Echockotee Lodge 200: 2012 Winter Fellowship
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Echockotee Lodge 2012 Winter Fellowship
The 2012 Winter Fellowship for Echockotee Lodge 200 was the first weekend of their annual series of activity patch theme, “Camp Shands Structures”. Camp Shands is where Echockotee has been holding its weekend activities since 1968. The Winter Fellowship patch depicts the “tree houses”, a coveted site at Shands where campers sleep in small cabins set about 12 feet off the ground. The name and date of the event have been embedded into the design, in the lower right corner. Other patches in the series will depict the camp chapel, council ring, climbing tower, a cabin, and the camp water tower.
The irony to this series that the Winter Fellowship may be the last lodge weekend event held at Shands for several months.
At the western edge of the camp property is Levy Prairie, a dried up lake bed that has built up thick layers of peat over the last few centuries. A fire started there in late November that has burned below the surface down into the peat. It has spread under ground, and has been smoldering since. The western Putnam County area has been plagued with the smoke created by the fire, made especially difficult at night and the early morning when mixed with the fog, and dropping visibility to zero. The photo on the left was taken at 9 in the morning. There is a building behind the smoke, trust me.
The Winter Fellowship was the last overnight activity held at Shands, as the smoke is not pleasant-smelling (like one would expect of burning mulch), and could be hazardous to one’s health. State forestry officials guess that what will be needed to put the fire out would be about ten inches of rain, like that found during a hurricane.
As a result, the Spring Fellowship will be held at Camp Echockotee, a suburban camp just outside Jacksonville. An Ordeal will be held there for the first time in 44 years. And the Winter patch is being re-ordered, in what is being called the “smoke” patch, to be rendered in about eight different shades of gray.
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