Sunday, November 27, 2011

Camper Guide Award


Chris Hoffman's Camper Guide Paddle
Clint Robins' Camper Guide Award
    The Camper Guide award is considered an advanced wilderness award. Prerequisites for this award are both the Wilderness Award and the Pilot License.  This award is achieved through successful leadership in planning, packing and guiding a canoe trip under the supervision of a member of the camp staff.  We all recognize the lasting impact good guides have on campers.  Fr. Jerry wrote, "The guides aim on the trail is to instill in campers a love and respect for the wilderness while having a whale of a time living it!"




Below, Camp Director Mark Harren, guides Jackie Noble and Mark Lindell give Ed Halvorson his Laketrails Camper Guide award in 1991.


Sunday, November 20, 2011

K.P.

Annie Dingle    
Outdoor KP behind old Mess Hall
      Ah, KP...  Who doesn't have fond memories of doing KP at Laketrails?  Many will remember starting a fire out back of the Mess Hall to heat the water, singing camp songs and swatting flies.  Today we have running hot water and boom boxes,  but a few flies still find their way to the KP crew.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Voyageurs in Aluminum Canoes




                                              By John O'Toole  (1953)

     It is the spirit that will continue to cast it's magic spell on the singing around the evening campfire.  It will add the salt of friendship to the coining of nicknames, the kidding, and the sharing of camp work.
    Whether he lugs a heavy pack or carries a canoe on a portage to one of the many rock-walled lakes in the Aulneau Peninsula, each boy will quietly grow into manhood.
   As he lays awake under the stars on Falcon Island and listens to a timber wolf complaining to the moon or to a moose sloshing through a bog, he will know that with all its surging, unpredictable power, nature can still be his friend.  He will live with men who live with God.

       (from a book compiled by Jack Conway)