THE GIRLS of CAMP KOCH Fredericka A. Schmadel
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GODDESS IN THE GREENWOOD: THE GIRLS OF CAMP KOCH Fredericka A. Schmadel Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology Indiana University May 2014 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee: ______________________________ John Holmes McDowell, PhD Chairperson ______________________________ Gregory Schrempp, PhD Member ______________________________ Hasan El-Shamy, PhD Member ______________________________ Henry Glassie, PhD Member January 24, 2014 ii Copyright © 2014 Fredericka A. Schmadel iii Dedicated to the Memory of Lou Froehle and Marion Woolcott With thanks and deep appreciation to Professors John Holmes McDowell, Hasan El- Shamy, Gregory Schrempp, Henry Glassie, Elizabeth Tucker, Jay Mechling, Hildegard Keller, and Linda Degh, who critiqued my work and encouraged me; And with endless gratitude to Donna Kopach, Karen Selby, Virginia Letsinger Hale, Anne Katherine, Ann Briel Weston, Cassandra Major, Sharon White, Judy Burns, David Coker, Peter Hare, Lori Meyers, Beth Heil, and the Kochies, who set me on the right path, again and again; And with endless appreciation to my parents, Earl and Martha Schmadel, who sent me to Girl Scout camp in 1958 and thereafter, and by doing so, opened my eyes and mind. iv Fredericka A. Schmadel GODDESS IN THE GREENWOOD: THE GIRLS OF CAMP KOCH Worldview, myth, and the 1960s come together in a song, ritual, and legend corpus preserved in oral transmission, central to an Indiana Girl Scout camp’s cultural production. As Levi-Strauss disciple Lee Drummond might describe it, Camp Henry F. Koch formed the identities of a dozen or more women still in supportive contact today. Primitive camping as wilderness therapy moved the campers and their allies the counselors into communion with the Goddess Natura. Arriving solo, for unit-based camping, each camper assumed the role of Vladimir Propp’s mission-centered folktale heroine. The role of supernatural gift giver, like Baba Yaga, was the counselors’ to play. A traditional camp song, “Magalena Hagalena,” typifies the residual force – an archetype in the Jungian sense – that elevated and ennobled the social and emotional lives of adolescent girls. One reported her liberation from something resembling Asperger’s syndrome. v Memory and commemoration, in Paul Ricoeur’s terms, rituals within rituals that matched Victor Turner’s Isoma, pranks, and tales of pranks, encounters with heroines and surly villains in personal experience narratives and songs – all these ingredients fueled the campers’ responses to challenges in maturation, tasks of daily life in the wild, friendships, education, and families. The camp culture’s sense of space and place continues to empower these women, still in supportive touch with each other, and now approaching retirement after career leadership in diverse fields. vi Table of Contents Introduction: 10 Chapter One: A Parthenos in the Family: Why This Research Is Needed 18 Chapter Two: Magalena Hagalena: The World View of a Camp Song 71 Chapter Three: A Protected Journey: The Units of Camp Koch 138 Chapter Four: How to Build a Girl Scout: Camp Crafts and Power 224 Chapter Five: Girls Grow/Boys Mature: Two Camp Cultures 319 Chapter Six: World View, Conflict, and Blue Wells 370 Chapter Seven: Steering by Songs 427 Chapter Eight: Ritual and Spirit, Cosmos and Time 482 Coda: Sandy, Smeady, and Clay, a Transcript 588 Bibliography 693 Appendix 1: Round-up Reunion 603 Appendix 2: “Magalena Hagalena:” Variants and Analysis 607 Appendix 3: “Magalena Hagalena” and “Jabberwocky” 615 vii Appendix 4: Kit’s One-Match Fire Instructions, continued 615 Appendix 5: Troop Camping and Unit-Based Camping 625 Appendix 6: Categories of Campcrafts 633 Appendix 7: Chart of Gender Roles 638 Appendix 8: How to Motivate Campers 641 Appendix 9: The First Expedition to Fox Ridge, cont. 643 Appendix 10: Kahlil Gibran and Camp Koch’s Worldview 647 Appendix 11: The Kochie Survey Items 657 Appendix 12: 1961 Campers’ Value’s and Badger’s 662 Appendix 13: Creaky’s Story: Worldview and Career 664 Appendix 14: Song Leading Throughout Life, Part 1 669 Appendix 15: The Camp Director and the Missing Jello 668 Appendix 16: Song Leading Throughout Life, Part 2 670 Appendix 17: Camp Koch Flag Ceremonies 684 Appendix 18: Dining Hall Procedures and Ceremonies 684 viii Appendix 19 Camp Koch’s Treasures, Bodily, Social, Spiritual, Mystic 679 Appendix 20 Mystic Texts and Commentary 683 Bibliography 692 ix Chapter One: A Parthenos in the Family: Why This Research Is Needed Introduction “A life in the open, the restful atmosphere of the woods, the glory of the sky … the naturalness of living, always brings revitalization of mind and body. … it is … the longing of every human heart. Children, and those who refuse to grow old, respond joyously to this appeal of nature.” Ernest Balch, 1926. A Handbook of Summer Camps: 18. This research presents a particular culture, an exemplary camp culture, during the time period 1958 – 1970. A group of six adolescent girls met at Camp Henry F. Koch, pronounced “cook,” near Cannelton, Indiana – only two had been friends before – and, together and individually, over the course of seven or eight years, became extraordinary. Some decades later a related friendship group joined them, also based on Camp Koch alumnae ties; the two groups’ members have been supportively in touch for most of their lives. How did this happen? Myth in the form of world view shaped the process; individual art in material culture, narrative, and song expressed it and multiplied the effect. Ritual, festival, and nature mysticism were its highest uses and, simultaneously, its reward. Researchers have approached the subject matter of this study, but not directly. Two relatively recent dissertations, both at the University of Pennsylvania, have centered on a) the history of the Girl Scout established camp and b) the Girl Scout ritual 1 called Scouts’ Own, often performed at established camp, but also on other occasions (Miller 2001 and Groth 1999). In addition there is Elizabeth Tucker’s research into Girl Scout storytelling, but not at established camp, in her 1977 dissertation at Indiana University. More recently Jay Mechling has written a detailed, insightful book about a Boy Scout summer encampment – not a unit-based camp, but troop camping – in 2001. I consulted the work of insider-ethnographers such as Michael Mason and Jose Limon, because I am to a considerable extent, as they were with their ground-breaking books, an insider-ethnographer. I would have had no inkling of the richness of Camp Henry F. Koch’s culture, had I not attended the camp myself, and at approximately the same time as this study’s major informants. I was a member of Troop 141, after most of the area’s Senior Girl Scout Planning Board went over to that troop; all but two of the ten primary camper- informants belonged to that troop as well. I knew some of them during the time period of this study, but I did not know much about their activities and friends. They all earned honors and recognition as Girl Scouts, but if I had not been a fellow troop member I would not have known whom to approach as a potential informant. This research is primarily descriptive. There is no theory to test, only a hidden, almost completely unexplored world within American summer camp culture to discover, a world nearly untouched in folkloristic research. If there is a single theme, it 2 is this: The culture portrayed here is important and worthy of respect. Its basic tenets can help girls and women, in various ways, as proven throughout the many years of the culture’s existence. Like many traditional arts and cultural systems, however, the camp culture presented here is fading in popularity and in the role it plays in children’s lives. The methods I used, primarily co-presence at storytelling and other events, reverse mentoring – I was the mentored person -- and survey, were possible only because certain informants were fellow Girl Scout troop members then, and graciously agreed to help me. My sisters also attended the camp and belonged to the same Girl Scout troop. In 1963 a sister and I sang, with other troop members, for the locally- produced camp song album Songs We Sing. I have, with the informants’ permission, already used portions of their comments and narratives for conference presentations. Two primary areas are important for me, as an insider-ethnographer, to keep in mind. I may need to provide more context and explanation, because some things that I understand, because to some extent I was there during the years in question, true outsiders may not understand. I must also beware of taking my informants’ statements so literally that I neglect to follow up certain lines of inquiry. Jose Limon chose his informants because they would reward intense scrutiny and also provide access to overarching cultural patterns (Limon 1994:13). 3 As Redfield notes (Redfield 1956: 23), the time is long past when I could look at a Girl Scout camp and achieve the kind of objectivity that makes complicated phenomena simple. Instead I have delved into what seemed to me to be simple activities, only to discover that there was no “man behind the curtain” as there certainly had been in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Instead there was a seemingly endless series of curtains, each opening only to reveal the curtain behind it. I have followed conceptual leads to describe the camp’s and the informants’ world view and some spiritual aspects hinted at or actually present – sometimes behind a curtain of their own -- in a number of experiences and activities at the camp 1958-1970.