1961 through 1968, Wanake senior high Wilderness camps loaded an antique wooden wheeled covered wagon with the supplies the group decided they would need for their week of “Wilderness Camping”. Merle Savage, our caretaker, pulled the heavily loaded wagon with a tractor through the hay fields that are now Alva Knoll’s Pond carefully circling the 1000’s of baby trees planted in and hidden by the hay grasses where the woods camp shelter sits now, through another field where the Pioneer farm is now growing and out the back entrance to Rt. 62. The “wagon train” of tractor, wagon, counselors and senior high campers (usually two groups of 10 campers and 2 counselors) followed the gravel roads nearly a mile to Sugar Creek and then bumped through the ditch and into Mr. Killgore’s pasture. The now sweaty and often sneezing hikers followed the banks of Sugar Creek nearly a half mile to a grassy clearing among the large maple and sycamore trees where Merle unhooked the dusty, squeaky wagon. Everyone held hands up for a group prayer and then said good bye to Merle who promised to be at the gravel road near the bridge each day at 11AM in case there were supplies we had forgotten.
The creek was mostly ankle deep but there were deep holes where floods had tunneled under big trees along the 10 foot high banks and then fallen into the water. Sugar Creek was also the drinking fountain for the cows who lived in the pasture and in the summer the cows visited the creek often. Many cow pies decorated the sandbars down in the creek bed causing “watch your step!” warnings and “Oh yuck!” comments from campers who didn’t watch well enough.
July 1969 was the first time EUB Camp Wanake and Methodist Camp Zimmerman worked together and held senior high Wilderness Camp at Zimmerman on the Tuscarawas River near Gnadenhutten.
Friday evening, July 4th public Firework displays were cancelled or interrupted by terrible thunder storms all over northern Ohio. Before breakfast on Saturday morning July 5, worried parents started calling Wanake asking if roads were open to Beach City and was camp going to be closed early rather than the planned 1:00pm Fellowship Circle? Saturday as the sun was peaking over the strip mined Eastern horizon, SYA volunteers Gene Parkinson and Bob Wagnor from Mansfield,Ohio were at the Big White house urgently knocking on the door. ”Dave, we need to get the Wilderness campers from Zimmerman before the river takes out any bridges. The radio is full of high water warnings… Wooster, Ohio has had several drownings, bridges are wiped out many places! ”
The Zimmerman campers and counselors were surprised when three very muddy men hiked into their campsite interrupting a cold cereal breakfast. ”We really got wet last night!” ”Did you know our tent has a leak?” ”Yes we’re ready to leave early?” ”Why are you here so early?” “My sleeping bag is soaked!”
As we drove back to Wanake, the river bottom farm hay fields we had noticed just an hour before were all now angry, boiling muddy lakes. Back at Wanake, parents were arriving with stories of closed roads and detours and ”Can we pick up our campers early before the roads are all closed?” The phone rang continually with similar questions and trying to learn if we knew what roads were still open.
Route 93 at the camp driveway started to flood north of the camp. Everyone had to come in through Beach City. Then the road flooded south of the camp drive and Merle took wagon loads of campers and luggage through the water to meet parents at the water’s edge. By 1:30 pm flood water on the highway was so deep the fan of the tractor motor was throwing muddy water all over the tractor engine and driver. Merle announced that, “The Wanake Ferry was grounded until a dove brought him an olive leaf.”
While we were row boating campers from the neighbor’s barn across the flooded fields to waiting parents on Rte. 93, one family came paddling across the water in their own canoe to get their campers (Vargo family). We got a call that at day break the sugar creek was 10 feet deep in Killgores pasture the exact spot the Wilderness campers would have been sleeping if God had not done the miracle of getting two churches to merge and made possible Wanake and Zimmerman to share a place for Wilderness camp!
God does not slumber! God does not Sleep. God is working through your camp staff to make miracles in the lives of your campers every minute of every day.
By David Schar