EB's last campout

EB's First Camp Out, Anokijig, April 2008.

This weekend was EB's last Indian Princess Camp out and also mine.  Harper graduated from the program last year.  There were tears then, and I knew there'd be tears on this one, too.  

I've been in the Fox Tribe since the fall of 2006.  I was pretty apprehensive about going to that first camp out.  I thought, "well, I'll do this one and see how it goes."  It went really well.  This last hurrah was my 18th Princess camp out and I spent a year serving as the Fox Tribal Chief.  I've seen a lot of guys come and go.  I've seen the Fox Tribe grow and shrink, ebbing and flowing with Ogden, St. Francis and Cossitt families.  

At some point a few years back, I was rummaging through the Fox Tribal Property box and I found ribbons from the mid-1970s.   Those little girls from my tribe were old enough to be moms of the current group of Fox princesses.  That thought made a big impact on me-- I felt like I was part of something big and important.  And I wondered what those girls were doing and whether they still had memories of the time they spent with their dads more than 30 years ago.  I knew I wanted my girls to remember these camp outs as some of the best times they ever had.

Our last Fox camp camp out was at a place I've never been to before: Camp Eberhart, in Three Rivers Michigan.  I grew up in Michigan and I can tell immediately when I'm back.  It always brings back memories of when I was a little boy.  

We rolled in early on a Friday night.   We had taken EB out of school so we could make the most of the weekends.  I've been a Friday night evangelist for a long time-- they are without a doubt my favorite night of camp outs.  For a while, I was the only dad heading up on Fridays.  But recently, another dad started coming in on Friday and on this night we had a record three dads up for Friday night.  It was great.

The girls went exploring and found a huge rope swing.  The dads made a camp fire, ate way too much food and took turns waking one another up snoring.

The next morning, we had an amazing breakfast, I wish somebody had taken pictures.  There were sausages, fried eggs, pancakes, grapefruit, donuts, and my home-roasted coffee.

Then, EB and I went off together to explore.

We want to the lake first.

And, EB being EB, we waited for the craft center to open and she was the first girl to make a tie-tied shirt.

EB's souvenir from her last camp out:

We ran into Ella, who was very sweet and wanted to be with EB all the time.

We joined Ella and her family in making candles.

EB's cool blue apple is on the left.  My twister is on the right.

EB wanted to go fishing.  So, we turned over some rocks and logs, found some worms and found the dock.

EB caught a bluegill...

And a sunfish...

And a nice bass!

It was time for lunch.  As the oldest girl, EB led the Fox girls in some cheers.  They did a great job.

Then, the girls played some Gaga, a very cool form of Israeli Dodgeball that they play at all the Metro-Chicago YMCA camps.

After Gaga, we headed back to the lake.

The winds were blowing something fierce, and we had trail riding scheduled, but we decided to go canoeing.  We went to the "island," beached our canoe and explored.

There is a really cool old observatory on a hill.

Down the hill was a cool old building that inspired EB to compose a ghost story.

There's always a good tree to climb, and somebody was nice enough to install this rope.

After Canoeing, we hiked 20 minutes to the stables for a trail ride.

EB made friends, immediately.

This was my horse, Whitey.  Like most horses I get on trial rides, he liked to snack and always wanted to pass the horse in front.  I was busy.

This is Blue, EB's horse.

EB and Blue after our trail ride.

We needed a break, so EB went rock climbing.

And then we hiked back across the camp for some archery.  EB rocked it!

I rocked it!

Finally, it was time for dinner-- and tribal cheer.  I need to be honest about this:  I love Tribal Cheer. After my second or third camp out, I volunteered to write and run tribal cheer and I've been doing it with the girls ever since.  Most dads hate that kind of thing (or pretend to) so this was never a problem.  

As my girls got older, they took a bigger hand in Tribal Cheer, selecting the music, writing the words and teaching the other Fox Princesses.  This year's Tribal Cheer was 90% EB.  She picked the music and wrote almost all of the words.  She held a couple of training sessions and taught the other girls the song.  When it came time to perform, she stepped right up, an led it like it was the most natural thing she'd ever done.  Never mind that for the first two years, she couldn't be in the same room as the tribal cheers due to the sensory overload.  And she was so painfully shy she could not even say hello, let alone lead a group of girls in an activity.  Watching EB run her Tribal Cheer was a huge moment for me.  This is why we do Indian Princesses. 

They did a great job!  Thanks, Ralph, for posting the video:

When Tribal Cheers were over, we got our faces painted.  That's traditional for dads and daughters who are going through "passage," or graduating from the program.  

It was a beautiful night for the ceremony.  

EB and I had talked a lot about how this was her last Fox Tribe camp out.  She welled up in tears a few times just talking about it, so I knew passage would be hard on both of us.  EB sobbed loudly through the whole thing.  I teared up, too.

When it was over, a Fox dad with great timing offered to take our picture.  Thanks, John.  EB pulled it together and managed a smile.

"Do you want to take a walk?"  I asked EB.  Yes, she did.  Down by the lake.

"Dad, can we dangle our feet in the water?"

"We can do anything you want," I said by telling her "yes" when the last thing I wanted to do was put my bare feet in the cold water.

It actually felt really good. We sat and talked and reminisced about camp outs.

Then we took a selfie:

The lake was beautiful.

EB was really happy to get back to our cabin and hang out by the fire for a while.

EB made everybody stop talking while she told the ghost story she had composed earlier.  Inspired, the girls put together a haunted house and all of the dads went through it over and over again.

Sunday morning, we went with Ella and her family to the lake for another canoeing trip.

I suddenly remembered my iPhone can take Panoramas.

Ella wanted to ride with EB in our Canoe.

Ralph and Kayla

There was a really cool tunnel under the causeway to the "island"

We beached on the island and explored it all over again.

A panorama of the view from the observatory deck

Ralph found an amazing climbing tree

While Ella and EB found a swing.

Time to head back

We decided to go fishing once more.

When you're turning over rocks and logs, worms aren't the only thing you find.  We also found a garter snake.  Actually, we had seen one the day before, too, but lost it.  Not this time.  I grabbed it.

Here's a fun fact about Garter snakes that I just copied from Wikipedia:  "These snakes will also discharge a malodorous, musky-scented secretion from a gland near the cloaca. They often use these techniques to escape when ensnared by a predator."  See, I already knew that because that's exactly what he did when I grabbed him from the back, right at the cloaca.  

EB held him anyway:

Fearless:

We let our stinky snake go and went fishing.

EB caught a bunch of panfish again.

Then she let me catch one.

"Just one more, dad."

That's exactly how I feel about the camp outs.  Just one more.  And one more after that, and maybe one more.  It went by in a blink.  From the fall of 2006 through the spring of 2013 my little girls became not so little, and I was there to see it.  I feel like the luckiest dad alive.