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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rawahaimock New* Staff Writer
“When you come down off that mountain out of the clouds, it’s like waking up from a dream, a really incredible dream,” my son told me after his second August as a teen counselor at Camp Fantastic, the camp for children with cancer held for a week every summer at the Northern Virginia 4-H Center.
Volunteers for the now-annUal Fantastic International Buffet and salute from Rappahannock shared a bit of that dream week last Tuesday.
Those who have never been to Camp Fantastic may imagine it a depressing place, a place where sick children mope around, whining and demanding attention and assistance. It is not that at all.
Certainly, there are the visible signs of radiation treatment and chemotherapy on some of the children. Others show the scars of battle with this disease in missing limbs. And others look just like the gangs of 4-H campers who crowd into Blair Shelter the rest of the summer.
But there is a difference. Since I first met these fantastic children four years ago, I’ve struggled to explain that difference to those who haven’t. The words are hard to come by. There’s electricity in the air around them, an enthusiasm and hunger for life and new experiences inherent in all happy children, only so much stronger here. Their bodies may be sick; their souls are shiningly, glowingly healthy.
Their spell is immediate.
“This is awfully fancy food for a bunch of kids!” said one of the first-tune volunteers during the rush to start the grill for the shish kabobs, set up tables for the seven international entrees and slice peaches and strawberries for the make-them-yourself shortcakes.
Two hours later, after the campers had emptied the platters of Mexican burritos, Italian pizza, Middle Eastern beef kabobs and Oriental chicken, cleaned the pot of American pork barbecue, dented the pile of roasted com-on-the-cob and the bowls of rice salad and cole slaw and wiped out the whipped cream topped shortcakes, Greek baklava, coconut cake, banana split cake, ambrosia and baked bananas Hawaiian, the same
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