The Lay of the Land

              The final left turn down Winter Road has to be the best part of the trip. After almost two and a half hours of driving, the first official camp sign appears. For many years it was a wooden sign with the words “YMCA Camp Aharah” and an arrow pointing down the road. After this sign was broken by vandals, the staff painted the words on an old two-person saw blade from the utility shed, attaching it to the old sign frame with chains. Now and then, a chain would break, and the sign would point us all, unhelpfully, to the ground.

 

       As you turn down Winter Road, the landscape changes from open asparagus fields to shady woods. The road curves by Little Lake Pebawma on the right, but soon, on the left, you catch a glimpse of Lake Pebawma itself. You have arrived!

 

       Just a note on spelling and pronunciation. Lake Pebawma is named for Chief Joseph Pebawma, a 19th-century Ottawa chief who moved from the Grand River Valley after the 1855 Treaty of Detroit with the Ottawa and Chippewa nations. I have seen the name spelled several ways, usually with extra or missing “w”s (Pebwamwa, Pabama). Most current

sources have it listed as Pebawma. I have always heard it pronounced with the stress on the second syllable and a long e sound at the end (pe – ba – mee). The 1855 treaty liststhe chief’s name as “Pay-baw-me”. According to Indian Names in Michigan by Virgil Vogel, his name means something akin to “It flies about” or “I walk about.”

 

       Winter Road is a public dirt road that splits the camp property into two parts. Every day we had to remind the kids to stop and look both ways because although the traffic was not heavy, the local drivers ran their pickup trucks and economy cars quickly across the passage,

the occasional teenage driver giving a sustained honk or triumphant “Woo!” as he passed. One week, as a sign of my great authority over an activity group that crossed unsafely, I had them chant the directions in Latin every time we came to the road. “Sinister! Dexter! Sinister!” Why? Because why not?

 

The activity area was on the north side of the road. Here you would find playing fields and the athletic field nicknamed “The Dust Bowl”. There was also an obstacle course with a vertical cargo net that would in no way pass a safety test today. A good ten feet high. No safety lines. No padding below. Just up and over. This area was also the location of the archery and rifle ranges. If you kept walking, you could follow the old railroad bed out of the camp property and into state forest until it intersected another public road about a mile away.

 

       The south side was where we spent most of our time. It was the side with the lake, the dining hall, and the main cabin area. For most of my time at camp, there were eight cabins in the main area, named for different indigenous tribes: Apache, Blackfeet, Cherokee,

Chippewa, Potawatomi, Seminole, Sioux, and Winnebago. Except for Seminole, which, according to legend, had burned down and was rebuilt in a slightly different style, the cabins were all log cabins with two screen windows on either side and a single window on the back framed by horizontal logs. Each window had a wooden shutter, hinged at the top and propped open by a long, metal bar. It was not an uncommon practice to rouse a deep-sleeping camper by letting the shutter by his window slam with a dramatic “WHACK!”.

             Each cabin also had a single screen door. A long spring was attached to the door as a self-closing feature to keep our mosquitos. Every time you opened the door, the spring would let out a mid-range moan of disapproval at being uncomfortably stretched, followed by an “And stay out!” door slam. It was not hard to know when people were coming or

going in the cabin area.

Ottawa cabin in 2013 

              There were two more cabins, Ottawa and Iroquois, set apart from the rest of camp, a couple hundred yards away on the eastern side of the lake. Older campers typically used this area, especially those going on adventure trips. They had the luxury of a separate fire pit and water pump but no bathrooms. When I was one of the outcamping directors, I appreciated having my groups at a distance but did not appreciate the long walk to the camp bathhouse. As an aside, these cabins were still standing when I visited the camp in 2013, filled with detritus from the old waterfront and even a couple of the original foam mattresses.

Sorry for the crime scene look. 
There was probably something nesting in the old buoys.

            
 In the last couple of years of Camp Aharah, the YMCA built two more cabins in an effort to move the camp toward a year-round facility, Pere Marquette and Manistee. While still without power, these cabins had weather-proof windows that closed and locked and doors that opened and closed with the woosh of an air-tight seal. The bunks were new and refused to rattle, squeak, and shake when you mounted them. They were also supportive, so gone was the fear that one day the child in the sagging mattress above you would come crashing down.

              The main cabin area was the home of the camp bathhouse, which on the boys’ side had toilets, showers, and the multi-person peeing trough, where young men could compete in challenges of time, distance, and accuracy. Unless the room was hosed down, the dirt of camp life would accumulate in cold, wet patches on the floor, the birthplace of the ubiquity of abandoned, dirty, damp towels that counselors would find in all corners at the end of a session. For years I traveled with a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” beach towel that had been gifted to me in this way.

       Of course, there were many other places at Camp Aharah, each with its own set of memories: the Arrowhead, the waterfront, the Nature Nook. Over time I hope to write a little about each one. I will not neglect the dining hall smelling of pancakes in the morning or the joy of leftover pudding late in the night. I will welcome you at the campfire in late August when nights are getting cooler. I will invite you to remember crashing through the forest during a game of Capture the Flag before the fear of Lyme disease limited our wanderings. 

 Feel free to share your favorite spaces. I find a few words can evoke many memories.

Sleep well, campers!