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Source: Tulsa World, Okla.self storageAug. 11--On the last day of Girl Scout camp, the camp flag is taken down.It's walked over to a campfire and cut up. Counselors-in-training say what each strip represents."You sing songs and you remember that this is the last time that the same group of girls will be in the same place at once," described 16-year-old Katie Childs, who's been a camper for 10 years."It's really -- nice, for lack of a better word."Summer is finished and so too is summer camp.So is the sailing and the horseback riding. The swimming and the endless laughter. The horsing around on the basketball court and all those summer arts and crafts.The days that seemed to take their time for the children's sake wear thin when August hits.Summer is finished, says the Girl Scouts closing camp ceremony. But the memories and value of a summer well lived persist for campers at scout camp and other programs across the region.'Lifelong memories'"It's like recess all day long," said camper Lauren Martino, during her last week at Riverfield Country Day School's Camp Raven.Among the camp sessions she participated in were Alice in Wonderland camp -- Lauren made a Mad Hatter hat and other crafts for a tea party -- and Caring Camp, in which campers volunteered at a number of social service agencies around Tulsa.The 11-year-old learned about gardening and cooked kale chips. She made some new friends whom she called "kinda weird."One found a cicada shell during a treasure hunt, placed it on her shoulder and walked around with it.Lauren wrinkled her face at the memory. She would never do that.These are the experiences Camp Raven director Ric Breig said he hopes campers take away whether they played sports all summer, learned about bugs one week or toiled away at a treehouse whenever they had a spare moment."It's the memory. I had memories, parents had memories. I want them to make lifelong memories. 'Hey, at summer camp, we built a bridge and we built it with our own bare hands and that bridge is still here today.' Or 'I remember this funny time when so-and-so spewed milk out of his nose' and 'that happened at camp, that happened here.'"'Big transformation'At the W.L. Hutcherson Family YMCA, children enrolled in the center's Next Level Basketball Leadership camp are taking a break before their coach walks through some drills with them.Among them, O.C. Walker III is getting ready to practice. Whole days devoted to the game have really sharpened the eighth-grader's skills."I was OK. Then, like the middle of camp, I started getting better and better, and now I can take the ball behind my back and stuff. I could shoot pretty good but now I can shoot better."The coaches have noticed too."Not only his skill level has increased but also his confidence," said Chivas Miller, sports director for the branch. "When he first got here ... 迷你倉e really wasn't confident in his game, didn't know too much about basketball ... and literally in a five-week span he's gone from not really knowing much about the game to now he's one of the best players in the camp. Even the way he talks is different. You can tell there's been a real big transformation."Walker's outcomes and those of the other campers are not unlike what camp advocates tout as benefits of camp.In a community environment, campers stand to not only build self-esteem, self-worth and self-identity, but also to refine skills in other areas."When you've just got a week and you've got time, I mean how often does anyone have time to just sit and be creative for a week?" asked Paul Knight, who leads a number of music camp sessions at Camp Raven. "I love songwriting camp because it gives me time to sit and write ... while they're working on their own, I get to work on my own."There are few time constraints, no deadline, Knight said.The only pressure of summer camp is lapping in all the adventure, learning and memories before the end of the week.'Switch!'Katie, who will be a camp counselor next year, won't forget the service project she worked on in which she had to paint a bathroom stall.She included the words to one of her favorite camp songs.It goes "I don't care if I go crazy, 1-2-3-4-5-6, Switch! Crazy go I if care don't I, 6-5-4-3-2-1, Switch!"And then there was the hike up Lake Hill, she recalled."It's a pretty steep hill."The girls would joke as they made it up the incline. At points when the trip got tough, chipper words of Girl Scout encouragement would ring in the air. There was a bit of cheesiness the girls would laugh at, Katie said. But she liked it, too.She said of new Girl Scouts, often any nervousness apparent on the first day of camp is replaced with a type of sadness by the last.A sadness such that, Katie said, camp counselors make an extra push for upbeat activities the final stretch of camp.Like the Shipwreck dinner. Girls can't eat with anything but tongs.At one particularly memorable meal, the high school junior had to eat spaghetti with a butter knife. She still laughs at this recollection.In a decade of summers at camp, Katie has met people she never thought she'd meet, made some best friends, went inner-tubing and learned about chores -- "I think my mom appreciates that."You become a sister to everybody, she said. And camp becomes like a second home."And that's what it does," Katie said. "It makes you feel like you have a second home."But summer camp is over now -- for this year at least.School is around the corner, she knows."I welcome the air conditioning."Bravetta Hassell 918-581-8316bravetta.hassell@tulsaworld.comCopyright: ___ (c)2013 Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) Visit Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) at .tulsaworld.com Distributed by MCT Information Services文件倉