Rhett LaForte served as organizer again this year for KCWC’s annual men’s retreat to Forked Lake in the Adirondacks. Rhett, his son Ryan, CJ Swain and Pastor Kelvin caravanned up through Barneveld to Old Forge where we stopped to buy local campfire wood. Then we continued past Blue Mountain Lake to Long Lake where we turned left to find the state campground on Forked Lake.
We unloaded the truck and car into Rhett’s fishing boat and pastor’s rented aluminum Grumman canoe. This is a primitive campground where everyone has to bring what they need in by boat including drinking water. It was a great canoe trip for me with the wind at my back. Setting up camp was a little bit of a challenge because there were no spots level enough and without roots or rocks. Finally we picked the least problematic and set up our tents. Ben Mackey, Anthony, and Thomas Kipping joined us later that evening and set up camp on the adjoining site. On Friday afternoon Stu Wilkinson brought six from his Boy Scout troop (Caleb, Damien, Jason, Eric, Mike, and Alec) for an Adirondack outing. John Kipping came with them. They set up camp on a huge site to the left of us, but even though the site was large, they also had a tough time finding tent spots, except for Stu who uses a hammock for sleeping—there were plenty of trees.
Now when you go on a retreat, people all come for slightly different reasons. Rhett is the early morning fisherman. I relax, read, and canoe. The boys all loved the swimming this year. One day they played King on the Mountain on a large barely submerged rock for hours. But on a men’s retreat, none of the guys plan on going hungry. Besides our regular meals and an occasional second breakfast, we ate late night snacks. At our campsite, on night one, we made popcorn over the campfire. Late the second night we had fresh bass cooked in olive oil on tinfoil over the fire for appetizer and s’ mores for dessert. The last night we ate peanuts and more s’ mores. The weather was perfect.
There were many highlights for me. I really enjoyed camping with Rhett, CJ and Ryan. Listening to the boys take their turns saying grace, watching them be responsible in the tasks of the campsite, seeing them thinking ahead on what needed to be done next, all this was very gratifying. One of the main things I enjoy at retreat is canoeing and this year it was special to take Ryan and CJ each out and teach them about canoeing. In addition, I caught a 12 inch largemouth with my fly rod last evening. I also immensely enjoyed the informal worship time we had this morning. In the Adirondacks on a sunny morning after a starry night, reading the first few verses of Psalm 19 takes on added meaning. We sang “This is the Day” to celebrate God’s goodness and then we talked about wisdom and learning from mentors and Proverbs 3:5, 6. Afterwards we loaded up and I canoed back. The wind had changed, it was at my back again—just another sign of a truly blessed camping time.
They say pictures are worth 1000 words so I took some to share with my readers too.
