Over 20 years ago, I was a college student who didn’t want to go home. Home was a source of pain and instability. So instead, I found a job that offered food, shelter and something more: a Christian summer camp in the Texas Hill Country hired me as a lifeguard.
I knew how to swim, but I wasn’t necessarily a strong swimmer. In the weeks leading to lifeguard training at camp, I swam laps in Texas Christian University’s campus pool to build up my strength. I remember singing to myself “Underdog,” by Audio Adrenaline, to pump myself up as I swam across the pool, worried about passing the lifeguard tests:
Been beat up
Been broken down
Nowhere but up
When you’re face down
On the ground
I’m in last place
If I place at all
But there’s hope for this underdog
My AOL Instant Messenger screen name, in fact, was TCUUNDERDOG. That was how I saw myself: a first-generation college student without a home to return to, studying religion and making friends and wondering how I might create my own life one day.
But at camp, I wasn’t an underdog. I was thrown into a cabin with about nine other young women in the weeks before camp started. For 10 days, we worked through the lifeguard workbook, did drills in the Guadalupe River and prepared for the lifeguard competence tests. On free days, we drove into nearby Kerrville to wash our clothes at a laundromat. We cheered each other on as we rescued a large rock in the river. In the end, we all passed our lifeguard certification tests and developed the sacred sort of friendship that only happens when you are 21 and working at a summer camp. For the next couple of months, we kept watch over the river as hundreds of girls swam in the cool green water.
On regular days, the campers rotated through activities like archery, horseback riding, softball and jewelry-making. Three mornings a week, I led a Bible study. On the other mornings—when not watching swimmers in the river—I supervised canoe racing. But there were also long spells spent in the camp’s common spaces when the rain carried on for days. I never felt fear; I felt bored. We came up with skits and art projects to keep us busy until the water receded. Once it was safe, we jumped back into the Guadalupe—for war canoe, synchronized swimming and all the activities that defined our summer.
On Sundays, a priest came to camp to offer Mass for Catholic campers and staff. While others slept in or lingered over breakfast, I made my way to the stone steps used for the service. The priest, old and kind, invited everyone to the Communion table, knowing that Episcopal and Lutheran and other campers might be missing the body of Christ, too.
At night, we had carnivals and games and skits and evening vespers. Then the walk back up to our cabins was a total glute-buster. Step after step to our cabins on higher ground. Never have I thought twice about why I had to work my thighs so much before bed. Until now.
Flooding was not uncommon 20 years ago. Sometimes, large rains came through and made the roads leading out of camp impassable. Counselors couldn’t take our laundry into town during those weeks, so I rewore my cotton shorts and washed my underwear in the sink. Once, in an attempt to return to camp by curfew, I drove through water rushing across a country road. The next week, I had to replace the alternator in my 1996 purple Saturn. The mechanic warned me not to drive through high water like that again. “It’s dangerous,” he said with a Texas twang. “Don’t be an idiot.”
My two summers at camp were magical. Even now, I can’t think of a better word. And even as a staff member who hadn’t had the chance to be a camper myself, I felt cared for and appreciated and loved in profound ways. My fellow counselors became my sisters, the older staff members became mentors, and the campers filled me with palpable joy.
I taught synchronized swimming and outdoor skills. I served as a lifeguard and taught young girls how to swim in the river. I became myself, unencumbered by family trauma or feeling out of place at college. I entered camp as an underdog, unsure of my strength. I left that summer not as someone who had “won,” but as someone who had been loved into her full self.
This is the sacred gift of summer camp.
Each session, at the last meeting of our Bible study class, I read the story of the Last Supper and washed my campers’ feet in the Guadalupe River and felt so close to God. I knelt in the river and thought of Jesus doing the same. To demonstrate not power but love. That same love surrounded us that summer—through water, ritual and community. And 20 years later, that same river swallowed up campers and stole their lives, and my heart breaks over and over every time I refresh the news, and I cannot stop refreshing the news.
Do you remember the places where you felt most like yourself? Or closer to God? Or both? When you stopped feeling like an underdog, fighting for the love of God or your family, and just received the love freely given to you from the cypress trees, the stable horses, your closest friends, the Eucharist?
We cannot forget the humans affected by this disaster. We cannot forget the presence of God, either. As we grieve what has been lost, as we cry and pull out our hair and gnash our teeth over the raging strength of this river and the fear those who suffered might have felt, we must also approach this pain with curiosity. How can we do better to keep our magical summers safe? What structural changes need to be made? What changes in our hearts are required to protect and love the underdog? What spaces are sacred and tender and must also come with glute-busting hills and a rigorous plan for safety?
I don’t have answers. None of us do, yet. But may we all take the time to remember the sacred spaces that formed us. To grieve. To act. To pray for the underdogs—for the campers, the counselors, the rescuers—and to do what we can to keep them safe in the summers to come.
To show your support for these families and campers, consider a donation to organizations like Hill Country Flood Relief Fund or Catholic Charities of Central Texas.
