I stood under the pines amid a circle of log cabins, with laundry neatly hung on a clothesline beside each, that there are people from Harding who have been ministering to my grimy children in this place for nine years now.  They prayed for them before they ever arrived, cooked for them, administered first aid to them, taught them, regaled them with ridiculous songs, hiked with them, rode horses with them, canoed with them, looked out for their safety, exhorted them to good hygiene and entreated them to more effective cabin cleanup, encouraged them in competitive activities, led praise and worship for them all, and called them toward stronger relationships and to a more authentic faith. When Claire arrived at college, a Tahkodah staffer welcomed her into her home for a weekly small group study, for which Dan and I have been most thankful.  Relationships forged here as the staff invests in the lives of campers from many states will have ripples into the future of each of these sweaty young humans.

We were pleased to note as we arrived at camp last weekend that Salado Creek was still running, although many ponds and creeks in Arkansas are dry.  I was especially thankful today that, in the midst of a miserable and devastating drought, Camp Tahkodah has seen some rain, cloud cover, and merciful relief from the heat, every day this session.  But I also know that regardless of the weather, at least for my girls, Tahkodah has always been an oasis.

Here's a link to a video about her Tahkodah experience posted online by a camper last year  It gives you some idea of her feelings about camp.  Copy and past to play:  http://vimeo.com/26932911

The American Taliban Prequel

Tonight I’m thinking about John Philip Walker Lindh, who was caught and imprisoned by the U.S. during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.  I’m  also thinking about my childhood experience at Maywood Christian Camp.  I think it must have been in 1968, although I can’t prove it.  Mothers were not nearly as obsessed with documenting childhood then, and my memories are vague.  I was perhaps eight years old and had never been to any kind of camp, or much of any place else,  before. I think it was in Tennessee, although I can’t prove that, either. I do think these events actually happened, however, because I can prove it with dental records.

We boarded a bus at Northwood Hills Church of Christ in Florence, Alabama, and off we went to the hardship of the wilderness, much like the Isrealites, who were also God’s people.  When we arrived,  they divided us into cabins which were named, I think, for the cities in Canaan.  I was in Shechem A.  There was a Shechem B as well.  There was a cabin named Gilgal, and one called Bethel, and Shiloh.  I don’t recall the others. 

I remember they served us cold chocolate milk in glistening aluminum pitchers at breakfast, and that I ate eggs for breakfast with great relish, which was odd because my mother’s eggs on the breakfast table at home nauseated me.  I remember that I won third place in the archery contest.  I remember that I made some kind of wooden box with tiny square tiles on top, and a lanyard, although I didn’t quite know what one was supposed to do with a lanyard.

I dived into the swimming pool one day and somehow chipped my front permanent tooth on the concrete, leaving half of it at the bottom of the pool.  No one called my parents or a dentist, or tried to retrieve the lost part.  I don’t really know if I called it to the attention of anyone in authority.  Today insurance and physician information along with signed liability waivers would be required before participating in an activity during which I could potentially have disfigured myself, but back then parents just put us on the bus and happily shipped us off, no questions asked, and the camp shipped us back on schedule, scratches and dents notwithstanding.

One thing I recall clearly, and that is that the showers were communal ones.  By that I mean they were not merely in a central location, but they were –- well—communal.  No stalls, no walls, no curtains.   I recall my complete mortification at the idea that I was expected to disrobe right there in front of God and the older girls with body parts I did not have yet – and tend to my personal hygiene.  So I refused.  I swam every day, but  during shower time I made myself scarce, and not once during the week did I join the other girls who were less modest and more conscientious about their personal toilette.

I also recall saving my one clean sweatshirt, a white one, to wear back home.  The last morning of camp I donned the sweatshirt, brushed my chlorine frizzed hair -- which was, by this time, a bush -- put on my glasses and headed down toward the bus, tripping over a root and tumbling head-over-heels down a clay embankment to land in an untidy heap at the bottom where the bus was parked.  

When I arrived back at the church, after riding the entire way with the bus windows open and the wind blowing through my ever-expanding hair,  singing "Kum Ba Yah" and "Michael Row the Boat Shore" all the way back, I bounded to the door of the bus to greet my mother with a gap-toothed smile, the red clay of Canaan's land covering both my clothes and my face. She hugged me and took me home as if nothing were out of the ordinary, for dental intervention the following day.

Flash forward to the American invasion of Afghanistan, when the U.S. army captures an American citizen named John Philip Walker Lindh. He is wearing the garb of the enemy and aiding the Taliban. There was a great outcry about his treason, and a photo of "The American Taliban” was on the cover of Time magazine. 43 years later, my saintly mother’s only comment when she saw his photo on CNN?  "He looks exactly like you when you got off the bus from Maywood Christian Camp, dear."  Ouch.