Bearskin Meadow Camp

     I remember standing in my kitchen, walking in circles around our wood block island while on an over-the-phone interview with the Bearskin Meadow Camp director. I did not know what to expect, as I had never done a formal job interview, and I didn't know what he wanted to know, or what I was supposed to say. But he was really nice, and excited to have a diabetic come as a counselor from across the country.

     I forget exactly where I first heard of Bearskin Meadow camp, perhaps it was on a diabetic magazine's listing of camps, or perhaps it was a friend's recommendation. But applying for and accepting the position turned out to be one of the most exciting, important, and life alerting experiences of my life. So much so, that I returned for three summers in a row ('97, '98, '99).

    My family and I worked my first year into a vacation. We planned a trip to San Francisco, and then headed north into the Redwood forest, circling back around to the camp in Kings Canyon / Sequoia National Forest/Park, just outside of Fresno. They dropped me off and flew home. I can recall the first couple of awkward days. Since most of the people there knew each other, I probably came off as pretty quiet. I was not necessarily a shy kid, but I tended to be in new social situations. So the first few days before the first group of kids got there, I was a little uncomfortable, missing my friends, and unsure if I could handle being out there for 2 months.

    But those initial feelings did not last very long. Once the camp started, and the kids arrived, I fell right into a routine and enjoyed every minute of it. The first group of kids I was in charge of were ages 10-11. I felt like it was the perfect age to work with, where they were old enough to play organized activities somewhat competitively, but they were not yet angsty or "girl-crazy." The camp itself was going through a process of expanding and their plans to build a new deck were not complete by the time camp began. You see, there were no cabins or buildings: it rained so seldom in the park, that we were able to sleep in sleeping bags on cots on roofless decks. So with "Granite" not yet complete, our deck slept on a tarp pinned down across a big slab of granite with a couple of tents pitched to store our clothes and supplies. 

Inspection Award

Boys Decks Staff Assignments

Pre-Deck site for Granite

       Each deck was organized by age for the kids camps. As counselors, we spent the whole day with our set of kids and went through a variety of daily activities to help bond with each other.  After two sessions of the kids came the teen week. Because everyone there was basically one age, the decks were sorted by "major." I was a Fine Arts counselor, so the kids on my deck went with me to the Arts & Crafts building and I basically spent the whole day with them there. But in both cases, there was free time set aside for the deck. This was unorganized time the deck and counselors could choose what they wanted to do as a group. We could hang out on the deck and play cards or do a number of activities in the woods. One of the activities I organized I developed based on the long discussions we had at the PA Teen Weekends. I mapped out a scenic route through the woods marked by neon flags. The kids, one at a time, had to follow the path leaving as much room between each other as possible to create the feeling of being alone with their observations and the natural sounds of the woods. We came out the other end of the trail with introspective thoughts and insights into ourselves, and it was received very positively.

      I had just turned 19 during my first year as a counselor. The teen campers ranged from 13 - 18. Feeling like I needed an extra bit of experience to work with the kids better, I told them I was 21. But I felt bad and finally came clean at the end of the week to a surprisingly positive reaction. I think one kid said it best with "Nah man, I don't care. It just means you couldn't buy us beer now, that's all."

Just a few of the Fine Arts camp activities

Fine Arts Building

Mattress wrestling during deck free time

   
     Our other major responsibility was to look after the kids in a supervisory medical capacity. We were all aware of the signs of low blood sugar, so it was part of our job to make we had testing and low supplies at all times and that the kids were staying balanced. The biggest problems tended to arise at night. Camping out in the woods, being active all day, and eating regulated amounts of food at routine times was a change of habit for most of the kids, and quite often, was a recipe for nighttime low blood sugars. After all the campers went to sleep, a selected group of counselors stayed up until midnight in order to come back and take their overnight blood sugars. Juggling a meter, strips, low supplies a pen and paper, we'd wake up each kid and test their sugar. We treated lows with the 15 - 15 rule if low (give 15 grams of carbs and wait 15 minutes to retest). The medical team would need the info the next day in order to adjust their insulin dosages, so we had to scratch the numbers down on whatever we had lying around.

Typical Midnight Testing Scratch Sheet

     The next morning we tested the kids again, and gave they wrote them down in their logbooks/hands, along with their midnight numbers. With every insulin dosage, they needed to have it adjusted by our medical staff as a safety/legal precaution and practical tactic. So the morning, the kids would go to the alphabetical shot line headed by a med-staffer. The staff member would regulate their dosages based on their logbook and their traditional regimens. The kids would receive their discussed insulin dosage written down and bring that info one of their deck counselors us who would watched them give the correct amount. Some kids would try to take more insulin in order to get more food.

Basic Shot Line Instructions: Humalog was still relatively new

Typical Shot lines at Family Camp  

     This was an age before insulin pumps took over: only a few staff and even fewer kids had them. One staff member told us about one of the first pumps she tried out in the 80's which was the size of a backpack, and you had to wear it in the same manner. The more informed staff foresaw the mass production and streamline technology that Minimed was developing as the field leader. It even made sense to buy stock in the company. I was one of the non-pumpers at this time, as I stubbornly distrusted a machine to push insulin into my body. But as I saw the effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability from other pump users, I had to get my own. By the time my third summer rolled around, I applied for my first Minimed pump. (At camp, I first tried a trial pump site, where I administered insulin by syringe hooked up to the end of the pump tubing. Later, after talking with the med staff, I tried the camp's loner pump for a week or so, and there was no going back)

Syringe-to-Pump Site trial

Camp Loaner Pump

     Toward the end of the summer, we had four sessions of  family camp. The idea- a fantastic one at that- was to invite the diabetic child/children and their entire family to camp in order to experience and learn together. It was nice for the siblings of diabetic kids to see other kids with diabetes and it was a time for the diabetic kids to be the majority among peers- a sometimes much needed confidence booster. During the day, the parents had educational classes with the medical team, experts, and sometimes, panels of diabetic counselors. We were not just counseling and watching their kids all day, but we were able to share our experiences, commiserate with the parents, and be living examples of how to succeed with diabetes. The parents also gained insight and growth through talking with the other parents. All the while, their kids were group by ages and siblings, and they would partake in activities that the camp and national park had to offer. One of the big highlights, aside from Family day in the park (where the families took a vacation from camp for a day) were the talent shows. Sure, they were mostly silly and the skits were kind of repetitive, but they were like old songs you wanted to get stuck in your head. And it was all in the name of normalizing diabetes and gaining confidence for everyone involved.

Staple "Howdy Buckaroo" talent show skit

Teen campers overnight trip to Buck Rock Lookout

     But personally, the most life impacting things were the other counselors and the lifelong bonds we forged. I went to community college for two years, and then Temple University for two more, but Bearskin Meadow was my real "college" experience. I learned about myself, and practical tips of living with diabetes through friend's experiences. Simply put, there was something almost magical about being isolated in the woods (before cellphones, smart technology and the internet's great insurgence) with a bunch of other diabetics.

Talking at one of the campfires

     While on break for a "treat" or a "real world fix," we'd find a friend with a car and go to the 6.5 mile drive to the Christian Camp at Hume Lake for their snack bar and general store. On my third summer there, I drove cross country so I'd be the one with a car. We'd "shamble" to places in the park with general names like "nearby" "up there" and "over there" to build a campfire, laugh and unwind. It was the youthful growing up where I transitioned from relying on people to being self-reliant. I was always a unique teenager, with a personalized, individual style in high school, and by the end of my first summer, I was comfortable to be that self again.

Travelling across country with friends

Staff dinner in the dining hall 

     The greatest of these experiences occurred in our free time between camp sessions. We could plan with friends to explore the park, or other parts of California. It was all new to me, so I was up for anything. Being from Pennsylvania, I never had the opportunities to do the same level of hiking and natural, outdoorsy experiences that one can do in a mountainous national park. I hiked up 11,207' to Alta Peak, ran through snow covered caps on the way to Pear Lake, and saw a fair share of bears at the camp and throughout the park. Bears were so frequently seen in the park, that other wildlife seemed rare. We saw a deer this one time, everyone freaked out and we trailed the deer as if it were some unique celebrity siting. We'll just say PA has more than their fair share of deer.

Our Trash Eating Bear

That Terrorized The Camp

Postcard-esq view on the Watchtower Trail to Pear Lake

     We often drove down to Fresno to catch a movie (a mistake if the movie was The Blair Witch Project, and we were isolated in the woods for weeks at a time) or stock up at Wal-Mart or Vons. I drove stick for the first time around central California, on a 4 day trip that included hitting many of the San and Santa cities along the coast. This included sleeping on a beach under a stage for a night in Santa Cruz and in a plum orchard surrounded by coyotes at the base of the park. All of this while in the company of people with a strong knowledge of diabetes. We all had each other's back, and we felt like we could do anything. We were safe knowing that we shared the same problems with, and knowledge of, diabetes (even with non-diabetic counselors: ultimately, there was no difference).

Diving into the waves

On the beach of Santa Cruz

The Santa Cruz Stage