A day at camp

Yesterday was my day leading kids around at adventure camp. Boy, was it hot! The temperature was 92 and the humidity was terrible. I drank oceans of water over the 6 hours of hiking. When I got home I was as soaked with moisture as if I’d stood out in a rainstorm. This morning I am still tired. Of course, Baby Dog woke me up a time or two to complain about the nightly raccoon, so sleep deprivation is at least part of that.

I make 6 trips up and down the mountain with a different group of kids each time. Typically, I start to hear one or two of them asking “how much further?” after about 30 minutes into the 60 minute hike. Even the kids who claim to spend time running aren’t used to walking for more than a few minutes at a time. A 60 minute walk is really foreign to them.

Yesterday, despite the heat we (or at least I) had a good sighting. A pied-billed grebe spent the day tooling around the pond, even while the kids were paddling their canoes all over it. The bird seemed healthy and happy—the pond is full of frogs—and wasn’t at all disturbed as the kids paddled very near it, shouting and flailing their paddles around. Once or twice I saw the bird move to the opposite end of the pond but it was soon back amongst the kids.

In the heat, we didn’t see a lot of animals, though we did manage one deer. As the kids typically make a lot of noise, that was unexpected. Butterflies, especially swallowtails of several species, were out in force. And the rain on Wednesday brought lots of frogs and toads for the kids to catch, which made up for having to walk 60 minutes at one time. At least I think it did.