Leaders in training

11:16 pm

The LIT retreat is this weekend, which means that regular Camp Gravatt is out of session and only the kids my age and I are here, with the exception of 5 or 6 counselors and our camp director, Fletch. We spent the day preparing for our retreat, a term which here means a night spent at a special dock on the lake under the stars with the 5 or 6 counselors who stayed at camp. The LIT dock is a so-called sacred place, partly because no one else frequents the dock as much as the LITs and the counselors when the camp is void of all campers, young and training to be a leader. I, for one, had not been to the LIT dock before this session.

So there we were, sitting on the dock at nighttime. It was the passing time after the campfire and hotdogs and s’mores and Oreos, after the sacred ritual of hearing the counselors pass down traditional scary stories, after the brushing of the teeth and hanging of the hammocks. I had my digital camera, a small Canon Powershot, and was taking pictures of the lake with the reflection of the moon, a bright white pearl on the surface. The pictures came out grainy and soft, almost like a watercolor painting. After a while I stopped using my camera and laid down on the dock to look at the stars. Most of the other LITs were still huddled around the campfire on the other side of our 6-tier hammock stack. I was alone for a moment.

Soon after, a counselor I didn’t know too well came out and sat with me. He asked about my crutches, and when I told him what it really was all about, I was surprised to hear he’d been through the same thing! In his case, his left arm was shorter than his right and when it came time for spring sports in high school, he got it fixed at the Paley Institute so he didn’t have to worry about it causing problems later on. The Paley Institute! The rival limb lengthening institution to the ICLL that my parents considered when I was a baby and this whole thing was new to them. Since it’s in Florida, our home in South Carolina is equidistant from both Paley and the ICLL.