Chauncey Ranch – YMCA Horse Camp Ages 9-16

its the best camp i‘ve ever been to. the only down siide is the sun and the cabins have leather beds and the last thing you want to do is peel your self of a bed at 6:30am.

This was the horseback riding camp I went to for a few summers as a kid. I see from their website that they are still very reasonably priced (my parents were far from rich) — although reading their description my memories are of a smaller, more intimate camp. Maybe it is just the condensation of memory or maybe the camp is just bigger now — but this is what a wrote right before I looked up the camp online. (It’s still there!)
The camp was co-​ed with a cabin for girls and one for boys. The girl’s cabin was near some cottonwood stands and a dry creek bed and I think the boys cabin was up near the main ranch house. There was a large meadow between these buildings where the horses and maybe some cattle would graze. We would all eat in the main ranch house together and then play games like ditch ‘em on the lawn in front.
Other than the meadow and the lawn the environs were all natural desert. We would go on long supervised rides (western) through the desert and learn horsemanship. Strangely, and perhaps because I later had a horse of my own I don’t really remember the rides as much as the experiences in and around the cabins and the games both fun and political.
The first time I went to the camp I went with my best friend S. We stayed in a room together and resolved one night that this would be the first night we would ever stay up all night long (which is one of those great milestones that all children desire to achieve). About 2am something we thought was a giant moth started swooping around our heads and scared us, especially when we discovered it was a bat. There was a whole community of bats in the rafters of the bunkhouse — in the eaves of the atrium — and one had found its way into our quarters. I still feel guilty about what happened next. One of the camp counselors, hearing our shrieks came into the room with a vacuum cleaner and sucked up the bat and then, freaked-​out herself, put the vacuum bag in the freezer to kill the poor wayward bat. The dead bat ended up on the fireplace mantle with several other mummified bats people had found on the grounds. But we were kids, alas.
The next year I went alone. That year I actually killed a rattlesnake near the camp. I thought it was going to bite me and I hit it with a rock. I feel sorry for this too, but also kind of amazed that I had that opportunity at a camp. The counselors actually showed us how to skin the snake and cooked it so that everyone could have a little taste.
I am sure that if parents read this they will wig-​out and fear for their children, but I think this is the wrong approach. I feel sorry for kids today because they are protected from everything (well…at least most kids of a class that can get sent to camp in the summer, but as I said too, my parents weren’t rich and this camp is very reasonably priced even today). When I think back on my childhood I remember so many near-​death moments — skateboarding accidents, being trampled by my horse, almost drowning going down the river, being knocked off my horse by a low hanging branch, having a concrete peeing-​boy statue fall on my head, seeing a dead body caught in the debris when the river flooded, killing black widows in the tack room — but I also had a very sublime and wondrous childhood because it was mixed with that kind of danger and overcoming.
From this camp I also won the «golden horseshoe» my second year for being the best rider, as well as winning the ‘egg in the spoon’ competition. I had my first-​ever slow dance with a cute Mexican-​American boy with a Shaun Cassidy haircut named Abran Abril (I still remember his name! And that I saw him riding the escalator 2 years later at the «Metrocenter Mall»!) And I think I remember that he was really good with the nunchucks! He could knock a spoon out of your mouth! (More safe stuff at camp!)
I had a great scary wonderful scandalous time at this camp. So swallow your fears and send your kids to camp and trust them to get in just enough trouble and danger to want to write a review of the experience 30 years later.