Summer Barn

4225 Oviatt Road

View of the Summer Barn taken from the riding ring. Photo by Clive Fetzer, June 2019

The Summer Barn decorated for Derby Day, May 7, 2016.

Interior of the Summer Barn during preparations for Derby Day, 2016.

The Summer Barn is an open air stable in the uplands area of the park between Hilltop House and High Lea Shelter. It has its own entrance (The Horse Gate), driveway, and parking lot. An adjacent riding ring was once used for lessons.  

The riding ring across from the Summer Barn. Clive 2019

Summer Barn entrance - ready for June events. Photo by Clive 2019

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 History

Built in the mid-1980's to support the very popular scout equestrian program.  Week-long sessions focusing on horses were held during the summer.  After GSLEC purchased their own horses in 1996, troops could sign up for short programs throughout the year.  Individual lessons were also held. 

Riding instructor Rachel Oppenhiemer recalls, "I believe that the upper barn could hold 22 horses.  I know there were/are 6 stalls on the back wall and I believe that each of the sides had 8 stalls.  The stables could theoretically hold 23 horses if all the stalls were filled and you used free-standing panels to build a stall inside the barn (which we did when we had horses or ponies that couldn't be let out onto the grass at night). 

"The upper and lower barns didn't hold the same number of horses, and when I worked there, we actually had two lower barns to accommodate the horses during the winter. The last time I went down there though, only one was still standing and all the stalls had been taken out and it was housing machinery. We used the lower barns during the winter because they were enclosed.  Usually they'd move the herd sometime around the end of October.

"We did sometimes use the lower barns during the summer (mostly the one that's still there), if we were introducing a new horse or horses to the herd.  If that was the case, the new guy(s) would be quarantined in the lower barn before they were brought up to the summer barn.  The first summer I worked there we had horses at the lower barn most of the summer. There was one mule.  Her name was Millie, her best buddy was the biggest horse we had."

In 2001, GSLEC developed extensive plans for a larger equestrian center on the west side of Oviatt Rd.  These never came to fruition.

Very soon after the former camp was purchased by Richfield in 2015, the Ohio Horseman's Council, Summit County Chapter, hosted an introductory event at the stable. The following spring they hosted Derby Day to raise funds for the reconditioning of existing bridle trails  establishment of additional trails, and expanded parking at the barn to accommodate horse trailers. Since then OHC has continued to host  equestrian events

Rachel's Story

I was little the first time Mom drove me down that long road into the parking lot on the Hilaka side of camp: mountains of green giving way to gravel and parked cars.  My sister Devon sat next to me, and though I don’t know how she felt, I was terrified.  Camping was not something native to my family.  Dad likes concrete, the smell of asphalt and car exhaust.  Family vacations never took us to the camp-ground.  I was determined, however, to make it in the great-outdoors.  I had to if I was ever to fulfill my life’s ambition of becoming a cowboy.

Gathering what strength we could muster, we loaded the troop gear into Dave’s truck and began the march to Gemini Cabin.  I struggled to keep up with Devon, who though younger than me, had a stronger will to experience the unknown and a recklessness that allowed her to run down the path even though we’d been explicitly told to walk.  Braving the retribution of our leaders, I hurried to catch up. 

The omnipresent green amazed me.  Suburban Cleveland had its patches of color, but nothing like this.  The wildness of the undergrowth was intoxicating…as was the smell.  Odors I’d later recognize as pine and camp-fire ash assaulted my nose.  This place was strange, but promised the type of adventure cowboys were supposed to have.

The cabin confirmed my suspicion that this was indeed the perfect cowboy training ground: one room, sweet curtains covering the windows and places to build fires inside and out.  Perfection.  Ultimately, though, it’s not the cabin that looms largest in my memory of that campout.  It’s the latrine.  Imposing and stench filled, it tested all of our characters that weekend, but it taught us that we were tougher than a couple of spiders and a den of mosquitoes.  It also gave us the first story that was to become part of our collective memory of Crowell-Hilaka.  Younger than the rest of us, Devon’s backside was a bit too small for the whole latrine experience.  Fearful of losing her to the latrine gods, as her slight form tumbled through the toilet opening to some unknown depth, our leaders assigned two of us to “Devon latrine duty”.  Every time she went to the bathroom, we held her aloft by the armpits, a life-saving gesture that taught the three of us involved, the true meaning of the buddy system.

That trip to Gemini Cabin translated into a further decade of camping with my best friends.  To the latrine story, we added the time Sarah realized she’d slept on a mattress with a mouse in it, eating bacon we’d cooked and promptly dropped in the dirt, creek hiking through the “eww water,” watching a raccoon steal banana boats for which we’d slaved over the fire, and endless nights of singing.  Of the 6 of us who went through the entire program together, 3 of us wound up as voice majors in college. If Banana Slug had been deemed appropriate for senior voice recitals we’d have probably all added it to our programs.

While most of us went our separate ways, I found it harder to leave a place that had become synonymous with peace and rejuvenation in my mind.  Sophomore year of college I went to work for the horse program at Crowell-Hilaka.  Childhood dream fulfilled.  I was a cowboy.  My days were spent in the saddle, and I got to pass on the secrets of camp to groups who came to spend the weekend learning to ride.  To this day I’ve not had a job I loved more.  I learned to laugh at the little crises that characterize working with horses - chasing down ponies who slipped through the fence, looking for lost shoes in the pasture, and braving the claws of the barn cats when it was time to remove them from the ring to teach a riding lesson.

When I wasn’t conning my way out of other chores and onto the back of a horse, I loved going to the north pasture to clean the water trough.  Silly, really, but it stood directly in the sun and made the most satisfying splash when the water was dumped onto the ground.  Scrubbed clean with water and Listerine, it smelled so fresh and inviting.  It took 15 minutes to fill and I’d sit in the grass, absorbing the sun and listening to the birds and the rustle of the surrounding woods.  When the trough was full, I’d slowly stand and slide through the wire fence to turn off the hose.  Sometimes, it was so hot and the water so fresh and inviting that once the trough was full, I’d stick my arms down to the bottom of the tub, feeling the bitingly cold water chill my arms to the elbows.

In September 2005, we, the barn staff, were told that the barn was going to close.  This was after a summer of budget cuts on our part to make sure the barn was running as cheaply as possible.  The barn manager asked if we were continuing the next year, and council representatives assured us that we were.  We asked if we could solicit funds from large donors, since many of us had good contacts in the equestrian world.  We were told no: there were council people who would write letters of solicitation, send them to us, and we could work from there.  These letters were never sent to us, and to the best of our knowledge were never produced.

It was then revealed that the board had decided to close the barn at a meeting in April of that year, and had allowed us to go through the summer asking troops for money for the horses and operations.  It wasn't until September that we were told to sell the horses by October and begin cleaning out the barn.  We asked for more time, as a month leaves little time to sift through unscrupulous buyers (slaughterhouses and the like).  It was granted.

In the meantime, we started contacting members to ask for support for a campaign to keep the barn open.  As far as we could tell, the information that we were closing was not spread very far.  After concern and support was expressed from the membership, Council officials met with concerned members but never really answered our questions about why the donation letters never appeared.  They told us they would keep the tack in storage in case money was raised to re-open the barn.  In the meantime we had to sell the horses and move out of the barn.  Barn staffers countered that tack can't be stored without considerable upkeep: leather cracks, synthetic materials degrade.  They told us to sell it.

Once the horses, tack and barn cats were sold, it was very difficult to keep up interest in the project as people looked elsewhere for activities.  The program is now dead.  Shortly after it died, we were told that the outdoor program staff who worked on the lakes saw the writing on the wall and quit.

We were devastated when the horse program was closed.  No more trail rides through the pine forest.  No more lunches eaten at Cricket’s Corner or trips to bounce on Garfield’s floor with an overnight group.  No more pristine moments in the north pasture.  And no more horses, barn cats or uninvited chipmunk lunch guests.  Price had trumped place for the people who kept the books at GSLEC, and we just didn’t make enough money.  We were expected to leave as if it were any other job.  The problem was, it wasn’t any other job.  By the time we left, I’d spent 20 years in that place.  I could (and often did) walk its path in my sleep.  I had a head full of songs about slugs, frogs, barges, and campfires.  I knew how to correctly roll a tent flap and could see canoes lit by torches coming across Lake Linnea in my mind’s eye.  There wasn’t an inch of that place that I didn’t associate with some fond memory, not an ounce of soil that didn’t make me smile.

It was one of the barn cats though that really drove home the fact that from that first campout at Gemini cabin to the moment I left, this place had become home.  Blair was one of three cats who had been given away when we sold the horses.  About a week after we’d given Blair away, I was met at the door to the tack room by an awe-struck co-worker.  “Look!” she cried pointing into the tack room.  There was Blair, sitting where the cat-food bowl once sat, meowing angrily.  “He was on the porch when I got here,” my co-worker explained.  The frazzled-looking and hungry cat had walked over six miles from the house of his new family to the place he too knew as home.  The veterinarian told us we’d need to find a home where Blair could be an indoor cat so that he wouldn’t get hurt attempting to walk back to camp again. After all, he knew the way now.  So, after talking to the owners Blair rejected, he came to live with me.  He broke my heart as he cried the entire way from the barn to my house and then refused to leave my side for days after he’d gotten there, clinging to the one familiar piece of his old life.

Blair has gotten used to indoor life.  He is a connoisseur of pillows and enjoys antagonizing my dog.  I know he misses being outside though.  He often cries at the front door and uses every available opportunity to sneak out that door if we don’t pay close attention.  I know how he feels.  I miss the days we spent at camp too.