Hot and Cold

This week the thermometer at camp has been bumping a little past 90 by the afternoon, building the kind of bright, humid heat that brings to mind places deeper in the south. Overnight is another story. That’s when our altitude provides a welcome break and the mercury drops back just below 70. Even during so-called “heat waves,” our fresh mountain air makes for genuinely wonderful sleeping. But daytime is daytime, and by early afternoon there’s really one main thing that comes to mind: getting in the water. Fortunately at Rockbrook, that’s never hard to do. Clear and chilly mountain streams tumble down and through camp, filling our lake. And a short drive away is the notoriously cold Nantahala River where we take our campers whitewater rafting.

Today it was our oldest girls, the Seniors, who spent the day rafting on the Nantahala River. Whitewater rafting has been a Rockbrook tradition since the early 1980s, when we became the only girls camp in the area to hold our own Forest Service permit, which lets us schedule and guide our own trips with our own equipment. The river runs a fast, toe-numbing 50 degrees or so, cold enough to make each splash arch your back with a wide-eyed scream. Every boat spends the two-hour trip alternating between calm floating stretches and bursts of whitewater, girls paddling, singing, posing for photos with their paddles held up like victory flags. When someone tips backward into the raft after a big wave, or gets bounced into the river, the boat erupts into the kind of laughter that only happens among great camp friends. By the time they hit the Nantahala Falls— the trip’s big, churning finale— everyone is soaked through, and today, happily chilled in the warm sunshine.

Meanwhile, back at camp, the Middlers and Juniors gravitated toward our own swimming lake, which draws its water from Dunns Creek. The shady waterfalls of the creek never really warm up no matter how hot the air gets above it. During the two free swim periods today, before lunch and again before dinner, girls filled the water with kayaks and canoes, a few Corcls spinning in slow circles, and the kind of inflatable tube that seems to exist purely for the relaxing joy of floating. Others lined up for tricks off the diving board— cannonballs, spins, and the occasional attempt at a real dive. The waterslide ran more or less non-stop, girls scrambling back up the ladder and racing back around for another slide. The lake is the place to be on a day like this!

There’s something almost essential about cold water at camp, as if it was built into the place on purpose. On a hot day, jumping in the lake provides a full-body kind of relief, the sort you dream of when getting back from a rock climb on Castle Rock or from a riding lesson down at the barn. We might even say the mountains have installed a kind of natural air conditioner as the water from Stick Biscuit Falls and Rockbrook Falls streams through camp. Take a seat near the creek and enjoy a cool breeze flowing by. Put your feet in the creek and you’ve got just what you need on a summer day. Do it with a good friend, and there’s nothing else to ask for.

By the way, if you’re curious about the weather at Rockbrook, our weather station at camp— KNCBREVA27 on Weather Underground— keeps a running record of the temperature, humidity and everything else.

None of this is something we engineered. The mountains simply gave us cold water, and all we had to do was let the girls loose in it. Watching them come up from a dive gasping and grinning, or climb back into a raft still laughing about who fell in, proves that the mountains had this figured out long before we did.