The Wonders of Creation

After Easter, the Gospels and readings talk at great length about how the people of Jerusalem and their leaders could not recognize Jesus for who He was. Indeed, after He had first risen, His own disciples did not even recognize Jesus until He spoke to them and revealed His identity.

Just as the disciples discovered Christ in His resurrected form, our students at Camp Hamilton learned to see God in many different ways this week. They discovered God as reflected in the beauty of the Creation surrounding them at camp. They saw God's creativity in the multitude and varieties of the plants and animals that fill our forests, the intricacies of His plan in the complexities of the relationships between the plants and animals, and how He loves and cares for His creatures by providing for all of their needs within their habitat.

Finally, they saw Christ in each other through the friendships and community formed this week at camp. We all shared our care for one another by being supportive and positive group members, sharing our prayers, cleaning up after each other, and cleaning up camp as we went along. We celebrated mass as a faith community to complete our week of Environmental Education before returning home.

A Week for Science and Stewardship

Environmental Education is in full swing! We have a talented group of teacher-naturalists from across the country working hard to make every student's experience enjoyable and full of learning.

This week, we have almost 100 students from St. Joseph Chehalis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Holy Family- Lacey, and St. Therese school tromping the trails at Camp Hamilton. Students spent their first day getting to know each other while studying macro invertebrates in our pond. Our first evening was punctuated by the boisterous songs of our campfire echoing across the lake.

Today, they are testing their teamwork and resolve on our climbing wall, learning about WAMO! in our organic garden, and canoeing under the halo of a rainbow on Lake Hannon. At choice time today, we will poise the scientific question: "Does everything really taste better dipped in chocolate?" Stay tuned to find out....

Facebook and Blogging

We've been trying to keep as up to date as possible on our facebook page, but unfortunately we haven't done that on our blog. So here are the highlights from CYO:

-Adult and Family Camp registration opens May 1st. Check out our website for dates and locations.

-We are still looking for nurses/EMTs for this summer. Pay and a campership included.

-Environmental Education has been underway for a few weeks now. They've had great weather and a great experience so far.

-The Bradshaw High Ropes Course Dedication is only a month away. We would love to see you at the event on May 22nd. To RSVP please email debbie at debbief@seattlearch.org.

Date Change

When we originally posted about the 60th Aniversary Celebration with the wrong date. The Celebration will be Saturday June 26th.

EE Staff Training is 4 days away!

We are all super excited to welcome our newest group of Environmental Education staff to Camp Hamilton. They'll spend the next 11 weeks helping students to learn their role in the environment as well as how they are called to be stewards of the Earth.

CYO Summer Camp is now on Facebook!

We have slowly been taking steps toward being more inline with current technology and today we have finally created a facebook fan page. This page will give you up to date information about CYO Summer Camp. We will be posting information about our 60th Anniversary Celebration coming up on June 28th from 4pm-9pm at Camp Hamilton. RSVP by emailing us at cyo@seattlearch.org (please include any food allergies). Also we are asking people to submit stories and photos to our facebook page as a way of archiving the last 60 years of camping.

Click on the link to the left to see our fan page!

CYO Office

Sorry we haven't posted in a while. Aside from summer, spring is a really busy season for us. Environmental Education is only weeks away, registration and recruiting staff picks up, as well as our office event Junior High Rally. Rally on Saturday was really successful. We handed out CYO buttons and took photos at our photo booth. When the camera gets unpacked tomorrow I'll post some.