Alumnae Story
Five-day Canoe Trip

By Damara Canery, Girl Scout Council of Central N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y.

One of the defining moments of my youth was the five-day canoe trip I took with my Girl Scout troop when I was in eighth grade. I had joined the troop that year with my best friend, having not been involved with a troop in a couple of years. It's safe to say I grew up in Girl Scouts, I was a brownie for many years and eventually moved on to Cadet, etc. When I was around 10 years old, I grew anxious for some action. I didn't want to sit in stuffy rooms and talk about cookies. I wanted to get out and go camping. My brothers grew up in Boy Scouts and they took wonderful camping adventures all of the time and this was something I wanted to take part in as well. I think I might have joined the Boy Scouts if they would have let me!

As I got anxious to get out and do things, to bond with nature and my fellow Scouts, I found that I was a part of a troop where clearly the leader wasn't interested in camping and outdoor pursuits. Disappointed, I stopped attending that troop and I lost an important influence in my life for a couple of years. It was important for me to belong to something that I believed it, and something that captivated me and kept me interested. Unfortunately at the time, that troop wasn't it.

My pre-teenage years were, at best, horrendous. I had trouble making friends in school, I was overweight and was bullied for it. I became depressed and suicidal at the age of 11 (seventh grade). In eighth grade, I made a friend and we bonded but unfortunately we had no classes together and my life, despite my new found friend, continued to go downhill. I daydreamed about killing myself and leaving a note to the bullies in school who made my life so difficult, blaming them for my death. I imagined myself stepping in front of a car on the way to school and just ending all of the pain.

If it weren't for my new friend, I might have done just that. In the fall, my friend and I joined a local Girl Scout troop. I think in the years since I lost it, I had forgotten how important it was to belong to something. The troop I joined was led by a man, Pete Moreau, and it was exactly what I had been looking for. We did the cookie thing, and we sat in stuffy rooms and talked about the things we needed to talk about. But on the weekends! On the weekends we went camping, hiking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, winter camping, we took expeditions!

This troop was exactly what I had been looking for. It started building something in me that I had been missing, a sense of self-accomplishment, of belonging to something greater than myself, of giving service to others, bonding with others my age who didn't judge me; it was a life saver. I think I was only a part of that troop for a year until I started high school, but I learned and accomplished so much in that year.

In the summer after eighth grade, we took a culminating trip to Raquette Lake, a canoe trip for five days! Never did I think I would be able to do something like that. I was overweight and out of shape but the people in my troop supported me and pushed me to do things outside of anything I ever could have imagined. I bonded with the girls in my troop more than ever, and more importantly I bonded with the natural world.

Girl Scouting taught me to love nature and the outdoors. Girl Scouting taught me to love camping, the most important and pleasurable thing I have in my life. I find peace and spirituality in nature and love to be outdoors. The most important thing Girl Scouts gave to me was the desire to give back to other children what I was given when I was lost, confused, and close to the edge.

I graduated college with a degree in interior design but, having worked at a children's camp for a couple of summers, I found a nagging in the back of my mind telling me that interior design wasn't going to make me happy. Ultimately I went back to school and got a master's degree in recreation and am now the Assistant Camp Director of a camp in upstate N.Y.

I know that I owe my love of camping and working with children in part to being a part of Girl Scouts, and I am so thankful that I had it in my life because I know that I needed something at that point in my life, something to keep me alive and to make me believe that life was worth living. I hope that someday my own work will help children realize that life is worth living and that making a difference in other people's lives is important.