Five years ago, on the last night of first session, a group of counselors gathered their campers and led them on a late-night hike into the woods. “Where are we going?” they asked. “You’ll see,” said their counselors.
Minutes later, the dirt path changed to a freshly groomed trail covered by pebbles and the trees began to twinkle with light. In the distance, they heard water flowing from a small stream.
The forest opened and welcomed them into a place that seemed to have sprouted overnight. Drawn down an aisle past stone benches, the campers sat on a wooden platform and looked up into the night. They heard a familiar guitar chord and instinctively began to sing:
“Stars in the sky…To bring the summer right back to me…Tell me you’ll try…To think about me whenever you see those…Stars in the sky.”
It will be hard to look at the stars and not think of Katherine Bauer, who died on February 7th in Dallas. Katherine was an incredibly spiritual person who believed in the magic of Greene Family Camp and whose generosity made the Bauer Tevatron – our chapel in the woods – a reality. She hoped it would be a place where children could find God in nature, just as her grandchildren, Andrea and Alex Kramer, did when they were campers years ago.
Our love goes out to Katherine’s daughter, Susan Kramer, son-in-law, Allyn, and the entire Kramer family.
Zichronah Livacha. May her memory be a blessing.