Week 3 Storytelling: Camp Gopher Wood

Everyone loves summer camp, so I'm always so surprised by how little attention the classic literature gives the world's first ever camp. Everyone is dying to tell the story of Jonah living in a stinky old whale, and everyone loves to talk about Adam and Eve's brief time in paradise, but those stories aren't even half as good as mine! 

People will even start to tell the story of the first ever camp when they talk about Camp Counselor Noah bringing us all together for a year of fun at Camp Gopher Wood so we wouldn't die in the flood. But then they skip all the juicy details! Why would a story about a guy bringing a big group of animals into a boat fast-forward through the songs, crafts, and campfires? What's the point in telling a story if it ends in a dove flying all around with an olive, when the rest of us animals got to stampede around eating s'mores on the poop deck?

I guess I should let the ancient past go and just appreciate that I'm even getting to tell this story at all. It all started, as most experiences do, with tons of rules. There were rules about how many of each kind could climb aboard, rules about where boys and girls had to stay, and really strict rules about not jumping off the boat (something about not enough lifeboats). Luckily, the rules didn't apply so much to me because I'm an elephant. We're pretty big, so no more than two elephants could have even fit on the boat, and people can't really tell the difference between a boy and girl elephant very easily anyways, and finally, elephants are strong swimmers. The only real rule that applied to me was that I could almost never go onto the deck unless it was a special occasion.

Even with the rules to govern all the different kinds of animals, Camp Gopher Wood was pretty much the best year of my life. I had never gotten to hang out with so many different kinds of animals. Back home in ancient Africa, we pretty much stick to our own kind, so getting the opportunity to become friends with a flamingo and a cat was unheard of. Because elephants are big and no one can tell me what to do, I never learned their names. But the flamingo and the cat were still the fastest and easiest friends I ever made, whatever their names were. We got to do so much cool stuff together.

Probably the most fun we ever had together was right at the end of our time at camp. Counselor Noah had already set the aforementioned dove out to search for land, or an olive, or a rainbow or something. But the flamingo, the cat and I wanted to see for ourselves if the flood had dried up for. We were all bigger than the dove, so we could definitely figure out a better way to check out the state of the world. You'll never guess what our devious master plan was. Or maybe you will, who knows?

Anyways, we decided that instead of doing something weird and complex, all we had to do was look outside! The only problem was that Noah and the rest of the counselors didn't like to let animals on the decks very often. You see, way back during the Camp Gopher Wood days humans lived for a freakishly long time, like hundreds of years. And as you could imagine, their bodies basically hardly worked at all by this point. Most of the counselors couldn't really see well, so they didn't know how close they were to the edge of the boat. Even if they could see past their cataracts, their balance was no good because their hips and knees were all failing, and the few young counselors never wanted to go on the deck because they knew all the responsibility for safety would be on their young shoulders.

I told the flamingo and the cat, “With our great diversity of size, we could definitely find a way to sneak out onto the deck and have a look outside at the dry land!”

 I outlined a pretty simple plan that required a three-person stack-em-up. The flamingo was on my back, and the cat was on the flamingo's head. Then, the flamingo fluttered her pink wings to catapult the cat up through the chimney, and from there the cat presumably walked around just long enough to take a gander. Finally, the cat tumbled down the chimney and I caught her with my long and flexible trunk.

The cat seemed sad as we asked her what she had seen and if anyone had seen her. She said,  “There is basically no water left at all, and there is seemingly endless green grass all around.”

I guess I understood why that made her sad. Dry land meant that camp had to be over, and Counselor Noah had already prepared us for our serious and important job by telling us over and over, “Repopulating the earth with your own species after the flood ended was the entire reason you animals get the opportunity to go to camp.” I probably wouldn't ever get to hang out with the cat and the flamingo again because we would all be so busy on various continents raising the next generation.

When the dove came back to tell Noah what we already knew, we all had to leave Camp Gopher Wood and start our new families. I never got to spend time with the flamingo or the cat again, but I hope that one day, maybe in a few thousands of years, some future generations of elephants, flamingos, and cats get the chance to spend time together and become friends and prove how capable they can be as a team (especially compared to a dove).

Author's note: This story is based on the Biblical story of Noah following God's instructions to build an ark out of gopher wood and save a few of every species and his family from the deluge. After more than a year, a dove is sent out and comes back with an olive branch while there is a rainbow to symbolize God’s promise. 

I filled in some fun and exciting details during the year that Noah, his family, and all the animals are on the ark. Because this is a Biblical story, I didn't want to change any main details of the actual story, so I added new information! Of course, I have no idea what actually happened during this long period, but I decided to make it about camp because everyone loves camp, and I think it's a much more uniting and universal experience than building a giant wooden structure. 

I think some of these classic Biblical stories can get told and retold so many times in the same way that it can be really exciting to use your imagination and think about what the story might be leaving out. And as for the elephant's particular obsession with his size, I channeled my brother, who is 6'4" and very proud of it! Hopefully by reading this story, people of all sizes can realize that they've got to work together to accomplish something really noteworthy!

Bibliography: Noah unit. Story source: The King James Bible (1611), Genesis 5-6

Image Information: Noah's ark; Wikimedia