Indy's Camp Aharah Memories

The Waterfront – Part 2               I was eight years old and could not row a boat. I had seen many campers rowing many boats in that first week of summer camp. Push the oars forward; dip them down; pull back through the water; repeat. It was simple, so simple that just a few minutes earlier I had sat in the rowing seat while a counselor named John untied the boat and pushed me away from the dock. The easy rhythm had pulled me away a bit awkwardly at first as I got used to the balance. Soon I was in the middle of Lake Pebwama. I spent the waterfront time doing a slow tour around the lake. But the waterfront director had blown the whistle, signaling the boats to return. I rowed toward the dock. When I was about 25 yards out, John yelled, “Okay, turn it around so I can tie it up.” Turn it around? I was flummoxed. I knew how to go forward. I had the concept but little experience in going in reverse. How do you turn the rowboat around? I could feel...

Seeing the waterfront today, I realize how much work went into maintaining it each year. The lakeweed has grown over the annual layers of sand that we shoveled into the swimming area. Tall grasses have taken over the beach. A few pilings that were once connected by yellow plastic rope and formed the outer barrier that separated the swimming area from the rest of the beach are still standing. Lake Pebawma is a spring-fed lake with a muck bottom. If you swim down to what seems like solid soil, your hand and arm will disappear into at least a foot of loose dirt, dead leaves, and other rotting vegetation. It swallowed up the cement blocks that anchored the floating raft in the deepest swimming area. It swallowed up any number of personal effects that lifeguards dropped from that same raft.  Each summer, we practiced the blue water search as part of a missing camper drill. When the waterfront director called the search, several staff members would jump into the deepest swimming area an...

The Real Naked People At Camp Aharah, two rivers were on the list of adventure trips for older cabins, the Pere Marquette and the Pine. Sometimes it was a day trip. The bus would drop us off in the morning at Bowman Bridge or Gleason’s Landing and pick us up at the Upper Branch Bridge shortly after the Rainbow Rapids. We would stop at a midway point for lunch, hoping that the food canoe hadn’t tipped over; our bread moist with river water, a flotilla of our apples sailing downstream. We would also take overnight trips, beautiful nights in a tent by flowing water; nights often interrupted by angry raccoons testing our food security. These nights will always remind you that, no matter how cute they seem on an internet video, raccoons are mean animals. Two raccoons arguing over a hot dog bun can sound like a fight to the death with hisses, growls, and angry squeals. Yet there is still nothing like falling asleep with a Michigan river flowing by, water on a twisty path to the Great La...

               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 Ottaw...

I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the 1970s.   It was a time when children were still raised with a measure of self-reliance.   I know some people of older generations are laughing at that idea because they grew up far more independently than I ever was.   I’m not talking about a Lord of the Flies kind of independence.   I’m not even talking about a Walden kind of independence (after all, Thoreau’s mother still did his laundry). I can only compare my upbringing to the culture in which my children are being raised, where, thanks to cell phones, parents can be in constant contact; where it is assumed the children’s lives should be programmed, lest they spend too much time unsupervised; where it is deemed dangerous and unusual to desire to be alone The important thing is that we felt independent, even though we may not have been truly self-reliant.   From first grade to sixth grade I walked to school with my brother Tom or by myself.   From fourth gr...