Sandy Hill — 2

(“Sandy-Hill,” eight years ago, was my first Sandy Hill blog.)

During the summers of 1959, 1960, and ’61, when I was 15, 16, and 17, I was on the staff of a religious boys camp in northeastern MD, on the upper reaches of Chesapeake Bay.
I was a CIT — Counselor-in-Training. The camp’s name was Sandy Hill.
How I, an agnostic, made the staff of an evangelical organization, is debatable. I always say it was because I was good at slinging words, mainly the application essay.
Pay was extremely minimal, even for full-on counselors. Usually they were college-students; summer vacation from regular college pursuits.
As a religious camp it drew its staff from religious colleges. CIT’s like me were usually ex-campers. I’d been a camper since 1954 = five times, two weeks per time; except my last year, 1958, was four weeks. My father always hoped that camp would make me a zealot.
CIT’s filled in regular counselors on their day off. I also lived in a regular cabin with a full-fledged counselor.
In 1959 I did only the final five weeks. In 1960 I did the first five weeks, although only four were actual camp. The first week was prepare camp and religious contemplation. That included communion from a common chalice. The camp nurse was aghast! The camp didn’t have a communion set.
In 1961 I did the entire season, 10 weeks total.
I was also a stablehand, although my ability to ride horse was questionable. But the horsey guys loved the fact I mucked stalls, and taught camper horsemanship classes. That meant they could pretend they were cowboys.
I also got better riding horse. By 1961 I was Assistant Horsemanship Director, and pretty much ran things myself. The Horsemanship Director had a camper-cabin, so couldn’t do much. (In 1959 and 1960 the Horsemanship Director didn’t have a cabin.)
The need to bring in and feed the horses meant I could skip the daily chapel requirement.
By 1961 I was leading trail-rides. Our horses were nags, el-cheapo rentals from a horse farm. The ride-leader took the spunkiest horse. I usually did okay, but the horses ran away once, complete with terrified campers. Our horses galloped back to the stable to stand around and eat.
Our camper cabins were rustic. No electricity, and no windows. Open but fully screened. We weren’t in tents, and had wood flooring, not dirt. We were sheltered from rain, but if it got cold all we could do was roll large canvas tarps over the screens.
The entire top half of the cabin, under the roof, was open, but screened. Nighttime illumination was by kerosene lantern, or flashlight of course.
Camp was on a named river, Elk River. But where we were that river was more than three miles wide — more a Chesapeake Bay inlet. It had tides, but wasn’t salt-water. A channel was dredged in the middle to pass ships. It went north to the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, a shortcut between Chesapeake and Delaware bays.
The “Muddy Elk” allowed all kinds of water sports, but Sandy Hill didn’t do much. All we had were five wooden Old Town canoes: two 17-footers, a 16-footer, an 18, plus a gigantic 24-foot “warrior-canoe.” It could accommodate an entire cabin: 10 campers, plus two adult staff-members. —I could be one of those adults.
Every summer, usually in August approaching the end of the camping season, it got cool enough to roll down the cabin tarps. Summer was winding down. Hot days returned, but winter’s icy blast was coming.
We’d walk around in jackets trying to shrug off the cold; temperatures were in the 60s, or even 50s.
The other day was like that here in West Bloomfield. My sugar-maple (actually my deceased wife’s father) will soon turn red, and I’ll be blowing snow in maybe 10 weeks.
Sandy Hill was one of my happiest lifetime interludes. The fact I was on-my-own, no longer at home, made college easy-as-pie. Others in my college class mention how difficult was that transition.
But mainly Sandy Hill left many pleasant memories. Most memorable was drifting at dusk in a camp canoe, on the dead-calm Elk, with another staffer sneaking Marlboros.
(The 1960 season was awash with sinners.)
20 miles north a gigantic 40,000-foot thunderhead hurled lightning-bolts cloudside. Dead silence; we were too far away to hear thunder.
That image is goin’ to my grave.

• Being a boys-camp, the only females were -a) the camp nurse, and -b) the dining-hall hostess.
• That previous blog has me a camper six times. Five is more like it.
• Sandy Hill was previously a DuPont family summer estate. It had a mansion-house, plus a dock into the Elk River. Camp Senior-staff, including wives, stayed in the mansion-house. That mansion was on a promontory overlooking the Elk River, about 100 feet above the river. The mansion still stands, but the dock washed away in a hurricane. Camp was about 2-3 miles from the main road, which meant the camp road passed large pastures that were farmed. A husband-and-wife lived year-round in a small bungalow on camp property — they did the farming, and the wife also laundered counselors’ clothes.
• RE: The river-channel and the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal...... —They probably wouldn’t clear a really big ship, but cleared the average freighter. Occasionally a freighter ran aground = stuck in mud beside the channel. Tides ran as much as 5-6 feet, usually enough to free a grounded ship.