Volume 65 Article 22 1-1-1978 Summer Camp '77 Ames Forestry Club Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/amesforester Part of the Forest Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Ames Forestry Club (1978) "Summer Camp '77," Ames Forester: Vol. 65 , Article 22. Available at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/amesforester/vol65/iss1/22 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ames Forester by an authorized editor of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. viewing the high lead logging operation on Potlatcll land, The entrance to Lubrecht Forest. Idaho. SUMMER During the summer camp of 1977 in Greenough, Montana, we students did not limit our education to the four subjects being taught by the instructors. Besides being well versed in forest ecology, wood ecology, {'Stop! I've gotta get a picture." wood utilization, forest resource measurements, and multiple use operations, we also became familiar with the use of axes, knives, potato The Bertha Hill tower near Head- peelers, closets, and Dodge van quarters, Idaho. windows. Gary Stephan and Dave Johnson were considerate enough to take time from their studies in order to demonstrate to the rest of us the extended use of the hatchet and 3/4 axe. The purpose of Gary's demonstration was to show that a sharp hatchet works as well on calculators as it does on wood. Dave, Dr. Countryman teaching the art of fly however, seemed to value his casting. calculator more than his foot and proved that a foot could be cut even through the formidable protection of a tennis shoe. It cost him several stitches and two weeks on crutches, but the rest of us thought it was well worth the lesson learned. Knife safety was demonstrated to us by Mark Woolley during Dr. Thomson's visit to camp. Dr. Thomson was generous enough tO provide several large watermelons in Forestry TROUP 204. Helicopter logging in Idaho. order that we might have an after 56 THE 1978 own death trap. She discovered that Potatoes were a favorite vegetable by thrusting large pieces of firewood for` the evening meal,,and needless to at the closet, behind which the say, this required the peeling of chipmunk was hiding, she could hundreds of pounds of them; a job smash the poor thing into the wall. which was delegated students on KP. Needless to say, she was quite suc- This job was not a favorite of Gary cessful. Bosch's (who often got stuck with it Others of us were not so creative anyway), and in an imaginative effort and resorted to such things as kid- to relieve himself of the duty, he napping Koral Santman and sending sliced off the tip of his left index ransom notes for her return via flying finger. The injury, however, was not pine cones, or playing combat in the so serious that Gary couldn't serve woods at night using weapons which out the rest of his KP week mopping Ransom note: To whom it may concern: highly resembled the modern day fire floors and wiping tables. We have Koral. We demand one Woolley extinguisher. On the fourth saturday evening pillow in retum. Drop it off at the big These attempts at tkeeping our meal the score was: Diners-4 and PiPo by the Royal Gem CLEAN! i humor' must have been fairly suc- Servers-6, during an all-camp post- the R.G's cessful since no reports were made of meal foil fight (from the baked permanent insanity due to tbooking potatoes); another attempt at keeping it' too hard. our humor. The servers didn't Weekends became quite a treat for normally have trouble like this, and us while we were at camp and it this particular uprising was attributed would have been a next to impossible to the mounting tensions of four CAMP f77 task to keep tabs on all forty-nine of weeks of homework and not the u§. Saturdays and Sundays were food. dinner feast. Mark volunteered to perfect for short camping trips, While working on KP we students slice the watermelons and in his over- during which some of us even became quite proficient at the sport zealous efforts to become better discovered the art (pleasure) of of towel whipping, not as a means to acquainted with Dr. Thomson, he not skinny dipping in 40o stream pools aggravate, but in our own defense only did an admirable job on the without causing any serious damage against the cook, Laura Schilling. watermelons, but he also managed to to ourselves . like our health. Laura was an expert towel snapper lacerate his thumb quite severely and Warmer blooded people preferred the who had a range of one half the had to be rushed to the hospital in sdiar heated Blackfoot River, upon length of a cafeteria, and often used Missoula. which they rode down in inner-tubes. her skills to keep the KP students in Though the word 'camp' may, for Of course, the cooler of beer had an line and on their toes. some, have the connotation of a inner tube all its own, and while the The cafeteria also doubled as a summer vacation, those who have journey started out being one big classroom/study hall which was attended know that at times it is quite water party, it ended up being one big utilized mainly for Dr. David the opposite. In our efforts to survive body-fry, as the temperature reached Countryman's forest measurement the seemingly endless stacks of well over 80o that day. class. The tables served well for reports to be written, columns of The Holding Company, a spreading out our map projects (the figures to be calculated, and diagrams discotheque in Missoula, was a to be drawn, we discovered that we popular place to meet on weekend had to lkeep our humor.I We use this nights on the town. In fact, it wasnJt phrase rather loosely, as it was in- long before we were no longer terpreted by many people in many ¢carded' at the door since everyone different ways. knew who we were. Popular music, One of the men's cabins thought however, wasn't our only choice to the word lhumor' meant stuffing a dance to. On one occasion many of us twenty-five foot Douglas fir through met, quite by chance, at the Flamingo the open window of their neighbor's Room of the Park Hotel in Missoula cabin. Upon return to their cabin, the to listen and dance to the hand neighbors quickly concluded that the clappin', foot stompin' music played tree was definitely not a misplaced by the Salt Creek bluegrass band. identification sample and wasted little Homework and weekend activities time in establishing a rivalry between were not the only things that kept us the two cabins. busy during our six week session. Connie Reints, on the other hand, Each of us was assigned one week of interpreted the phrase a little dif- KP duty which entailed assisting the ferently, as she changed a chipmunk's cook in food preparation, serving the idea of a warm cozy cabin into his food, and cleaning up after the meal. I 'Boy, I'm hungry.II AMES FORESTER 57 map m"s/ have measured five feet by effects on a forest from "a four set of purposes and goals, giving us insight to the many aspects of forest six feet!) on which we spent many legged bovine which gives forth LONG hours, sometimes completing lactile, good for young and old management. our work just before breakfast. The alike.,, on one of these trips, Rich actual drawing of the map, however, ole often lent his own brand of straight, during one of his sessions of was only half the entire project. An levity by performing his imitation of story telling for which he is famous, entire week was spent in the field Floppy, a children's afternoon repaid a gas station attendant's collecting data in crews of 5 students cartoon TV star. This not only gained courteousness by shutting the at- each. These crews ran a boundary our attention, but also our ad- tendant's fingers in a Dodge van traverse around a 30 acre plot, taking miration for ole since no one could window. This happened as Rich elevation measurements, and do the imitation quite like he could. pulled the pop-out window shut in eventually laying out several sampling we all felt fortunate to have Dr. order for the attendant to wash it. Rich, engrossed in his story, Was plots. Most of us used hand compass Dwight W. Bensend as our wood and pace to locate these sample plots, utilization instructor since it was his unaware that the attendant's fingers but Kin Coder decided against this last summer camp before retirement. were in the way. method, and by calculating the we were especially impressed by his On the last Sunday night of camp circumference of his waist, located vast knowledge of wood processing the instructors provided refreshments his crew's plots using the "hand for which he is well known. He often around a campfire where Ole compass and roll" method. He corrected and supplemented the Helgerson, accompanied by a few usually started by tripping over a information given to us by the tour other students, provided banjo and guitar sing-a-long music, and the strategically placed log. guides during our trips through ttRoyal Gems" provided en- These same cr-ews of five often nearby mills.