Natalie

Natalie was always a very serious person. She kept everyone on track and wasn’t afraid to be disliked by a few campers to ultimately keep everyone happy and safe. She was energetic and super involved every day, even when she was exhausted at the end of a long week. She had lots childhood memories and experience at camp from her years as a camper. Despite the fact that her extra knowledge could have ranked her above the rest of us, she was super down to earth and helped us grow. She taught me my way around camp, since I’d never been a camper before. Of all the LITs, Natalie was possibly the most grown up. Even though she’s the same age as I am, she was the one that walked me down to the clinic when I was stung by a hornet, because I didn't know my way around camp yet. She knew where everything belonged in the kitchen, and she was tough and hard-working. On nights when we had to wash dishes after dinner, Natalie would take on the dirty jobs, wiping sauce off hundreds of plates, scraping gunk off of cooking pans, or spraying down dishes with scalding water before loading them into the washing machine. 

Along with being strong and assertive, she was very caring. Just because she was tough and knew how to assert herself around the campers didn’t mean she wasn’t attached to Camp Wapsie. She loved camp unconditionally and, after many years as a camper, was sad to leave after LIT knowing she might not make CIT. For all of us, LIT could be the last year we get to be part of the innocent fun that is Camp Wapsie. For Natalie, that hit harder than the rest of us because she’s been coming to camp so long. She was tearful when we all said goodbye. She was strong, patient, and a kind person.

Stay awesome, Natalie.

Claire

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Michael

Michael is super cool but lives really far away. He lives in Chicago. I hope he makes CIT so he can come back to Iowa and we see him again soon. He was always a good, mild-tempered LIT that held together the group and was tolerant and patient. In his last week of LIT, he was assigned to work out in the horse stables. It’s a job that a bad LIT complains about all week, because it smells, it’s hot, and you are constantly in the sun, swarmed by flies. Michael was an outstanding LIT, and managed to take full advantage of his time out there with the horses. He took care of the horses, carefully taught kids how to ride a horse and took a lot of campers on their first ever horse ride. He was patient, and he sat in the heat everyday, ignoring the flies and making the most of a job that is usually dreadfully dull. There’s a story to go with Michael. He stepped up to the plate near the end of our time at camp, when there was a horseback riding emergency.

It was a sunny afternoon, our last week at Camp Wapsie, and us LITs had a free afternoon. We had asked our director if we could ride horses that day. I’d never ridden a horse before, and didn’t really want to at first, but decided to try it. Michael helped everyone pick out a horse and set us up with helmets and gear to ride. He taught us how to mount a horse and helped us all start to learn, since most of us hadn’t ridden before. We rode around the corral for a bit, and then the horse caretaker had Michael lead us out of the corral to trot around camp a bit. Everyone plodded along after Michael on his horse. It was sticky and hot, but we were enjoying ourselves. And then Luke got kicked. His horse got to close to the horse in front of him, and Luke got a hoof to the leg. In the moment, Luke’s face drained of all color and he looked like he was going to pass out. His leg was bleeding, and the impact of the kick had put him in a shock. He was still on his horse and dazed, unaware that his leg was gushing blood. The rest of us were trying to figure out what was going on, and Michael took charge. He helped Luke off his horse, and Luke was limped off to the clinic, held upright by our LIT director and the horse caretaker, leaving Michael in charge. Michael led all the LITs and our horses back to the corral and we tied up all the horses and put away gear. What followed was an afternoon of nervous waiting. Luke had to go to the hospital to make sure he didn’t have any broken bones and didn’t need stitches. We sat in a circle in the patch of shade by the corral and we waited and discussed what to do. Our LIT director had left with Luke, and no one told us what to do. We worried for Luke, but Michael, being the one with the most knowledge of horses present, reassured us he would be okay and told us it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Michael showed leadership when we most needed it, and held our group together.

He’s also just a cool guy and I hope he makes CIT because he made us all laugh and is really good at boosting the mood in any situation.

Stay awesome, Michael.

Claire

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Conner

Conner doesn’t think he’s worth what he is, but he’s super awesome and one of the best people I’ve met at communicating his thoughts. The principle thing I like about him is that when he gets irritated about something, he isn't afraid to speak up about what the issue is, and he’s always been sort of badass for standing up for himself. He just doesn’t take any crap from people. Whether it’s younger campers not following directions, older campers acting out of line, or his own peers not working for the team, he confronts them patiently and politely and is more assertive than I ever could be. He asks for what he wants or finds a way to get it, and he will rise to the top someday.

He was great with the older campers during LIT. I can only describe him as chill. He would play Magic the Gathering, the card game, with kids at a picnic table. Because Magic is a game for quiet-minded people, Conner became good at engaging the quieter campers that didn’t want to swim and splash, or play a game of Nuke ‘em. He seemed most approachable when he was hunched over an array of cards. He would sit down at a picnic table at the edge of the pool and slowly garner the attention of over half a dozen kids that had cards, or even just wanted to watch. And he showed genuine interest in what kids had to say to him.

The final thing I like about Conner is the conversation. I’ve had many chats with Conner since camp ended because he stays in touch and video chats with anyone he can if he has free time, even though he lives over an hour away from most of us. We’ve talked through multiple frustrations and advised each other on school issues and discussed where we want to be in the future. Our paths are very different, but he’s a wonderful person to talk to. Conversations about the smallest and largest details of life has kept Conner closer to the rest of us despite living further away.

Stay awesome, Conner.

Claire

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Taylor

Taylor made me laugh. She was pretty pretty quiet in the first few days, and spoke quietly when she voiced an opinion. Then on Tuesday of week two, all of LITs packed up food and canoes, and went on a canoeing trip. That night we pitched tents in a campsite at the end of the mapped out trip and sat around a fire telling life stories, and Taylor truly opened up. The rest of our LIT session, she was cheeky and bright and had more to say. She wasn’t as afraid to speak up for herself and she generated some good ideas throughout various situations. She was good at taking charge and making everyone help with a cookout, too. That skill helped a lot when we were hungry and tired at the end of a long day. Taylor would assign a role to each person cooking that night and got the food made more quickly.

My favorite memory of Taylor was from week two. (Context: the LIT boys’ cabin, Alpha, was nicer than the girls’ cabin, Chinook. Alpha had been remodeled earlier that year, with nice tile floors and new windows. Chinook was an old bathroom, with insects in the window sills and squares of carpet covering a concrete floor. To top it off, the boys got a nice wooden stool to use to climb into the upper bunks, so they didn’t have to vault into bed at night and risk hitting their shins on the metal bars.) At the end of week two, the girls had had enough of it. There had been light talk of taking the stool and seeing if they noticed, but there was never time to actually do it. Then late Friday night, I went to the bathroom with Taylor so she could take a shower without walking in the dark. On the way back, we peeked into the fully lit Alpha cabin, and all the boys were asleep. We found our counselor, Jordy, at a picnic table talking to other counselors. He gave us the go ahead. We crept up to the back door of Alpha, creaked open the screen door, grabbed the stool, and ran giggling all the way back to Chinook. We kept the stool the rest of the session, which was only fair, not that the guys really cared anyway. Still, the glee in Taylor’s voice when we stole a chair at 12:30 is unforgettable. How this memory adds to Taylor’s character, or teaches a valuable life lesson, I’m not really sure. But it’s a story that shouldn’t go unshared purely because it was so fun, even in our sleep deprived state. Taylor is thoughtful, hilarious, and a smart leader.

Stay awesome, Taylor.
Claire

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Jordan

Jordan was always the quiet one. He had little to say, but there's no less to say about him. Dark hair always framed the top of his eyes and his face was sort of hidden. He is one of the LITs I have lost touch with since school started. But if I think a little, a lot of memories surface of him at camp. He was very quiet in the first week, but by the end of the second week he had opened up and we knew him better. He never had much to say, but the few things he did say were perfectly timed and hilarious, and if you didn’t hear what he said, you missed the whole joke. Not only that, Jordan was one of the best hoppers from our group. As LITs, we had to help with some of the work around camp, and that included dish-washing the dinner dishes, and serving platters of food during meals. We had to hop tables about twice a week. Jordan was particularly good at weaving through the masses of campers with full platters. He worked at the canoe docks and kept kids busy while they were waiting for a boat, and he’s really good at picking out the quiet kids and chatting them up. He looked most comfortable outside, especially on the docks that final week. He starting ordering around the kids and telling the little ones to put away their life jackets after they went out in the boats. He was great at engaging possible troublemakers with turtle races. He was quiet at first, but when he spoke up he surprised us all.

Stay awesome, Jordan.
Claire

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Camp Wapsie

There’s something that I’ve been avoiding blogging about because it is such a huge part of my life. But when I’m truly out of inspiration and I don’t feel like writing about another role model or life lesson, camp still comes back to me. And for good reason.

This past summer I spent three weeks at Camp Wapsie working as a Leader In Training, or LIT. LIT is one step on the path to becoming a camp counselor. I learned to be a better leader, to work with kids and to make their camp experience better. Camp Wapsie is a place with lots of campfires and games, with almost no electronics in use, and only songs and love. It’s a place for campers to be kids, and camp staff to let their inner child run free alongside campers.

While I was there, I met a lot of pretty amazing people. There were fourteen of us, seven boys and seven girls, in LIT together for three weeks. We not only went through the same scary challenges, but we celebrated our small victories together at the end of each day. We learned so much about each other sharing our meals, stories, tears and jokes. Our counselor, Jordy, put us through exercises where we were forced to see things in new ways - fit everyone on one square foot platform without touching the ground. Cross an invisible maze made of tape. These might sound like familiar activities to anyone that’s been to a leadership retreat before. We learned to problem solve. But then we pushed ourselves even further and grew as a family, helping each other through small and large issues in our lives. We sat around fire after campfire tell stories and discussing fears and hopes for the future. Words can’t describe how much I love those people.

As Thanksgiving nears, we will be receiving letters. I believe all fourteen of us applied to become Counselors In Training, or CITs, next summer. It’s weeks of rigorous work to learn about being a counselor and spending time with campers. There are two four-week-long sessions, but the groups are smaller. Not everyone will return to camp next summer, because we were one of three groups of LITs. We’re competing against each other, plus about twenty-eight other talented teenagers, and only half of us will be accepted. I truly believe all fourteen of us deserve another month at camp next year, but we can’t all go on. Last year, my letter of acceptance to the LIT program was written on November 21, 2014. That’s less than a week away. So I’m going to write, on this blog, about each person in my LIT session wishing them the best of luck and reminding them of all the things they taught me during my three weeks with them. I will do my best to keep them all about the same length, though I could write an whole paper about each and every one of them.

Stay awesome,
Claire

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Alexis Isabel / Distorted Feminism

Disclaimer: I'll make this quick. I am a feminist.

This is for the frustrating people out there that only side "halfway" with feminists or refuse to label themselves as feminists. There are some huge misinterpretations about feminism, especially when people read out of context social media posts, and people shy away from the word because extreme feminists send inconsistent messages. If you're reading this and you have qualms with the idea of feminism, take some time and go read through some more educated Twitter profiles. It's probably one of the fastest ways to debunk alternate ideas of feminism. 

The number one feminist I follow on Twitter is Alexis Isabel. Her Twitter tag is @lexi4prez, and she is also associated with feministculture.com. Both are intelligent, accurate sources of information about feminism. Feminism is about equal rights, and Alexis tweets intelligently about the subject. She's passionate and bold and if you want an idea of what feminism really stands for, check out her social media.

Stay awesome,
Claire

Alexis Isabel on Twitter and Instagram.
Visit feministculture.com for more information on feminism and equality.