For some reason, a Campfire Girl song from my childhood jumped into my head and stayed there.
“The little twinkling stars on high are whispering nature lore,
While all about us the soft winds sigh and great Wokanda watches o’er!
Wohelo! Wohelo!”
I believe that Wohelo stood for WOrk+HEalth+LOve, which still seem to me to be pretty good watchwords.
Naturally, I had to Google this, and I was correct. Here are the complete words to this and other old Camp Fire Girl songs. In case you want to recreate the Campfire Girl experience.
We had brown dresses with a vaguely Native American look, on which we sewed wooden beads received for various accomplishments, like Scout badges.
I bet modern Campfire Girls, or Campfire Youth as they would now be, don’t sing about whispering stars or Amerindian-style Great Spirits.
But it was fun to be a Campfire Girl, and we didn’t know any better.
Further googling has shown me that the Camp Fire youth program now focuses not only on work, health, and love, but also on STEM and LGTBQ inclusion and good works in general. They were the first multicultural girls’ organization, started in 1910 apparently on the basis of Wohelo Camps.
I don’t know why this came into my mind, but I’m glad to have had the memory and the chance to learn about the modern organization.