Surrounded by thick woods and vast trees there sat camp Kalaqua. Every morning when the sun would rise, there shinned a golden gleam of light beyond the field. The field was flat and green, and the grass was so long it would tickle your ankles. Beside the field was the waterpark that smelled so highly of chlorine. In it was the wave pool which was always covered in inner tubes. My favorite thing was the spring. Built on this beautiful brown wooden deck it consisted of the clearest blue waters I’d ever seen, and the water was so cold if you stayed in long enough your hands would go numb.

When I arrived at church it was 6 A.M. and the sun just arose. Anxiously I was texting Abby to see where she was. She said she was at the back of the courtyard and so I hugged my dad goodbye and started pushing through the crowd of people. I was so thrilled when I saw all my old friends. Summer was so busy, I barely got to see them. I ran up and hugged them all. It was all our first times going to clash and we were beyond excited. Clash camp was a sleepaway summer camp led by my church. The bus ride was dreadful especially when the other cabins started singing the song about bottles of milk on the wall. We were all so anxious to arrive.

When we finally got to camp, I’ll be honest I was sort of concerned seeing the cabins we knew the guys had to sleep in. Our bus pulled up to the lodge and we unpacked our luggage and went to our room. We all fought over the top bunk, but our arguing was interrupted by screaming coming from the hallway. It was another cabin zipping up people into sleeping bags and throwing them across the tile in the lobby. I told them I wanted to try, and it was a lot of fun. We quickly became friends with them, and we were all very outgoing and talkative and laughed a lot, we got along really well.

I made a lot of new friends there, Alexia who was in my cabin and Gracie who came from the cabin down the hall. We ding dong ditched the rooms on the second floor and got yelled at several times. By this time Doraliegh, our leader was done unpacking and it was time to go to the gym for worship nights. Worship nights were me and my friends favorite and Doraliegh jumped in to. She was the coolest counselor. She was young and kept up with trends and we could talk to her like she’s our age and she would always jump into our TikTok’s.

After worship we went to the water park before it closed, and we saw Gracie and her cabin there. Me and Abby spent a little while with them and then reunited with our own cabin in the wave pool. All the inner tubes were taken and me and Abby struggled to stay above the water. The waves were huge and when you got pushed under the water there was no way to get up because the tubes were blocking the surface.  We eventually found tubes and made a circle with our cabin.

We talked for a while and a group of guys joined our circle. I’m not entirely sure they knew Doraliegh was our counselor, or I don’t think they would have. We always joked that she looked our age if it wasn’t for her height and I guess we were right. We all started talking and Doraliegh didn’t even mind. Across from me was Spencer a guy I met on a sailboat the summer before. He said he remembered me and when we explained the story to everyone they were shocked. I still can’t believe I saw him again.

Things have come a long way since then and now we are in touch and we are pretty close. We talked until the pool closed and then we went back to the lodge. Lights out was at ten and it was 9:45 when we got back. I wasn’t worried until Abby said she remembers her sister telling her the water shuts off at ten so we would have to be quick in the shower. So, we agreed since we still had on our bathing suits, we would take showers two at a time. Stephine and Abby went first and took 12 minutes. Which means me and Alexia only had 3 minutes till the water shut off. I was stressed and me and alexia panicked, and we were rushing.

It was 10:03 when we finished and realized they don’t actually shut off the water. Me and alexia were mad but couldn’t help but laugh. The next morning Doraliegh surprised us with presents before we went to the mess hall for breakfast. She handed out gray tee shirts that read “Woman of God” in white lettering. Gray because we were on the Silver Scorpions. We all put them on and got decked out with silver face paint and tied gray bandanas around our thighs. We were all matching even Doraliegh. After we ate we waited in the foiler behind the gym until it was time to open doors for the morning message.

We waited an hour and did each other’s hair and when they did open doors, we were the first ones in, and we got front row. After the message was war games. War games were a buch of sports where we got to compete against the other teams. I got to play in all of the games but my friends didn’t want to. Tube tug was my favorite and it’s the one my friends did too. There is a pile of inner tubes in the middle of this tarp which was covered in water and soap. The goal of the game was to get as many tubes as you can to your side and whoever’s side has the most tubes wins. You must stack the tubes on someone on your team but if the tubes aren’t on anyone you can steal them and bring them to your side.

We went against the golden gorillas everyone wanted to play since it was so hot out. Me and my friends were picked and lined up against the edge of the tarp and then the whistle sounded. I dove onto the tarp crashing into and scattering the tubes. My friends were behind me and raced to the center of the tarp. While my friends tried to get tubes to our side, I went to the opposing side and stole tubes from them. When I saw some of their team going to our side to do the same thing I followed. I was wrestling the girl trying to steal our tubes and in my mind everything stopped. I looked over my shoulder to see Doraliegh cheering us on.

I grabbed the tubes from her and got on my knees. She threw me down and punched me in my stomach. She had me pinned on the tarp and I was pulling her hair. I pushed her off of me and stacked the last few tubes on my teammate. The whistle sounded and we waited for the referees to count the tubes. We won! We cheered and moved onto the next game. We had won all of them and were on the last one. It was a combination of rugby, football, and basketball. To get points you had to throw the football into the basketball hoop but as long as you were holding the football you couldn’t move.

This time we were against the pink piranhas. We won the first round but by the second it was pouring down rain, but we continued to play. I thought I saw Landon, but it was hard to make out who was playing since the rain was pouring. He was a mutual friend I met as a mutual friend at church. When the game ended we won and I was jumping around with my friends. I looked to the other edge of the field and Landon looked at me and smiled as he walked away with his team. That night we were bored, and we ding dong ditched again.

When we went upstairs they caught us and someone came out barking. We were genuinely concerned and scared and raced down the stairs. There was a counselor on the lower level, and she yelled at us. The rest of the time at camp was so much fun even though I don’t remember it all. The last day we were all so sad to leave. Overall, I grew closer to my old friends and made many new ones too. I made so many memories that I will never forget and it brought me closer to God. We watched “Moana” in the gym with the rest of the campers while the buses were being prepared. I ate pizza next to Abby and Stephanie and Landon joined us too. It was the perfect way to end the perfect day and the best camp experience I could ever hope for.