Le Raggazze di Birch Creek

In the 40 year history of Bennion Teton Boys Ranch, and the subsequent three of Birch Creek it has been soley and institution for the betterment of strapping young lads. This year, I took on organizing and directing the first ever girl's session! Same program, same hard work, same living in yurts and showering outside, just different gender. This has been a life long dream of mine (in fact when we first got the girls in the van and where driving them down I leaned over to Kelly and whispered "Kelly, I'm driving a van, and it's filled with girls! And we're taking them to the ranch!") and I couldn't have done it without the incredible program already established by Adam Bateman and Eric Peterson.

The girl were incredible. They were strong, worked hard (I never had to tell them to keep working), brave, hilarious, talented, and inspiring. They started with a backpack the first day up Horseshoe mountain, and they all summited (and all spent the night outside not in a tent for the first time in their lives)!

At the top of Horseshoe and still smiling

The girls worked HARD, they bucked bales, moved pipe, dug out bigs rocks and made fences out of them, hauled wood to the dump, dug out horse manure and mulched a garden with it. . .they done me proud.

Dirty toes were just the tip of the ice burg, gone were the days of needing a shower every day!

In addition to all the work there was lots of fun had including campfire songs (hello, it is camp!), a day at the lake, african dance, documentary watc hing (hitting the apartaid issues with the teens), pinata hitting, horseback riding, tie-dye . . . you get the picture. Pretty much the best camp ever.

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Jeanne and Lauren making tamales, my cuz Heidi and I, Hannah leaps at the yak, the cool crew.