Woo! This one’s going to be long.
I spent a few months working for a summer camp in Canada.
Camp Chief Hector is in the gorgeous Rocky Mountains and has been running for
nearly a hundred years covering 1000 acres of forest/mountain/rivers. All the
campers and staff (called councilors) sleep in teepees, lighting fires at night
to keep warm and eating together in the giant lodge.
I was part of the horse staff, crazily.
The camp has a
herd of about 80 horses and there were about a dozen of us on the horse
team to
look after them all. Everyone else on the team had either grown up on
ranches, worked with herds or done show jumping all their lives, meaning
I had a lot to catch up on really quickly! Each day we were down at the
barn at 7am to bring all the
horses in, get them organised for the day into their lines, fed, any
first aid
that they needed and then we rode bikes the 2-3k’s to the lodge to
quickly eat
before racing back down to the barn to get the horses ready before the
kids
arrived. Then the groups would rock up and the other horse staff would
teach them
how to groom, saddle up and basic riding instructions – go, turn, stop.
That
sort of thing.
My responsibility over camp was for the
littlest campers. We took campers from about 8 years old I think and so
rather than teaching
them to saddle up and groom and things like that, I would take the
oldest, most
docile horses and saddle them up and lead them down to the big flat
riding
corrals where the kids would meet me. I spent my days down there,
getting kids
on and off the horses and getting them to walk around the corral. We’d
play
games and I’d teach them a few basic things. If the kids were doing
really well
I’d sometimes get them to trot but the old horses weren’t big fans of
that.
Every so often you’d get a kid who was scared of horses or didn’t like
being so
high so the councilors for that group would walk along next to them or
lead the
horse for them. My horses ranged from a massive black guy with feet like
dinner plates to some tiny
miniature horses and a couple of really gorgeous old nags that had been
at the
camp forever and were so obedient. I could go on for a long time about
my old
horses, they were so funny. I was incredibly sad to leave them at the
end of camp. 
As well as supervising the little chiniquays (the group
name for the youngest camp group), we would sometimes go on staff rides. These
were the best. We’d each pick our favourite horse and we’d just go way out into
the open valleys and fields and run around like a crazy wild herd. Most of the
other staff had their regular rides as they were out on trail rides twice a day
but I chose a different horse most opportunities til I found my favourite.
He
was a dappled grey that was donated to the herd while we were at camp, and
while he wasn’t ready for trail rides or for campers to ride yet I loved him.
And hated him. He was so feisty and head strong but he was also
one of the
fastest horses at the camp and so beautifully fun to gallop on. The only
trouble was getting him to stop. Heading out from the barn and running around
he was so responsive and easy. Until it was time to stop and head home. A more
stubborn horse I have never ridden (this isn’t saying much but still he was a
pain in the butt). He would try and go any direction except home, even leaving
the herd and brushing against things to get me off. Several times I just gave
up and had to lead him home, walking in front of him and dragging him forward.
This might say a lot more about my riding skills than the horse but I still chose him to
ride for the rest of the camp as the first part of any excursion made up for the second.
Other riding things – every two weeks a
camp group would
graduate and there was a ceremony in the forest with all their leaders
and
stuff and they would be lead there by two silent horsemen (horsepeople).
It was
all very symbolic and traditional and I hated it. Every single time we
did
this, the horse that I was one would lose it’s mind. I had a horse bolt,
a
horse that wouldn’t go near a particular clump of trees we needed to go
through,
one night we were doing it in a thunderstorm – horses are particularly
easy to
spook, I got kicked… They were awful. By the end of it I was on the most
docile
of horses, normally used for the kids, and begging to not have to do it.
(Even then this horse suddenly tried to bolt from a deer that appeared
ages away) I was
so scared that I was going to trample a group of kids.
I got pretty good at horse first aid. As
I was at the
barn more than most of the staff who were out on trail rides, I was
tasked with
making sure the relevant horses got their medicine, wounds were washed
out and
treated, eye drops put in… a whole range of stuff. Horses do not take
medicine
well so it was tricky but interesting work. Also I got really fit.
Carrying saddles, bales of hay and children all day, as well as pushing
around horses and a million other chores means you get buff in no time.
It was awesome.
Other than horsey stuff…
All of the councilors got a day and a half off every two
weeks and, as a staff team of 200 young people, we would choose a venue to
descend upon and party out all our hard work. Days off were chaotic and messy
and fun. Most of the next day was spent being very quiet.
The horse staff and the higher ground (high
ropes/climbing etc) staff were really close, whenever we had time off we always
hung out together. Or at meals. Or when there was nothing going on at the barn.
Or after chores were done. Pretty much all the time. We were the resources team
and we were elite. Oooh yeeeeah.
A million other stories happened over the two and a half
months that I was at Camp Hector but you’ll have to come and find me to hear
about those. Basically working at a Summer Camp is an incredible experience and
I’m so glad that I did it. Anyone can go and work at a summer camp, I went
through a great company called NYQUEST who looked after my placement and
application, even arranging transport to the camp. The average age of the
councilors is about 20 but anyone can go and work there and it’s such an
adventure. Get into it! =)
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| My Teepee, Wakanabi |
