Scott’s Column: Sandhills Retreat Sep 28, 2020 | News Shortly after I arrived at Kamp Kaleo last week, our denomination’s campground and retreat center in Burwell, Nebraska, David Butz, the director, asked if I wanted to tube the river that afternoon. Yes, I did. Floating down the North Loup River over gentle rapids and a few sandbars, I delighted in the late summer warmth and the many birds, including a blue heron that we trailed most of the way back to camp. This was the beginning of a couple of relaxing days. The next morning we went kayaking for a long stretch downriver that I hadn’t explored before. The highlight of that trip was the two, hunting bald eagles. David has spent a lot of time clearing out old trails and blazing new ones, so I hiked through parts of the grounds I hadn’t before. The sunflowers were in full bloom. Beavers had built a number of dams. I laid on the grass beside one dam for a long while reading Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality by Belden C. Lane, which seemed fitting. Before I left the last morning, he took me on a tour of the property on the golf cart. I had only packed shorts, not prepared for the temps to drop into the forties. So I was wrapped in a comforter the whole time. I was simply amazed, after a decade in Nebraska, to learn how vast Kaleo is and how underutilized it has always been. David and I spent a lot of time brainstorming. He’s taken to calling it “the State Park of Nebraska UCC and DOC.” And I agree with that description. We’ve not always had directors in the past who were interested in hosting folks throughout the year, but David is. I highly encourage you to consider Kaleo as a great, relatively safe place to retreat to in this pandemic time and then afterwards. I was only there for a few days, but it was a refreshing break from remote schooling and other stressors of the moment. The river, the skies, the birds, the flowers are some of God’s gifts to us now and always.
