The first time I went to camp was in my freshman year of high school. It was more of a “spiritual retreat” than a camp, sort of an annual mandate all of the boys had to go through every year for a week. At the time, I was having difficulty adjusting to my new school. The boys and girls were literally segregated into separate buildings and had next to no interaction with one another. Most of my friends from elementary and junior high had ended up going to a different school, and I was verily stranded in a strange place that catered towards the lavishly rich and wealthy. The grades were formed after a ruthless social hierarchy, and as you would expect, freshmen lived on the bottom of the rung. We were open prey for “birthday beatings” and random attacks by the upperclassmen. A year before me, a boy had been hospitalized. Before we left for the retreat, there had been rumors of upperclassmen traditionally pranking on the freshmen after hours.
The retreat took place at a ranch outside of the city. It sat on a very large piece of land and it was the first time I encountered horses and cattle. The first activity that took place that day was horseback riding. I loved it. Each person was given his own horse in proportion to his weight and the rancher had given me a mare. We followed a trail for a few hours without much fanfare until the very end when my Theology teacher's horse freaked for unknown reasons, reared, and kicked behind him. There was a lot of commotion for a few minutes, but no bodily injury was done, so we pressed on towards the ranch.
The rancher, I'd forgotten his name, decided to select two boys to round up his spare cattle who'd strayed away from the rest of the herd. He was looking for the most able and fastest riders out of the group, so imagine my consternation when he picked me, a green freshman who'd just learned how to ride only three hours before. It was an exhilarating experience, chasing down the strays. I was riding fast after one, completely adrenaline hiked when I realized that my horse was no longer under my complete control. It was barreling down on the stray to circle it back into the herd, but we were approaching some trees with very low hanging branches. Before I could steer him away from his prey, a lower branch loomed into view in front of me and tried as I might, I couldn't negotiate my horse to turn.
My friend described it later in horrifying detail and said that it looked like my head had snapped back with a sickening “crack” when the branch collided with my forehead. I remember an instance of pain and the sensation of blood trickling down my forehead before chasing the stray back to the herd. I dazedly made my way back to the rest of the group. The rancher inspected my wound and someone wondered if I might have been slightly concussed, I wasn't sure. I was gently led back. My Theology teacher was a strange Irishman with a inclination for beer, jeeps, and John Wayne. He'd taken a liking to me on my first week of school and was immensely popular with the boys. He looked over my injury while we waited for dinner and told me that I ought not to clean it and that scars were masculine. The look fitted me, he'd assured me. Fearing infection, I cleaned it anyway and after two months, the scars were completely gone.
Although the rest of the trip wasn't terribly exciting and the sophomores did attempt to prank the freshmen in our sleep, I look back on that time with a certain amount of fondness. There was something exhilarating about riding horseback and I'll never forget that first experience. If I was given a choice, I probably would have gone after that stray again. Only with a little more control the second time around.