Fire Crew

It was a normal Wednesday. As normal as you can find living in a Young Life camp in the middle of nowhere. One of the guys had family in camp and it was a pizza night, just like every Wednesday. We were sitting in the house, preparing for bible study when flashes of light started shooting out of the sky and landing all around us. The percussion of some of these blasts shook buildings, scared animals, and started fires.

As the camp was scrambling people to get them to fire lines, and protect the villages, Mark 2 was scrambling to fuel villages in case of an evacuation. Camp staff managed to control the nearest of the many fires around property and we never had to evacuate, but that didn't mean the danger to the camp was over.

That night I asked, begged, pleaded to go out on fire crews but was told that I needed to stay in camp in case we needed to drive to guys to a place of safety. I was frustrated watching vehicles drive up seldom used roads in and around camp. I guess my boss had a valid point, but I would rather have been out on lines.

With the end of the day Thursday, however, there became urgent need of more and more people to man the lines. I was officially on my weekend and I could do what I wanted, so I went to war. A paniced voice hollered out over the radio calling for every available body to man lines. I was ready and available and hadn't been out all the night before so I was fresh legs.

It turns out that your legs will carry you even when your body doesn't want them to. You can walk up and down hills fighting fire until you are about ready to drop from fatigue. Looking in to the eyes of guys that hadn't slept in almost two days, you could tell they would still willingly walk up another hill even if their body was screaming for rest. Several people were indeed sent home and more of the camp staff showed up for fire crews as the weekend approached. It was a new battle, they had fresh crews.

So up and down, through smoke, through fire, through burned out remains of forrest that I used to enjoy on my hikes, I walked. Much of the time carrying an extra 60 pounds of gear, but I never seemed to tire. Something was lending strength to not just me, but everyone. Looking back on it now, it's quite clear that much of what strength we didn't have to use was coming from God.

The terrain around camp is steep. The actual camp is the lowest spot on the property and it was rather easy to keep the fires from spreading into the camp proper, but that doesn't mean the lines didn't run up and down ridges surrounding the camp. I spent the better part of two days perched on a hill above what is called West Village. It's a mostly abandon part of camp that was in use recently for the contractors as they built the new Creekside camp.

On one side of the hill was a clear view of the houses, on the other was the smoking remains of a juniper forrest that was burned out and still trying to smolder back to life. I've dug myself knee deep in hot ash to save trees that it didn't matter if they burned or not, and many of them still did. As of right now, the fire on that ridge has not spread.

Unfortunately, with that victory, and a few others around camp, there is a large section in the southeast of camp that we can do nothing about right now. There are crews up fighting it as I type and the land is not friendly to the unexperienced hiker. I enjoy the tops of these hills that are burning now, but never the hike to them. Fires are clearly visible from my house, and the ridgelines were glowing last night with encroaching fire. I'm off the line today, as I had to go back to work, but that doesn't mean there aren't 50 other people up cutting lines in the earth to hold back the inferno.

Changing Events

Sometimes it seems like the world doesn't turn in my direction. It seems like I can't get ahead and the harder I try the worse things get for me. I struggle with friends, faith, relationships, family, any number of things, because I always need to control the way things are going. I'm sure all 3 of you who ever read this will agree that the tighter you hold on to something, the faster it slips away.

I've finally given up trying to hold on to things and look what happens, they start to fall in to place. The last few weeks have been a living hell. I'm not sleeping, it's hard to eat, my stomach/chest/head is constantly hurting, and I'm pretty sure that I had a panic attack last week. If I didn't know my body that well I would be more worried that it was a heart attack, but it was just chest pains caused by stress and becoming overwhelmed with my life.



Today while sitting by the pool over at Creekside, I had a good conversation with a friend of mine. We managed to talk for about a half hour and I had nothing bad to say about my life. It was then that I realized that I'm letting myself not worry about the day to day flow of events and just letting things happen. The universe doens't just run itself so it must be something else that is steering me around and through the squabbles of this crazy exhistance.

I'm glad to say for the first time, truly, since I've moved to Antelope, I am letting God steer my life. He was instrumental in my move to the property and many of the events in my life up to that point, but once I got into the roll I"m in now, I stepped on the brake and said that's far enough God, I'm driving, get in the passenger seat.

It only took getting scared. I don't scare easily and that's all it took. Just a few days and again I'm comfortable, I managed to sleep, and my body is actually acting like I'm young. I plan on being around for a few years yet, I believe I told a friend of mine a month ago I was going to make it to 96. I have a ways yet.


PS I have permission to use the photo from the owner. :)

August

It's coming down to the end of the summer and things are just going a bit crazy around me. With assignment teams for the camp coming and going, there is a constant stream of people moving in and out of my life. I feel like there is never really time to get to know any of them before they are gone, to further complicate things, my job change has moved me to the very edge of camp where I spend most of my days. I rarely venture as far as the main camp and almost never venture to the middle school camp, so my life has become a bit isolated.

I didn't realize how much until this morning. Wednesdays are my day to job coach for the guys in the morning. I supervise their work and make sure that they are on task and continue to work in a fashion that both helps them and the camp. An order came in to the Iron Kettle (dining hall) and we helped them put it away. It was a small order, and therefore didn't take much time, but the little time that I got to spend helping them out felt like a mini vacation from the cooking and cleaning that I do every other day of the week.

Backing up a little to the assignment teams, they aren't the only people that are fixing to leave. Here in the first part of September, there will be a number of staff people that leave property. The end of the summer is joined by the end of a job for kitchen and grounds staff, some of which I've become very good friends with, mainly because they have been here so much longer.

Looking forward a bit, once the summer ends, my job will change further. They guys will have an easier time of work and my day will almost exclusively be spent in the Mark 2 area of camp. I won't leave unless I have business elsewhere, but I won't really ever have business elsewhere. What will my isolation look like then?

I've made some new friends, and many of them will be here longer than I am, so I'm not too worried about my island. I will be isolated, but I have God. He's been enough help to get me here in the first place and will continue to provide me with the guidance that I need in the months to come. I need to focus on what he needs me to do and listen carefully to learn the things he is trying to teach me. After all, I will be on an island and will have plenty of time to hear.

‪A Call to Anguish - David Wilkerson‬‏ - YouTube

A Quarter or two for $15

Part of my job is just way too interesting to explain, so you would have to experience it for yourself to really get the scope of what I get to take part in every day. The men that I work with have limited understanding of this life and part of my job is going to them, understanding the world the way that they do and finding a way for them to exist in a world that takes advantage of their limited world view.

I had an excellent opportunity to learn about one of my guys the other day. It has come to my attention, that Alex, a man of 21 years, can't count, has no concept of what money is worth and further, doesn't know what the symbols on the bills mean exactly.

A little bit of a back story here. I'm basically the den mother in the guys house these days. I cook and clean, pick up after them, help them with their individual chores, and basically get them through each day while trying to teach them to be more self reliant than they were in the first place. Getting them to pick up after themselves has been one of the biggest chores for me. I spend a lot of time moving shoes and clothes out of the way, so finally I came up with a simple solution. Any clothing or shoes that are not put away properly become the property of the house, and they can buy them back for a quarter.

The other day, Alex left his shoes in the middle of the walkway, and not only are they a hazard to him, he has Cerebral Palsy, they are in the way of the other guys and therefore become property of the house. I don't go out of my way to take their things from them. The rule has been in effect for 3 weeks now and I've only collected about $2. He learned quickly to put his shoes away when he takes them off, but on this instance, he did not.

I took them and he could buy them back for 50 cents. I told him as much and he complained about not being able to go to the movie with the other guys because we were going to have all his money. This did not make sense to me and Joe looked as confused as I felt. Joe has taken over as the job coach for the guys when I moved to the daily living duties. My failure was thinking that Alex understood how much money he had and that the fine was not going to break his bank. He grumbled and stumbled upstairs and we could hear him fumbling around for a minute. He stomped down the stairs and walking into the kitchen to hand me his money.

I want to draw your attention to a previous paragraph. Remember how Alex can't read, now look at the title of this blog. By this point you probably have figured out that he handed me a $10 and a $5, thinking that this was the cost of getting his shoes back. It then made sense why he thought he was not going to have the money for the movie (we pay for that for him) and helped me realize that they think in a different fashion than I do.

Instead of taking the offered $15, I went upstairs with Alex and showed him what we meant by 50 cents, and it was a simple matter of quarters being the "silver" coins. Now I have to watch out for dimes and nickels being replaced with quarters as he doesn't know the difference, but at least I can see one thing that he thinks differently on. I need to simplify a lot of my thinking to connect with him, but at least I have a starting point.

Feeling Gross feels so Good!

It only take a mile. Sometimes not even that much and I start to sweat. I think I should head back and talk about the history of my life up to this spectacular moment. I am a runner. I run miles and miles, and sometimes I don't run miles at all. In my day, the ones that I was a track star, I ran hurdles, and a quarter mile was about all that I ever ran. Thinking back on that glorious moment of my life, I enjoyed so much the feeling of being utterly spent and just laying on the ground... just done.

Just done... that is such an odd way to feel. Not often in your life will you feel this way and be completely happy about your inability to move even the smallest of your muscles. The decathalon was the hardest thing I ever accomplished, and I did it the best that I could. Today, I realize things that I could have done different and it's unfortunate, but I can't go back and change them, all I can do is go forward.

The other day, I went for a run. Running never bothered me, I can run. And I can run for a long time, even after a long absence from the activitiy. 3 miles is just a good stretch of the legs, and unfortunately, I picked a day that the temp had climbed into the 90's. When you are a little out of shape and you go running on a hot day, you are going to sweat.

When I got done I felt gross. That feeling you get when you've been working all day and you can feel the grime between your toes, on your back, just chilling out, and then the worst of all, you feel gross in your mouth because you started to sweat in places that you didn't think you could sweat in. I fell great.

In my life I have pushed my body to the outer limit of it's endurance. I have tried to break it in so many ways, but I have been up to task on all of them. What I am usually left with is that feeling when you have sweat just a little too much and want to shower in the worst way. It feels great, I can't get enough and I must run more, I must push myself more, and I have to feel that moment, when I am utterly spent and my body is crying out, "quit" and I tell it to shut the hell up because I love this.

Mark 2 Outing

It's Tuesday. I had a hard time rolling out of bed this morning because every muscle in my body is screaming in agony because of it's over-use yesterday. Ok, so not every muscle, but my back, shoulders, and arms are all about useless. I'm finding in hard to do simple things like wash my hair in the shower or even pick up a fork to eat. They are simply done.

You must be asking yourself why? We went rafting. In any normal group of people, I would make sure that I got to sit in the front of the boat, but on this trip, I didn't get a choice. We had 3 people on the paddles, plus the guide. It was a boat big enough for 8, we had 6, and 2 of them weren't eaven rowing.

To the river we go. It started out pleasent enough, it was some slow moving water, not much of a current and we were learning the commands so we would know what to do if we got into a situation that required a bunch of commands in a row. The other boats and ours got into some splash fights and we got a small cooling down from the mild spray that was bounced into our raft.

Then the fun began. For a little over 3 hours we had slow currents, fast rapids, some swimmers (both volunteer and not), waves pouring over the side and a complete drenching of everything that you had on. I didn't bother taking off my shirt when I climbed into the water at one point because it was soaking wet anyway.

A visiting volunteer was accompanying us because of extra spots that we had in the boats. Alan was taking great joy in watching every wave that came over the front of the boat land right in my lap. He was damp, but nothing compared to the complete dousing that I had taken... until... Coming into the biggest rapid on the trip, our boat took a sudden lurch to the left. A wall of water, like Moses parting the red sea, dove over the front of the boat and I was convinced I was going swimming. At the last second, the current caught the boat and we lurched to the left, throwing Alan from his seat, almost throwing Robby from the boat, and landing the full force of the wave right into... not my chest. I was missed by almost the full wave of water. Alan however, was not so lucky. He could not have been more completely soaked by the wave that washed over him. There was nothing dry on him left to be found.

As much joy as I took in watching him get drenched, I later took the full force of a wave right in my face and came through sputtering incoherently. Robby road through a rapid on the outside of the boat, on purpose, and Mike seemed to enjoy just being out on the water.

Sunburned and with a story to tell, we had lunch at the Imperial Restraunt in Maupin, then headed home. My food sitting heavy in my stomach, my eyes barely remained open to get us home and there was little complaint from anyone when it became time for lights out. They/We were exhausted.