Harry Potter and the Bog Monster

No, this isn’t a new instalment of the popular franchise. These were two of the activities that took place during this past week’s session at Camp McDougall.

I’ve written before of being at camp, how it is at one time exhilarating and exhausting; peaceful, yet energizing; a time to discover more about yourself, while learning about others.

Camp is all that, and more!

As happens every week, this week’s session was chock-full of activities in four main programming areas: Arts & Crafts, Rec, Waterfront, and Chapel.

Arts & Crafts included making jewellery out of coloured wire, gimp bracelets and keychains, and collages.

The Rec sessions included hiking up to the upper field to play various games and taking a blind-folded trust walk.

The Rec Director was also responsible for planning each evening’s WIDE GAME! -- a camp-wide frenzy of excitement that sees campers running rampant over most of the 30-plus acres in search of a flag, or hidden Counsellors, or other variations on the theme.

Waterfront, obviously, included instruction in swimming and canoeing, culminating in a “canoe trip” to the point for afternoon snack on the last day.

FREE SWIM! is undoubtedly the most popular activity of the day, with campers either heading out in to the somewhat shallow waters of our semi-protected bay on the North Channel to splash about and cool off, or staying on the beach to build sand castles or just lay in the sun.

Chapel is typically the “church” part of a Church Camp where the focus is on spirituality, our relationship with each other, and learning more about ourselves.

Wednesday was “Theme Day,” and this week’s theme was Harry Potter -- which, as regular readers will know, made me very happy!

Staff dressed in costumes and took on the roles of the various Hogwarts characters, and all activities had a Hogwartian theme.

During FREE SWIM! time, a number of staff and campers hiked through The Forbidden Forest in search of the Bog Monster – adding a Hogwartian touch to the weekly Bog Wallow! (A walk through the wood that includes crawling though a mud hole. We’re famous for this, actually!)


As this week's Chaplain my Chapel sessions looked at ways in which we can learn to work together to accomplish various tasks, in teams and in pairs, and how individual wants and needs must sometimes be set aside for the good of the team.

Our activities included a Trust Walk, where one person was blind-folded, and walked behind their partner with their hands on the partner’s shoulders. The partner guided them along a marked trail through the woods.

When they completed the course their roles were reversed, and they walked the course in the opposite direction.

In this way the first “guide” would not have the advantage of knowing the lay of the course, as the terrain would feel different heading in the other direction.

Another activity was the “Magic Stick,” where two teams each lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, with their elbows locked at their sides, their forearms extended outwards and their hands held palm up with their pointer fingers extended. A long, thin stick was then balanced on their fingers.

Together they would then lower the stick to the ground and raise it back up, hopefully keeping the stick level and not dropping it.

The next step was for them to carry the stick along a trail through the woods. The tricky part was that the trail was not wide enough for them to walk forward, side-by-side; they would have to walk in a side-stepping fashion.

The initial trial was marked by angry recriminations as the stick would wobble precariously and one end or the other would be rising or dropping.

The second trial was made easier by having the team members stand alternately on the other side of the stick, giving it more stability.

During the follow-up discussion, one of the campers summed things up quite nicely, saying:

Sometimes more than one person has a good idea, and you need to decide whose idea to use. But you don’t always want to have that same person tell you what to do all the time, because then others don’t get to have a say. You need to remember that it’s not always about you.

(Note: this pearl of wisdom came from a nine year-old. She has a better grasp on the concept than some adults I know.)

Another fun but frustrating activity was building a tower using marshmallows and spaghetti. The tower had to be as tall as they could make it while remaining self-supporting.

Again, there was some initial squabbling as those who thought their idea was the best tried to convince the rest of the team of this, but once a strategy was decided upon the work began at a feverish pace.

An interesting point to note was the choice of using either a whole mallow or breaking them into smaller pieces. The whole mallow camp insisted that the larger candy would provide more stability where the fragile spaghetti was attached; the pieces proponents suggested that a whole mallow would be heavier, and thus put more strain on the pasta.

(Again, I need to point out that these were 9 to 11 year-olds.)

In each of the two sessions, the towers were within a few centimetres height of each other. Some had wider bases than others, while some had more diagonal bracing for support. One team went so far as to lean strands of loose pasta against the outer edge of their tower, to prevent it from leaning.

They were all very creative, and most of the campers learned an important lesson in co-operation and teamwork.

If you haven’t tried it yourself (and I suspect most people have not) grab some marshmallows and a handful of spaghetti and try building a tower, yourself. Be sure to use spaghetti, and not spaghetini – it is far too thin and much more fragile.

You will see that the spaghetti does break easily, and that one must use both hands to assemble the components – one holding the mallow while the other attempts to insert the pasta.

You will also see that all those tedious and incomprehensible geometry classes begin to have a practical application: if you build a cube of pasta with marsmallow connectors, the same strands of pasta will not reach to provide cross-bracing between the points of the cube.

Also, attempting to insert additional bracing causes tremendous stress on the rest of the structure. If two or more people are attempting to add components at the same time, catastrophic structural failure can result.

You may also find that what is relatively easy for one person to do alone becomes a more difficult task for two or more, but that does not mean that we should always just go it alone.

Sometimes we need help to complete a task. When this is the case, it becomes very important to be able to co-operate and work as a team.

There may be a team leader, but even leaders have to be willing to accept input from team members, and acknowledge when a better idea is put forth.

As that wise young camper said, “It’s not always about you!”

Advice we should all take to heart.

But… that’s just my opinion.