Sisterhood Retreat

Jennifer A

April 27, 2012 - 11:00 PM

Last weekend I went for the night with my sorority to a Girl Scouts camp called Camp Cleowox on the Florence coast. We went to clean up the trails as community service to help out. I got more than I bargained for!

Within one hour of arriving on a bus with eighty girls we were out on the trails clearing the brush away. It was a beautiful day on the coast and we were all very excited to be outdoors. Over the winter months the trails had been covered with many branches and fallen down trees from the snowfall. It was our jobs to get it all out of the way. There was this one underbrush part where multiple trees had fallen down creating full blockage of the trail. I started climbing on them pushing things out of the way left and right and I fell out of the pile onto the ground. It was not even five feet and we all started laughing. As I start climbing again I noticed my shoe had something in it. I looked down and realized it was filling with blood! A branch on my way down had somehow impaled my leg.

As I limped back to the camp house I began to see the wound more clearly. It was only about an inch long but it was rather deep. My sisters met up with me and cleaned it out as best they could. We had been dropped off by buses and none of us had cars to drive me to the hospital so a park ranger found us and dropped us off at the ER. Four hours later (and many interesting encounters with the local staff) I gimped away with six stitches.

I went back to the camp and roasted marshmallows, told ghost stories and slept outside with my sisters. Even though I got hurt it was a great weekend. Who knew community service could be so deadly though!