Heaven and the Hornets

Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

I have always liked teenagers—a condition which my mother insisted could only be explained by some sort of serious genetic abnormality. (In her defense, my brothers would have convinced anyone that adolescence was a developmental life-cycle to be avoided!) On the other hand, I don’t like camping. Put teenagers and camping together and you have a paradox which has led me to spend more than 20 years going to church girls’ camps. Now before all of you outdoor-lovers get up in arms, consider my argument: I’m seriously claustrophobic—tents exacerbate that. Other people have nightmares about attacks from malicious, rampaging clowns. I dread a bunch of kids pulling the poles of a tent while I’m asleep inside—a prank virtually every teenager I’ve ever met fantasizes about. Plus, I’m not fond of being covered in dirt or mud or unidentifiable muck—all substances endemic to the outdoors.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the beauty of lakes, forests, wildflowers, icy mountain streams, and stunning views from rocky peaks or red rock canyons. I do. And having traveled through every state in the U. S. but one (North Carolina), I have learned to love national parks. (Now that I’m old, I am the proud owner of a lifetime pass to America’s most memorable landscapes.) I just don’t like to sleep on the ground when I’m visiting them. So naturally, every time the Bishop of whatever ward I was living in surveyed the Sunday audience looking for likely camp directors, I was inevitably the most prominent suspect–partly the result of teaching a couple of thousand (or more) high school girls over my career and always having one or two of them within my ward boundaries.

Since teenagers have a tendency to leap before they look, camping with large groups of them (including the ones when I was one of the “girls”) required at least one medical professional as part of the leadership team. Daughter #2 and Son #5, both nurses, have volunteered for lots of camps over the years. They tell me that there is ALWAYS some emergency or other that requires their assistance. Now and then, I have discovered, even Heaven steps in to help.

Sometime in my fortieth decade, once again I was the camp director. In those–my younger days—I was having the early twinges of breathing problems which have plagued me for years. Mountain elevations made the issue more intense. I recall being anxious about how my lungs would manage our planned five-mile hike, but it seemed cowardly to assign the task to someone else.

The day of the hike dawned clear and sunny. After breakfast we assembled the ‘troops’ (as my dad called every gathering where he was in charge). I ducked into my tent to grab my fanny pack—already loaded with whatever first aid equipment (bandages, antiseptic, etc.) I could image we might need. I was almost back to our meeting place when the thought occurred to me that I ought to take some Benadryl just in case my allergies objected to something in the air that morning and made my breathing problem even worse. I retraced my steps, flinging aside clothing in my suitcase till I found my Benadryl bottle and grabbing it before heading out.

Twenty-five or thirty girls had opted to come hiking, some filling the hiking requirements for camp awards. It was a lovely trail, a walk really, alongside a mountain stream still swollen by snowfall runoff. I assigned myself to keep track of the stragglers, so I was close to the rear of the pack. We had made our way uphill for about a mile and a half when the first groups of girls encountered a small pool of deeper water. Several slipped out of their shoes–in delight declaring a ‘rest stop’ at the unexpected and idyllic scene before them,–and they splashed into the icy stream. The other three adults and I sat down along-side the path, watching as they played.

It was then that the screaming began. One of the girls inadvertently bumped up against a clump of brushes on the other side of the stream and disturbed a hornet’s nest. Hundreds of furious buzzing insects came barreling out, stinging everything they touched. Girls scattered in panic, some falling, cutting their feet on the sharp rocks as they fled. We leaders raced into the water, swatting at the hornets, helping girls escape the raging, stringing creatures. But two girls were frozen in place—covered with dozens of hornets and sobbing in terror.

Frantically, we pulled the two to safety, brushing away angry hornets without thought of the swarm of insects all around us. By the time we got the girls out of the water, they were already covered in red, swollen welts, and their panic had escalated to the point that we knew they’d never make it down the slope to camp by themselves. Ripping open my fanny pack, I spotted that last-minute bottle of Benadryl. Someone must have been looking out for us, crossed my mind as I doled out the two girls a maximum recommended dose and smaller doses to the several other girls who had been stung. Our more experienced hikers took charge of the cuts and bruises, applying antiseptic and bandages wherever needed.

There were no cell phones in those days and that high up the mountain, even had we had cell phones, there would have been no coverage anyway. We discussed the possibility of sending a couple of leaders racing down the mountainside to camp and help, but it was clear from their swelling welts, our two worst cases would be in jeopardy before a team could get back up to us. We had to figure a way to get them off the mountain and to our onsite nurse as fast as possible.

Out of nowhere, in my head I saw a demonstration from my early Girl Scout days—I was only 8 or 10– where we learned to make a chair with two people using our four wrists—a lesson I never imagined I would someday have to use. Demonstrating for the other three leaders how to do it, each set of us lifted a stricken girl onto our makeshift “chairs.” We back headed down the mountain, moving as fast as the rough trail would allow. The less-injured girls followed behind, partnering up and helping one another to keep pace.

In my whole life–because of pneumonia-weakened lungs as a child—I had never been able to run with other kids, much less bear the weight of another human being for any distance further than across the room. But that day, with another leader, I hiked 1 ½ miles downhill carrying an 80 lb. girl to safety. We walked into camp yelling for the nurse as we came. He came on the run, assessing the girls and taking over their care—almost immediately heading with them down to the nearest community and a hospital emergency room. Watching them drive away, I noticed with shock that I wasn’t even breathing hard.

Thirty years later, I’m still not fond of camping. Now even the slightest incline can make me gasp for air, but my love for teenagers has never faltered. And it’s pretty clear to me that Heaven loves them, too.