What is the Camp Glen Labyrinth Keepers Society

9 years ago, when alumnae met at “our Camp Glen” to celebrate its 50^th anniversary, we constructed a labyrinth in the woods behind the Council File and set in it many stones memorializing loved ones. I hope there will be one there for me someday, as a consider it’s location a unique and timeless place of peace and serenity, resonant of ancient native peoples celebrated by the American Indian lore of Camp Fire. This year, when some of us came to clean up the labryrinth, which badly needed it, I realized that at my age, I may not be able to physically make it back to the labyrinth’s location in 20 years. And it is such a privilege to go there now, clean and maintain it, and remember the wonderful friendships memorialized there that I want to share the experience with others so this tradition may continue into the future. Thus the Camp Glen Labyrinth Keepers Society was born.

What does it mean to be a member of the society? It could mean donating funds for scholarships for campers. Or it could mean remembering camp friends or supporters with carved stones to add to the labyrinth. Publishing the lyrics to beloved camp songs on Facebook like Emily Blide (name) does. Painting the Council Fiire birds like Jill Chatelain (Kinn) and her husband Clete have been doing. Or what Laurie McGregor (Connor) and I, Roberta (Birdie) Stober, and others did this year: drive to Camp Glen on a beautiful fall day with work gloves, rakes, and gas-powered leaf blowers to clean up the site. When Laurie and I were high school CITs (Counselors in Training) we lashed sticks together near our tents to make tables and were so surprised when they weren’t there the following summer. It was amazing we could still find the labyrinth after 9 years of winters, springs, summers, and fall without maintenance. Thank goodness it was still there, waiting for our tender, loving care. But if we’d waited a few years more, we might not even have been able to find it! More about that in a minute…

Camp is both a place and a mindset. I recognized that when my friend and fellow camper Suellen Brandman (Haggerty) gave me Michael Eisner’s book, Camp, as a gift. Read it and you’ll know what I mean. Speaking of books, my 50-year old Book of the Camp Fire Girls means more to me every year I live, revealing things I overlooked when I was younger.

Mrs. O.D. Donnell (Glenna) of Findlay, Ohio contributed the site on which Camp Glen is located to the NO-WE-OH Council of Camp Fire Girls and it celebrated its first camping season in 1959 with buildings like the health and meadow cabins, the NO-WE-OH Lodge and the Director’s Cabin. The swimming pool and “Tent City” were added in 1960, the footbridge and Caretaker’s House in 1961, the Equipment Building and 5th Grade Cabins in 1962 and the Council Fire in 1963. Laurie McGregor (now Connor) and I were Bluebirds spending our first week away from our families in Cabin 1 that year. Then and during my 10 years as a camper, the Council Fire was a sacred place used only on Friday nights before leaving camp Saturday morning – you didn’t go there any other time.

In 2009, alumnae built the labyrinth directly behind the firebird, walk behind it until you reach a rise surrounded by ravine. How many 8 year olds know what a ravine is? Camp Glenners do.

The day the Labyrinth Keepers Society was born? Not really sure. Could have been at that 50^th anniversary reunion in 2009. Maybe at a Camp Glen work day when the Conine sisters wore their original vests and read the Wood Gatherer’s Desire. Or when former campers showed me their American Indian names sewed onto their blue vests and remembered what they meant. It was eerie how well they described the middle-aged women I saw in front of me and I’m sad I don’t remember mine.

But I think the day the Society was finally born was September 30, 2017.