An Ode to the Lodge

My first memory of the lodge was the juice machines. When I was much younger, our family would make the 4-hour trip to camp almost every summer, and every visit to camp included a stop in the lodge. This old, decrepit, white building perched regally on the north shore of Lake Sakakawea has been a staple of Camp of the Cross Ministries for decades, and for young me, walking through the door and seeing those juice machines was something that could brighten me up. The grape juice was my favorite, and after abiding by our 2-glasses-of-water-before-juice rule, I would indulge myself in the sugary goodness.

The story is that this building was used as a barracks for Army Corps of Engineer workers during the creation of the Garrison Dam in the 1950s. During that time, an enormous earthen dam was built across the Missouri River, flooding all the river bottom land in the directions of north and west, all the way through populated areas of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation up towards Williston. Thus, Lake Sakakawea was created. At the completion of the project, there were buildings that could be re-purposed, and the barracks were no exception. Camp of the Cross received this building, but transporting it was going to be difficult. Fortunately, North Dakota’s frigid winters freeze the lake over to such a depth that the building was thrown on the back of a truck and driven across. They set it down on the north side of the lake, and here we are, years later.

Today when I visit the lodge, there is a forgotten quiet, sliced only by the hum of a few remaining freezers still being used. With the advent of our new fellowship center at camp, the lodge has passed on into history. Essentials have been removed; non-essentials have been left. Assorted items are scattered across the floor, and parts of the wall remained painted from this summer’s festivities. The 70+ boats representing all our supporting congregations have been taken down from the wall, and so too have the numbered prayers that all campers for decades have sung together. The juice machine is absent, having been disposed of years ago because it didn’t work.

The lodge as a building would go through cycles every year. During the summer and weekends during the rest of the year, it was bustling with noise and vibrancy; during times when nobody was there, it was simply another old building in the middle of nowhere. I fell in love with it during the quiet times. From playing piano early in the mornings and listening to rain fall off the roof in the veranda, to hiding from howling winter winds and searching for air conditioning, this building was always a refuge. In this building, a person can watch a prairie thunderstorm whip across the lake while hiding from the kids inside. In this building, a pastor can nap before Sunday morning worship. In this building, it felt like a person could breathe easier.

Well, now that we know what kinds of things are in the ceiling, I suppose ‘breathing easier’ is subjective, but that never stopped the lodge from shaking the walls with noise. In the summer, we would pack Summer Sunday worshippers in like sardines, and at times the guests would spill out onto the veranda. Hours later, dozens of crazy, noisy, energy-packed youth stormed in and made it impossible to hear your own thoughts. We would sing, dance, and eat like our lives depended on it. During times of rain, we would come in and play games, watch movies, and even one time perform our famous ‘Faithwalk’ play. During staff reunions, we would stay up late into the night playing games and blasting music on the kitchen speakers.

Adults can make plenty of noise, too. For a few years, Ingrid and I lived and worked at Camp, and during that time we hosted lots of adult retreats, many of them focused on crafting and quilting. Even though it was cold and dark outside, the attendees would fill up the space with their warmth, laughter, and conversation. In the stillness of winter, life abounded in this glorified shack. Many times I would walk through the back door (kind of the employee’s entrance, even though my official title was ‘husband of the program manager’- which is a de facto volunteer) and immediately be greeted with smells of food and sounds of laughter. I’d try to sneak a dessert and hop in line for food, before having a time of fellowship with whoever was spending their weekend getting away from the world at camp. For many, year after year the lodge represented a safe haven to enjoy life a little, worship a lot, and breathe easier a little more.

During my Christmas visit this year, I wandered into the kitchen. The utensils and cooking supplies were mostly gone, along with the fridge and most of the stuff in the pantry. Remaining was the basic outline of stovetops and countertops, the dishwater (Hobart), the walk-in fridge (Betty), cabinets with meal plans written on them in marker, and a small chalk wall with a monthly outline of retreats. As with most of the rest of the building, it looked as if someone hastily packed up the necessities and abandoned ship the day before. I considered all the dishes I helped clean, all the desserts I had illegally obtained from here, and all the camper midnight kitchen raids that had occurred under watchful supervision. I remembered the songs we had blasted through the small space and the times we had all been kicked out by an overwhelmed food service manager. Perhaps most vivid to me was the quiet weekends during my first summers on staff. I and the few others who lived more than an hour or two from camp would stay Friday night and Saturday while everyone else went home. Often, we would gather in the kitchen in the lodge and cook a meal together, usually something gourmet like mac-n-cheese or spaghetti. In some of those weekend moments, it was peaceful and quiet.

After the kitchen, I walked into the vern (the veranda). Describing the vern is difficult; it is like that second-favorite room in your house that you don’t frequent as much as you wish. This extension perpetually battled the wear and tear of North Dakota, perched wonderfully on the west side of the lodge, ready and willing to take the brunt of punishing northwest winds all year round. When it rained, water would pool on the tables; when it was hot or cold outside, it was hot or cold inside the vern; and when food was left unattended for a week during summer staff recharge, a friendly neighboring raccoon came in and got itself stuck inside a dry storage. The vern housed staff meetings, guitar practice, art storage, fish frying, and excess meal attendees.

For me, the vern always has weather attached to it. Because most of the windows of the lodge are covered up, the vern is where’d I go to keep an eye on pesky summer storms that would brew up during the afternoon and come barging through around suppertime. We would be treated to spectacular displays of lightning, howling winds, and rain and hail pounding on the metal roof above our heads. Sometimes I would use weather as an excuse to leave the lodge, because those kids can get so loud sometimes!

For years at camp we have done this thing called “amped up”, where we would take a normal campfire worship and turn it on its head by using electric guitars and basses, a drumset, and speakers. It has, over time, also morphed into “lamped up”, where we do everything the same, but we also plug in an obnoxious number of lamps to illuminate the stage well after sundown. I remember being a camper and not wanting to be in the lodge when amped up was going on, because it was too loud for me. I went out to the vern with a staff member and stayed out there most of the time. A few years ago as a staff member, I stayed out on the vern with some youth that didn’t want to be inside during the loud festivities. The vern has always been a place of peace.

I’m not ready to say goodbye to the lodge, because I haven’t known life without it. It would be fascinating to see a picture of myself every year I’ve walked into that building and how much I’ve changed over time. I went from a little kid, to an adult shaving in the bathroom sink on the day of his wedding, while it rained right outside. I went from an inexperienced staff member to someone that helped a year-round staff member drag his deer out of the woods through the snow in the non-summer months. I went from a person that seemingly knew everything to someone that seemingly knows nothing. At the center of it, each year, was the old lodge.

It’s not a liberal estimate to say at least 50,000 unique people have walked through the oft-broken front screen door of the lodge throughout the years. Whether for worship, a meal, camper registration, retreats, youth bashes, reunions, or service work, anybody with connection to Camp of the Cross has experienced the lodge at some point, and it will now be phased out. In some time, it will be torn down. The prairie grass will fight back into its old turf, and within a few years maybe even some prairie flowers will reappear on the hillside. Kids will run through the open space, unaware of the large, rickety shack that once stood in that place. In 100 years, it will be a faded picture in a photo album.

But in many ways, the lodge was much like the faith of a western North Dakotan. It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t enormous, and it wasn’t in-your-face. For year after year, season after season, it quietly went about its business providing a refuge to retreaters and worshipers from all walks of life. It was strong and steadfast and had a deliberate message of being a place for people to seek God. For every day of joy and noise, there were equally many days of quiet and seclusion. And the people here wouldn’t have had it any other way.