Four older adults stared me down as I approached the camping site. Eight teenage girls my age or a little older eyed me up and down. I felt so uncomfortable and awkward. Before I could even utter a word a staff member guided me under a canopy. There he explained where I was and what this whole situation was about. I was at a camp but not your normal make s'mores sing fun songs type camp, this was a therapeutic retreat site. This place stripped you of everything, literally, to help you build yourself back up to be a better person. In no way am I bashing this facility or what it stands for, but this is just me stating my personal experience at this place. I believe that this program would be very helpful to many people, but for me I still find it hard to reiterate what I got out of the program.
The first thing that I was introduced to was the phase system that I would be apart of for the rest of my stay. In order to move up in the phase system one would have to complete a set of tasks and exemplify a certain level of leadership and responsibility. There was many incentives to move up in phases (there was four phases total). An example is while being apart of the first phase you could not speak to anyone but the staff members, therefore this created a sense of loneliness and need to complete the tasks in order to phase up.
After the staff member (let's call him Joe) Joe explained to me the phase system then proceeded to give me my tasks. Great. It's pouring rain, I’m under a canopy in the middle of nowhere, and I have twelve people staring at me like I’m some foreign creature. On top of that now I have to do assignments just to so I could be granted to gift of speaking to others. The work I had to do mainly consisted of various science worksheets and essays until I came across the dreaded assignment. This dreaded assignment told me I had to write my life story. Now you may think, what is so hard about writing your life story? I mean it’s your life right, you’d think it would be easy to recall your own life. Of course I started writing about my adoption and how I was born but going from there made me rethink a lot of thoughts I spent so much time trying to erase.
To put things simply my mother has a mental disorder, multiple in fact. She never got the help she needed even to this day. It took me awhile to fully comprehend that it wasn’t my fault and I can’t help someone who refuses to help themselves. My father and mother didn’t marry one another because they were madly in love but because they both wanted children and the only way to adopt a kid from China was if you were married (that is how it was in 1998). Between listening to my parents argue and my mother taking things out on me, I shut down and went into a depression. Back in 8th grade I self harmed, broke objects, and at one point tried ending my own life in hopes of numbing the pain. I was so emotional back then, I didn’t have many people to talk to about my problems so I just bottled things up. Of course I had some amazing supportive friends but only the kind words of others could go so far. My dad didn’t know how to handle things so I guess that is why he sent me where he did.
Three days prior to arrival I finished all my assignments and moved up a phase. That is when things got real.
1. You couldn’t talk to the other girls about your past -- that is, you cannot glorify anything involving partying, drugs, etc. This wasn’t a problem for me but at the same time everything we said was censored.
2. You could not talk without a staff member being there and whenever you traveled you had to be with a staff and one other girl (unless one was going to the bathroom, bathing, or going on water run).
3. Each person was given a job each day, the jobs would rotate throughout the week. A job example would be water run. I hated this job the most because water run meant having to go into the woods by yourself, find a water source, collect the water, and do this throughout the whole day (the night time was the scariest because you were all alone). Another unfavorable job was digging the poop hole. Yes you read it right the poop hole. Every camp spot a lucky person was in charge of digging a very big hole where everyone would put their feces. Our shovel was our hands.
4. When being any distance from the camp (you only were away from the camp when you went to the bathroom, bathed, or where on water run) you had to scream your name every 10 seconds. The point of this was they wanted to make sure you weren’t running away because if they couldn’t hear your name that was an issue.
5. Bathing in the woods was the realest struggle. Your main objective was to make sure no one could see you but still be within a reasonable distance of the camp site because you had to scream your name in order for the staff to hear you. I had so much anxiety bathing because normal every day hikers weren't on the lookout for naked girls cleansing themselves behind trees.
6. It was hard to stay hygienic. You didn’t have a nice flowing shower over your head nor did you have running water in general. Especially when it was your time of month, that was rough. You can use your imagination on what that was like.
7. The hiking was exasperating for an out-of-shape girl like me. Almost everyday or every other day we would go on these long hikes up hill in the terrain most of the time. We had around 70 lbs on our back when we would do these hikes (keep in mind we didn’t have cars so we would have to carry everything).
8. Sleep? What’s sleep? Our sleeping arrangements consisted of the nice cushy ground and tarps above our heads. Every time we set up our sleeping arrangements we would find two trees a good distance apart, tie a string to each side while the tarp was attached to the strings, and kind of make a tent-like structure. In order to keep the sides down we used sticks. Yes measly little sticks that came out of the ground easily. When it would rain or storms these sticks stood no chance. Basically, I slept in harsh weather conditions with little to no protection.
9. Dry ramen was now the best thing to exist. We obviously didn’t have the best meals in the wilderness. Breakfast was dried oats, lunch some hard ramen noodles, and dinner was a tad better - pasta or dehydrated beans. Before every dinner usually one person would be able to bust a coal to make fire.
10. Bow drilling. Bow drilling is a semi complicated process that allows you to literally make a fire using some sticks and a string. Our source of heat depended on this method.
Those were just a few of many things that went down at our campsites and day to day routine.
