How Bionic Buddy Affected My Heart
by Rev. Jeff Wood
Honey Rock Camp is a good ways north of Rhinelander, WI. I worked there for $50/week for most of my college summers. Something happened there that I have never forgotten … and I hope I never will. It involved the camp director, a man we called Bionic Buddy. There was a relentless to this man and he always demanded we live as stewards and caretakers of the camp, its values, its people, its things.
I led wilderness expeditions and on one of them, on one occasion, we had two lakes chained together by a short whitewater river. We shot the short stretch of rapids and, alas, my canoe turned over.
Going into the water shouldn’t have been a problem except we broadsided the canoe on a huge rock and we did so with the gunnels and thwarts upstream. In an instant that 17’ aluminum canoe was wrapped like a horseshoe around the boulder.
All I could think of was our rule about each leader being personally responsible for camp gear. There went my whole summer earnings! I carried the weight of that thought for many a day as the expedition bore on.
Then came the moment back at camp headquarters when I met Bionic Buddy for equipment inventory. “Buddy, I lost a canoe. Wrecked it. I’ll pay for it somehow.” He looked me in the eye and I think he could see my struggle. Then he simply said, “It’s okay, Jeff, I’ll take care of it. I can handle the cost better than you.”
He took care of my debt. Do you have someone you are grateful for? Someone who has absorbed a debt you couldn’t handle? I hope so. It does something good to the heart.
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