Monday Musings
As we head towards the home stretch, this week is chock full of so many special events and activity competitions. Today at rest hour I watched boys play their Alpine Open matches in tennis. Each age group has a bracket to crown a champ. Soon the Tour de Alpine will commence, a two day mountain biking race to see who’s gained the most skill this term. Physical training will be holding competitions in running and camp’s strongest man. In Project adventure (ropes course) the challenge is individual as boys tackle high ropes elements they may not have completed before. It’s also team oriented as boys cheer on their buddies. Wilderness held fire building competitions (first fire to boil a pot of water wins).
A camper at dinner told me that today was his favorite day in camp. When I asked why he said that all his favorite activities lined up on the schedule today: Earth Games, Tennis, Wilderness, Riflery, and Archery. There’s something for every boy to love here!
A group of Chiefs from climbing class spent all day honing their skills at Sandrock village, a collection of boulders and rocks begging to be climbed. Once again we take advantage of our wonderful friends at Higher Ground guide service to lead these. They also led some of our Warrior age group on a rappelling trip near Desoto Falls. Throughout the course of the week each Warrior (rising 7th) will have a chance to rappel. Tomorrow some Braves (rising 8th) who take climbing will get to test their skills at Sandrock. A few days ago Mike Fielder, our target sports head, took our advanced riflery crew to a large civilian shooting range a bit south of Gadsden. They loved trying their hand at all manner of sporting clay and trap stations. So much happening!
Wednesday is Mountain Day! It’s a special event all day, a day like no other at Alpine. I’ll give you a full run down after the fact. You’ll know it when you see all the wild costumes in photos here in a few days.
Friday night will be our Council Ring ceremony, around a campfire, honoring our 2nd year chiefs in their last year as campers. And our Glee club continues to practice diligently in anticipation of performing for the girls at Camp Desoto soon. Not sure if I’ve mentioned Glee Club yet. It meets every night after dinner and has for all 59 summers. It’s mandatory for the first few days of camp. Now it’s optional, with incentives being to sing for the ladies and receive a tribe point for your attendance. As you would imagine, the first incentive grows more appealing with age!
They sing some great old timey songs like Rocky Top and Will the Circle be Unbroken. There are also some camp songs, written to tunes from famous rock songs. Desoto Girl to the tune of Brown Eyed Girl, Say It’s French Toast to Say It Ain’t So, and We All Live in Cabin #3, ala Yellow Submarine. There are so many others.
Meals today: scrambled eggs, grits, biscuits and sausage, along with OJ, milk, water, and cereal. Lunch brought roast beef, rice and gravy, green beans, rolls. For dinner we enjoyed spaghetti noodles with meat sauce, buttered toast, and chopped lettuce and tomatoes.
At lunch today an evil pirate villain entered the dining hall and made off with all the bacon in the kitchen (really just a cardboard box labeled “All the Bacon”). Our Mission tonight for night program is to see if we can get back the bacon. A giant game of spotlight known as Mission Impossible will soon commence with cabins in search of clues that will lead them to the missing “bacon”. I sure hope we recover it - I’m counting on some bacon in the morning with my French toast! Stay tuned to find out . . .
Thanks for reading and good night for now, Glenn
