History Makers

Here are the very first girls to camp OVERNIGHT at The Marys! See Arden's story below.

First to Stay in the Marys

Hi! I’m Arden. This most recent summer, I went to Camp Timbercrest for my second year. I had chosen to do the session Trail Trekkers. Basically, this program was an introduction to staying and living and hiking in the woods. For part of this session, we were to have a campout in the woods. So, we had visitors from Friends of Timbercrest come out and show us how to get to the Marys. (If you are not familiar with what the Marys are, they are little lean-to's that were built in memory of Mary Alice and Mary Cooper.) And after they had shown us how and to get to the Marys a couple of nights later we set out to sleep there for the night. This is the story of what happened.

It was around 8:30 p.m. when we got there. Right away, we had started unrolling our sleeping bags and getting that fire going. For about an hour we just hung around the campfire, talked, and laughed (we laughed A LOT). It was around 9:30 p.m. at this point so the girls and I started heading back to Mary Cooper’s lean-to, the one we were staying in. We had still continued to talk as we changed into our pajamas and started climbing into our sleeping bags, until we heard a noise. A very odd noise. Almost like howling, but not quite. We had called over to our counselors and told them of this noise, but since they had not heard it, they simply told us to lay down and relax. We had heard this noise again, but louder this time. So loud that the counselors had heard it too. They instantly radioed in to the camp director, and she said to stomp on the floor, however, it only made the noise seem closer, and louder. Instantly, a girl who was with us started hysterically crying. So me being the oldest in the bunch, I felt that I had to be the bravest. I offered to bring her to the counselors. She said yes and another girl had asked if she could come with us and I said yes.

So, once we had gotten over to the other lean-to (Mary Alice), the girl who had been hysterically crying, had made it well known that she could not stay the night. So we tried radioing down again to see if she could get picked up, however she was told that she had to stick it out. Then all of the sudden-we heard that same noise again, but so loud that it had only seemed to be about 30 feet away from us. The counselors wanted to make sure that the other two girls were okay, so they said for me and someone else to go over and grab the two girls. Naturally, for lack of luck, both girls were too scared-so I went over alone and got the girls. During this whole event, I’m thinking to myself, “Why do we have to drop the buddy system now?” But I made it back, with two girls hanging on my arms. However I was  unfortunately not done with running errands-if you will. The one girl who was hysterically crying said that she didn’t want her stuffed turtle to be eaten, so once again, I was sent over alone to grab the stuffed animal.

A little while later the counselors had made their decision to send us back, but they would take their stuff and stay with us in our lean-to. “Glad the counselors decided to stay with the girls” you may think. Yes, it was a kind doing-however, it is a rule that the counselors cannot sleep with the campers, so they pretty much stayed up all night watching us sleep. And of course there were some girls who needed to use the bathroom, but as we were walking over to the Luggable Loo, we heard the noise again. So we marked our territory in front of the Mary Cooper lean-to, if you know what I mean.

After that we fell asleep, woke up around 7:30 in the morning, packed up our stuff, and walked back down to our unit. But you probably are still wondering, “What animal was making that noise?” Turns out that it was just an owl.

So there we have it! The story of the first stay in the new Marys lean-tos! I hope that everyone enjoys this story!

-Arden (First year Cadette)