I’ve Got that Brush Ranch Feeling

You guys….WE DID IT!!! We had a reunion for a thing that only exists in our hears and memories!

I will attempt a recap of our Brush Ranch Reunion weekend for those of you who were unable to join us. (I will also say that I’m exhausted and this blog platform has been a little weird with adding photos so if it looks sort of weird, that’s why…I can’t deal with it right now).

When the planning committee began meeting in December (was it really that long ago?!), I really wasn’t sure how we were going to pull off this event, especially with mom working and then my kiddos were in and out of the hospital all spring. Registrations started rolling in and as of a few weeks ago we had around 80 folks signed up. I think we were all a bit disappointed and then dad (not on Facebook) went nuts and started calling people left and right. In then end we had around 120 people and a few more than that joined us at Brush Ranch yesterday!

Friday afternoon Roy Johnson, Rachel Maurer, and Angus Macpherson opened registration and smiling faces started pouring into Hotel Albuquerque. We had three rooms full of scrapbooks and had TVs with old videos running. Many people brought photos and scrapbooks to share with everyone and my parents put together many, many binders full of old posed photos of staff and campers from each year. Friday evening we all had a lovely dinner together and enjoyed a sideshow that consisted of around 1,200 slides from the beginning of BR to the very end that was put together by Steve Wolfel. He went so far as to Google the top 100 songs from every few years and included decade appropriate music with the sides! It was incredible to see so many familiar faces in the slideshow and it brought back LOTS of memories! There were brief presentations of a bit of history by Scotty and Kay and then Rachel taught everyone the Jr. Birdman song (I’ll have to do another post on Jr. Birdman…). Later in the evening, Jr. Birdman actually happened which included singing and marching to the pool around 9:30 PM…after, I’m sure, quite a few alcoholic beverages had been consumed. Sadly, I missed this as I was waiting for a drink at the bar…where are my priorities (can you blame me, my kids were home sleeping)?! Ohhhh….and Kay named everyone at the reunion honorary Camper of the Week just for showing up!

Saturday breakfast included an activity where we figured out who spent the most summers at Brush Ranch, the winner was James Congdon with 16 summers!!! (We didn’t count those of us who were born and raised there, or my parents.) Then we loaded up the busses and headed up the Pecos Canyon. If you rode the bus and have any good tales to tell from bus riding, please share them as a comment to this blog post. (I drove the mom-mobile so my children could nap in their carseats). The forecast for the day was not good…something like an 80% chance of rain, but we absolutely lucked out. The weather couldn’t have been nicer. The New Mexico blue sky shone through a few fluffy white clouds and then a thunderhead rolled in as we were loading up the bus.

The Lujan family, who now owns Brush Ranch, were nice enough to open most of the cabins for us and we spent the first hour or two wandering around camp reminiscing and enjoying the sunshine. We had lunch in the Dance Pavilion and then all gathered on the front lawn to sing a few songs and share more memories. I’ll be sure to post what was read by Roy and his crew if they’ll share it with me. After taking a few more photos, we loaded up and headed back down the Canyon with more than one or two tears…

Saturday evening consisted of dinner outside and lots more reminiscing and looking at scrapbooks and movies and then we wrapped up with a breakfast this morning. Kay asked each table to come up with a word that described the weekend for them. I was wrangling my children during this and missed most of it (great re-cap, I know), so if you remember what your word was, please post it in the comments of this post! Roy also did a really nice thank you to everyone’s camp mom (and my real mom) and recognized her for the amazing woman she is with a beautiful bouquet of flowers (a bouquet she thought had been sent to Roy!).

I don’t think a chronological recap of the weekend sums up the time we all shared. It was like camp…we all returned to real life at the end of each summer and shared our stories with the friends we had during the school year and it was all just so difficult to explain. The magic of summer camp and specifically of Brush Ranch is indescribable. The mix of people who came this weekend reminded me just how many lives were impacted by Brush Ranch for so, so many generations.

We hope you’ll join us for the next reunion which will be held somewhere in New Mexico from July 31st to August 2nd, 2020. If you’d like us to send you information on the next reunion (when we start sending it out in a few years), please visit this website: www.postable.com/brushranchcamps , and fill out the form as completely as possible (please share this link with your old BRC friends and family!) and be sure to join the Brush Ranch Camps Facebook Page!