A Living Disaster
Wednesday, July 8th, 2026
PUPPET GROVE circa 11:15pm—In the quiet of night, the vehicles on highway 101 hum like a pulsating white noise machine, or, if you squint your ears, it even almost sounds like the ocean. Counselors commiserate in the kitchen area, enjoying some time off while Nightwatch monitors the Tipi Circle. Administrative Manager Mayahuel Montoya pulls up in the camp golf cart stacked with boxes of junk food. We unload the bounty into my blog lair for safe keeping. As she pulls away, a young skunk skitters through the carpet of dry bay leaves that surround my desk. A quick hiss sends it skittering along into the night.
Tonight’s evening program was the infamous Adventure Night, where all of Camp is plunged into a competition of carnival games, every tipi for themselves. With such valuable prizes such as chips, soda and candy on the line, emotions were high, and the accusations of cheating began hours before the start of the game.
We started in the Tipi Circle, seated on the logs and benches that surround the central firepit. I gave an explanation of the rules and blew a conch to signal the beginning of the game. The next hour was an unrelenting torrent of youthful mayhem, children running in all directions, desperately trying to earn our custom-printed “Winnarain-Bucks” by participating in goofy carnival-style activities. Paper planes, roshambo, spider web, obstacle course, crate ball, rock stacking and limbo are just a few examples.
Camper Advocate Silver Morningstar was offering Winnarain-Bucks for finding lost water bottles, that is until he got carried away and just started throwing fistfuls of the little green bills into the air. It resembled something you might see on the news from Black Friday the way the campers clambered for the fluttering money.
As usual, we had a counselor dressed up as the Grim Reaper, slowly marauding through the crowd and tagging unexpecting campers, who were then compelled to lie down on the theater benches until rescued by a fellow camper.
I took a moment mid-game to gather reactions from the players themselves.
“There’s a lot of cheaters out there!” said Kip, 12. “Don’t be one of them!”
“It reminds me of a living disaster,” said Maple, 9.
“I think it’s pretty tough but pretty scary,” said Delphine. “If the Reaper comes, you gotta bark at it.”
“Adventure Night is really cool,” said Nick, 13. “You get to get money and gamble how many squares you can get.”
The money is used in the game to buy rolls of giant dice to move giant gamepieces on a flour-line track that wraps around the Tipi Circle.
“I like getting to run around and avoid the Grim Reaper,” said Tyson, 13. “My favorite site so far is limbo.”
“When money is tight, go win at rock-paper-scissors,” advised Micah, 12.
Once it became too dark to safely run, we blew the conch bringing everyone back to the Rainbow Theater for debrief. Site leaders gave reports on how the competitors performed and, most notably, the Real Estate Office site announced that one team had used all their winnings to rename every area of Camp after their favorite counselor, Bodhi. Even Camp Winnarainbow itself was renamed “Bodhi Town”. These revelations gave way to a raucous chant of “Bodhi, Bodhi, Bodhi…” that haunted us through the rest of the evening.
It was Mattias Rowenbale, the Chancellor of Counting, who announced the final scores: 3rd place Rainbow, 2nd place Ultraviolet, and 1st place with more points than the two runners up combined, Turquoise.
After the stage portion, we returned to the Fire Circle, where a group of fire jugglers dazzled the audience with their pyrotechnic antics. The final spectacle of the evening was a beautiful lullaby rendition of Fleet Foxes’ White Winter Hymnal, sung by camper Ophelia and friends [names to come]. As usual, I collected some more quotations in the toothbrush scene.
“I gambled a lot,” confided Anonymous, 14. “My favorite moment was Milla eating fire. Never seen anything like it.”
“I liked the spider web; it was easier than last year,” said Nora, 12. “Was it more fun? I don’t know, but I got more money!”
“It was amazing,” said Erwin, 11. “It was one of the top-ten best nights of the year so far, along with my birthday and the last day of school.”
“They gave less money this year,” observed Matthew, 11. “I got money just for bringing water bottles from the lost & found. I even threw in my own water bottle for a few extra bucks. This year I didn’t make the mistake of going to ring toss; it’s a time trap. The Grim Reaper was faster this year—way faster.”
“My tipi was very successful because we won by like 500 points,” said Mae, 13, Turquoise Tipi. “Everyone said we cheated, but we just had a meeting before the game of what each of our roles would be.”
“Adventure Night was super fun; everyone was just mad because they didn’t win,” said Frankie, 14, also from Turquoise.
“It’s all about strategy,” said Boon, 14, also from Turquoise. “What was our strategy? I can’t share that. My advice to others is just have fun.”
Stay hydrated,
—J. Payseno, Editor