Circle C Ranch, 1974

Circle C Ranch has received much publicity the past few months resulting from an abuse scandal. I was eleven when I spent a week at the camp in 1974. I did not witness anything as horrendous outlined in the reports as the abuse began a couple decades afterwards. However, I did witness a culture at the camp making it vulnerable to such an event. My stay there was the first step, of many, causing me to keep religion at arms length.

Most summer camps in Western New York are located near Lake Erie to enjoy the cool summer breezes as well as the water. Instead, Circle C is located in a rural area an hour drive from Buffalo. The camp is seated on a dead end road and is physically isolated from the surrounding community. The sign pointing to the camp, unlike the prominent sign today, was so small we missed it at first pass. In 1974, before the internet, the brochure on the camp emphasized horseback riding as the main activity. The camp is based on a frontier western town, not unlike Dodge City on the show Gunsmoke, which was very popular at the time.

My first day was filled with the usual summer camp activities such as swimming, arts and crafts, and horseback riding along the trails that wound their way among the woods encircling the camp. We ate dinner, and after the Sun had set behind the hills, we gathered around a fire and here the true purpose of the camp came to light.

The same brochure promoting horseback riding also disclosed the Christian nature of the camp. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I went to Catholic* school up to 5th grade and the church also has summer camps. Like the usual routine at a Catholic school, the morning starts out with mass and then you get on with the rest of the day.

Circle C had something different in mind.

As I sat looking into the campfire, a counselor asked me to name the specific moment I had accepted Christ into my life. A bit stumped at why I was being asked this, I explained I had gone to my parents church since I could remember and could not name a specific starting point. The counselor replied that the devil was inside of me, preventing me from expressing my acceptance of Christ. Quite a judgement from someone who had known me less than 24 hours. With the exception of two of the other campers, the rest around the campfire concurred.

The kids, no doubt, understood the expectations of the camp and were mimicking the adults. The average eleven year old mind does not have the ability to understand when an epistemic bubble is being constructed around them. They were also exhibiting signs of foreclosed self identities. That’s not unusual for children of this age, but it takes a broad life experience to grow out of and the camp leadership were guiding the children away from that.

An example is when one of the campers attempted to impress upon me that my height was a sign of the devil growing inside me. In hindsight, I doubt the kid concocted this himself. Most likely, he heard some variation of the theme from one of the adults in camp and decided this was how to ingratiate himself within the only community he probably knew.

While we were asked by the camp to turn ourselves over to Christ, it was apparent we were being asked to turn ourselves over to the adults at the camp. I was at an advantage as this was my first and only stay at the camp whereas many of the other campers spent time there every summer. Being tall for my age meant adults often talked to me differently. Their biases and flaws got laid bare pretty quickly. I learned at a young age to take adults with a grain of salt.

The physical isolation of the camp played a key role in its mission, but there was also an intellectual isolation. No books, newspapers, radios, or television. Nothing supporting an alternative view was at hand. There was no email or cell phones during this era so no contact with family or anyone outside the camp occurred during the stay. For me, this was a very disorientating situation.

This top-down enforcement of thinking is guaranteed to stunt intellectual growth. As one reads the bible, each individual will incorporate their own life experience into their interpretation of that passage.  And you’re going to require a well rounded education to interpret any source of information properly, meaning humanities, science, social sciences, and the proverbial hard knocks. Not allowing that encourages a foreclosed self-identity where the individual adopts the viewpoints of an authority figure. There may be an absolute truth in the universe, but you’re not going to find it in any single person.

What happens when foreclosed self-identity extends into adulthood?

In my experience, these were the people who frantically tried to discourage me from going to college, who thought I should take on dead on jobs, who play the numbers game online to drown out opposing voices, much like at those campfires so many years ago, and this year, called those who took the Covid vaccine “sheeple”. If I had followed the life path they wanted to impose, I have serious doubts I would be alive today. Perhaps that’s the point, when you are no longer useful, you are disposable.

As the week went on we fell into the routine of camp activity during the day and proselytization at night. The only free time was a half hour after dinner. Under the growing shadow of the lone tree near the center of the camp, me and two other campers would discuss how we would handle the night proceedings. On our state of isolation, the joke was World War III could start and we’d never know until the week was over.

One of my tree-mates decided to simply tell the counselors what they wanted to hear, thinking they would leave you alone for the remainder of the evening. For an eleven year old, that could be the most effective way of dealing with the situation. I kept quiet as much as I could or shrugged my shoulders when asked a question about my faith. Of course, that led to more lecturing on how the devil inside was holding me back, but whatever. I had the luxury of knowing when the week concluded I was done with the camp.

Saturday was the final day and we were to participate in a horse race at a camp rodeo. That seemed to be a good way to finish the week as the horses were the best company in the camp besides my two fellow resistors. As I was packing, a counselor cornered me for one last pitch for the cause to be put on some sort of mailing list, not unlike the final sales pitch at the car dealership for rust proofing extras. Sighing, I put down my belongings for another go round of shoulder shrugging and repeating no until he left to get ready for the closing festivities.

The rodeo went off without a hitch and I headed back home. We had lunch at a restaurant not too far from the camp and the memory of that is quite strong even after 47 years, the vinegar on the table and the taste of the fries especially. After the hour ride home, I consumed magazines and newspapers to see what had happened in the world that week. I headed off to the corner store to check out the book section to see if anything new arrived. On the way there, I had to pass a neighborhood store called The Cracked Pot where Nazi paraphernalia was displayed in the front window, leaving me to ponder how on Earth I was accused of consorting with the Devil the prior week. I was especially grateful to be back among friends not hanging that one on me.

Difficult to imagine in the internet era, I did not hear anything further about the camp until the late 90’s. The camp was outside of Erie County so it was not in the phone book. They did not advertise at all, and when I asked people if they ever heard of the camp no one ever said yes. It remained a surrealistic childhood memory until one day out of curiosity, I did an internet search and sure enough, the camp had a website. It has stayed in ownership of the same family till this day.

The camp got my attention again this year when the abuse situation was uncovered. The details can be read in the news reports. Many of the women who have made the allegations have been subjected to violent threats. Nobody wants to believe someone close to them can do such things, but I think the true source of the anger is the women decided to challenge the authority of the camp. In the culture of the camp, it’s just not something that is done, especially from the camper side.

I have to leave to legal experts how this will unfold for the camp. It is untenable in its current state. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve realize I found my experience there disagreeable. Still, I can respect the sweat equity put in the place, providing for the horses and from what I understand, the volunteer labor that built the camp facilities. However, it is time for the camp leadership to stand down, and their followers to stop making empty death threats. It is long past time to reconfigure the camp experience more towards the benefit of the campers and less towards the self-aggrandizement of the camp leaders. 

Otherwise, one way or another, the camp will need to be shut down.

If Circle C was ever “God’s Camp”, it was campers such as these women who have spoken out that made it so. The adults at the camp would have realized that if only they took the time and had the modesty to listen to them.

*The Catholic church obviously has its own abuse issues – the isolation of abuse victims in this instance tended to occur on an individual basis, while the church itself was embedded and protected in the community power structure rather than hidden from it.