The Day an Astronaut Landed on a Culpeper Farm
By Culpeper HQ ·
There are certain sentences you never expect your wife to say.
“We need an astronaut” is one of them.
Malinda had been asked through District Talent to help provide entertainment for a Camp Fantastic field trip in Culpeper. Apparently, NASA was unavailable. This meant the honor fell to the next most qualified candidate: a middle-aged man whose experience with space travel consisted mainly of complaining about the legroom on commercial airplanes.
So last week, I put on a spacesuit.
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Camp Fantastic is a weeklong summer camp in Front Royal for children ages 7 to 17 who have been treated for cancer. It is the hallmark program of [Special Love]([https://specialove.org/](https://specialove.org/)), a nonprofit that supports children with cancer and their families through camps, programs and a community built around one important idea: children facing cancer still deserve opportunities to simply be children.
Medical care is available at camp, which allows campers to spend the week swimming, canoeing, riding horses, tackling ropes courses, making friends and doing the kinds of things summer was designed for. There are campfires, songs, sports and enough activity to remind you that childhood was never intended to be a quiet occupation.
Once during the week, the campers leave Front Royal and come to Culpeper.
For the past 23 years, Kacey and Marshall Jenkins have welcomed Camp Fantastic to their family farm for a field day supported by volunteers, businesses and community organizations from across the area. What normally looks like a Culpeper farm becomes its own small universe of activity, entertainment and characters.
This year, that universe apparently required an astronaut.
My assignment was simple: greet the campers, pose for pictures and do my best to look like someone capable of operating a spacecraft. The helmet helped. A good costume can create tremendous confidence in a man who would otherwise need instructions to unfold a road map.
But beneath the spacesuit, the day offered a much better view of what Camp Fantastic makes possible.
For a few hours, nobody had to explain why they were there. Nobody needed to be introduced by a diagnosis. There was a farm to explore, entertainment to enjoy, pictures to take and an astronaut wandering around Culpeper looking as though he had made a wrong turn somewhere near Mars.
That spirit extends far beyond one afternoon. Camp Fantastic gives children facing cancer a full week of friendship, independence and fun, with the medical support they need close at hand. Every camper attends free of charge, made possible through volunteers, donors and community partners.
Malinda and I arrived to help provide a character. We left reminded how much character already surrounds this camp.
It belongs to the campers who show up ready for an adventure. It belongs to the volunteers who give their time. It belongs to Kacey and Marshall Jenkins, who have opened their farm year after year. And it belongs to every person who helps create a place where children can spend less time thinking about cancer and more time thinking about what childhood ought to contain.
You do not need a spacesuit to become part of it.
To learn more, volunteer or help send a child to camp, visit [[SpecialLove.org](http://SpecialLove.org)]([https://specialove.org/](https://specialove.org/)).