GODDESS IN THE GREENWOOD: THe GIRLS OF CAMP KOCH

Abstract

Worldview, myth, and the 1960's come together in a song, ritual, and

legend corpus preserved in oral transmission, central to an Indiana Girl Scout camp's cultural production. As Levi-Strauss disciple Lee Drummond would term it, Camp Henry F. Koch formed the identities of a dozen or more successful women still in supportive contact fifty years later.

Primitive camping as wilderness therapy moved the camp community into communion with the Goddess Natura. Arriving solo, for unit-based camping, each camper assumed the role of Vladimir Propp's mission-centered folktale heroine. The role of supernatural gift-giver, such as Baba Yaga, was the counselors' to play. A traditional camp song, "Magalena Hagalena," typifies the residual force -- archetype in the Jungian sense -- that elevated and ennobled the social and emotional lives of adolescent girls. One of them reported liberation from something resembling Asperger's syndrome.