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The Complex Legacy of Church Camp Experiences

The Complex Legacy of Church Camp Experiences

Last updated on: August 15, 2024 at 12:34 pm by Cara Meredith

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The Complex Legacy of Church Camp Experiences 2024-08-15T12:34:35-07:00 Cara Meredith

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Can I tell you a short story, dear reader? It’s a story of remembering, a story of childhood, a story of camp.

—

But for the small, antiquated sign on the side of the highway, you could easily miss the turn-off for camp. Once you passed the Dairy Queen and drove through the towns of Boring and Welches, you knew you were getting close. Pass the hardware store, you’d gone too far.

I remember becoming so transfixed by the Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines that lined Highway 26, the ones that seem to grow taller around every bend of the road and make the temperature drop by a handful of degrees in turn. I remember how if you stared too hard you might not notice the 40-mile marker.

Image by Larry White from Pixabay

If that happened, the driver had to figure out how to make a U-turn on the highway. Soon, every face in the church van peered out the windows, looking for the camouflage sign, the same one that makes your heart start pumping something fierce – because when someone finally spotted the sign and the driver slowed down to twenty-five miles an hour to take a left this time, you knew you were almost there.

Once you made the turn onto Rhododendron from the highway, it was only another half mile down the road until you saw the giant, mossy rock. That one was hard to miss.

Just as your young self was left wondering how that much lichen and moss could grow on the surface of a stone, the driver peered down at the set of handwritten directions the church secretary had Xeroxed on the copy machine. Paired against the three by two-foot map of Oregon’s highways, you realized you really were there.

Because then you saw the rock. Her granite face welcomed you to that sacred playground, begging you turn onto the gravelly single-lane road. The name Camp Arrah Wanna etched into a wooden sign perched precariously on top, she was a welcoming committee – our very own Mount Rushmore, all rolled into one.

After that, everything else was a blur: check-in near the dining hall, on the grassy field, or at the portable table in the northwest corner of the parking lot. You’d find out if you were going to be in the same cabin as your friends, then you’d lug your suitcase and sleeping bag to cabins with names like “Buckaroo,” “Whispering Pines,” and “Lake Wenatchee.”

You’d say goodbye to your driver, perhaps hugging your parent or giving your Sunday School teacher a high-five. No sooner muttering finally under your breath*,* you had finally arrived.

You were finally at church camp.

—

You may wonder why I tell you this story. First, it makes me wonder if you ever had a similar experience.

Did you go to camp as a child? Was there a special place, a sacred playground as Jacob Sorenson calls it in a book of the same name, you returned to every summer with a handful of children from your church?

I know I did, so much so that I continued going to these places well into my early thirties. Camp was who I was, part and parcel a deep part of my identity …until it wasn’t anymore. While I still hold the memories of church camp close to me, I also look at the place with a different sort of lens now.

Because for me, when I walked away from the white evangelical church, I also walked away from church camp.

Now, over a decade has passed since I’ve spent any considerable amount of time at the place I once spent an inordinate amount of time. Just as I’ve had time to reflect and think about the many ways that place called church camp shaped me, I’ve also had time to think about how she got things wrong.

How she caused harm.

How she could have done better.

I suppose this brings me to my second point: I’ve penned the entire thing for you in a book and it’s now available for pre-orders wherever books are sold!

After all, when it comes to publishing today, pre-orders often determine how well a book will do when it actually hits the shelves.

Here are a couple of handy links to some of my favorite (or simply, most popular) booksellers:

Amazon
Bookshop — FYI: the hardcover’s on sale for $25.10 right now!
Barnes & Noble
Broadleaf Books
A Great Good Place for Books (Oakland, CA)

So, there you go. I hope you’ll pre-order a copy of my next release, just as I hope you’ll take a jog down memory lane and perhaps remember that place you once visited as a child.

Because the story I shared with you above? It was a deleted part of the original manuscript! Although you’ll not see it in the final copy of the book, I do hope you had a little bit of fun with it in the meantime.

To church camp!

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About Cara Meredith

Cara Meredith is a writer, speaker, and part-time development director. The author of The Color of Life (Zondervan) and the forthcoming Church Camp (Broadleaf), she gets a kick out of playing with words. A lot. You can read more about the author here.

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