Camp
The Alcove
A true story by: Sonia Roberts
It was the first activity of the second day. Allie Greenberg and I were partners for it- canoeing. Now when we got off the dock (we were last), most people had already explored the alcove. The alcove was like a little mini pond off the big one, like a child and her mother.
Some people had already come back to switch the person in front with the person in back. (By the way, I was in front and Allie was in back. She had experience with canoeing.)
For a while, we were out in the wide area of the pond, waiting for the alcove to clear. When it finally emptied to about three people, we canoed out there to check it out. It was beautiful, at least until we tried to get out.
In our first attempts, we bonked into land, and tried to push ourselves out. This didn't work, but we kept trying, always at different points. Then we tried just plain going out, but the wind and the water held us in their grips, their grips of steel. We kept trying these two methods, over and over, one after the other, going, going, never stopping, never resting. We couldn't. The currents held us at bay, keeping us prisoner, never letting down. Not even for a second. For if we stopped, we would get into an even worse situation. (I think I really toned my muscles from that experience.) We even tried just scaling along land. Nothing worked.
But- somehow- just as the whistle shrieked that it was time to go into dock, we (amazingly) managed to ease ourselves out. Just like that.
But it took skill. It took work. It took understanding. And the most important thing-- it took TEAMWORK.