I never knew how much I missed camp until I went back to it as a grown-up.
The hikes. The group meals. The swimming. The cold mornings and lingering sunsets. The stargazing. The smell of pine needles and Pine Sol.
And yes, even the silly songs and skits.
I found out about Women’s Fitness Camp at YMCA of the Rockies’ Camp Chief Ouray in an unlikely place: One of the farmers at my market had a brochure. From the looks of it, this wasn’t a slick operation. There were no $250 mud wraps or hot-stone aura-fluffings on offer.
But there were classes in yoga, water aerobics, tai chi, line dancing, belly dancing, more yoga, archery, mountain biking, horseback rides, massages, evening lectures on astronomy. Best of all, the price was less than $600 for a package that included a private room, five nights and four days of programming and all meals. There were only a few extra (and nominal) fees for some side trips. Shared rooms were even less expensive.
So I signed up, without a clue of what to expect — buffed and body-snubbing trail warriors? Boot-camp drill-sergeant instructors?
I shouldn’t have worried. This was camp, not an episode of “Biggest Losers.”
“This is your camp,” director Maureen Pryor told us. “Do what you want, and don’t do what you don’t want.”
She told us that she had attended the very first Women’s Fitness Camp more than 30 years ago as a young teacher with two small children.
“I went to one class and read four novels, because that’s exactly what I wanted to do,” she said.
The following year, she became director and talked her friend Ellie Moller, a newly minted yoga instructor, into coming — and neither has missed a year since.
“Women come from all over the country, from Europe, Ireland. People bring their cousins, sisters, aunts, daughters, mothers,” Moller, now 85, said last week.
The women range from age 18 and up and take all shapes and fitness levels. They’re often friends who have helped one another through knee replacements, cancer, the loss of children and husbands — or they become friends at camp.
The camaraderie keeps women like Lynn Ensslin, 66, returning. She’s attended regularly since 1997.
“I don’t think I spend a week all year when I laugh as hard — or when I spend five to six hours a day working out. It’s structured so that you can do anything you want,” Ensslin said.
Campers can also take advantage of nearby Sulphur Hot Springs, trails in Rocky Mountain National Park trails, Grand Lake for kayak outings and all the facilities of Camp Chief Ouray. For example, I grabbed the opportunity to go nose-to-nose with a litter of husky puppies at a dogsledding talk; other campers took advantage of the crafts center.
“What keeps people coming back, I think, is the chance to be with women of different ages,” Moller said. “There’s not much going on in our society with people in different age groups.
” ‘We never have this opportunity,’ people always tell me. And then when they leave, they say, ‘Now I’m not afraid to grow old.’ ”
Adding to the age mix are the camp counselors — college-age young adults who have spent the summer’s previous weeks supervising kids’ camps.
For me, being outhiked, out-downward-dogged and out-swum by women my mother’s age was awe-inspiring.
Moller recounted a year when a woman in line for coffee confessed that she was in an abusive relationship. Moller connected her with another camper who had survived a similar situation.
In the summer of 2013, I was a solo camper with a private room, feeding my need for new friendships at meals, but mostly savoring some introvert time in the evenings. When it came to the final night’s skits and singalongs, my natural reserve — or my abject fear of being silly in public — was the big hill I wasn’t willing to climb.
First, the camp counselors, natural comedians all, warmed up the room. Then a camper who was a published poet wowed us with something she’d written that day. A trio of women bared their initial, unfounded fears about the camp, that “there’d be nobody here who’s round or brown.”
But it was the octogenarians with artificial parts — knees, hips, breasts — whose skit brought down the house. One ripped off her snap-front hiking shirt to reveal a tin-foil bustier. We fell off of our chairs, weeping with laughter.
The next morning, we shook off the night’s partying with a sunrise hike to a ridge above a lake.
And vowed to return.
Susan Clotfelter: 303-954-1078, sclotfelter@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/susandigsin
Women’s fitness camp
Aug. 21-26 at the YMCA of the Rockies’ Camp Chief Ouray. Starting at $465. 970-887-2648; e-mail chiefouray@ymcarockies.org;
