It's an Uphill Climb to the Best View
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"The goal is to make it!'' Brittany Carethers shouted. "This is a sisterhood hike, so if you see anyone slowing down, encourage them!"
As a counselor at Camp Moss Hollow, Carethers, 19, was doing her best to psych up three dozen girls for a camper's rite of passage: The Hike.
"Are you ready?" she called out, playing the cheerleader.
"Yeah!" they answered.
With that, the group of 7- to 14-year-olds set off into the warm, sticky morning. They strode along the pond shore, through the campfire circle, and headed for a steep trail up one of the Blue Ridge foothills that make up Moss Hollow's 400 acres.
Most of the girls had never been on a hike before, but by the end of the week, each one, and every boy at camp as well, would have done one.
Jasmine, 10, was prepared. She had her socks pulled up and her hoodie pulled tight against any critters that might fall on her head. She also carried a small red backpack with a change of clothes, "in case I get hot," she said.
A little way behind her, Torri, 13, was trying to keep pace. "My legs hurt already!" she said.
"It's a different experience for them, going into the woods, and they're a little bit afraid," said Joshua Ledbetter, 21, Moss Hollow's recreation leader, a.k.a. hiking specialist.
"They're definitely going to sweat."
Not only is a walk in the woods good exercise, Ledbetter said, but "it also builds cohesion," and that is a lot of what Moss Hollow is about.
The youngsters who come to Moss Hollow live primarily in urban Washington and some of its more crowded suburbs. Most are, in some way, part of the region's web of social services. Many are foster children, while others come from homes where parents or guardians are struggling financially.
