MAGIC
rising
FROM THE PINES In the rur al outskirts of M organ Coun ty, Camp
Twin L akes resumes summer progr aming and
gears up f or further e xpansion
Dan Mathews, program director of
Camp Twin Lakes, with one of the
many motivational signs nailed on
trees through the property.
SUMMER 2021 | LAKE OCONEE LIVING 25
STORY BY PATRICK YOST
To get to Camp Twin Lakes you hang a right off
Kenchefoonee Road at the bright, sunny Camp
Twin Lakes sign. You drive past the Greater
Moses Baptist Church whose direction signs proclaims
that the Morgan County church is Winning Souls for
Christ.
Drive under a heavy shade cast by dense pine trees
and you come to a parking lot. Walk down a trail and
you literally are given a sign that this is a special place.
It is like others nailed to trees around the property of
the camp that annually takes in children with sickness
or developmental disabilities and gives them a week or
a weekend of nature and bliss and freedom.
The signs are written and constructed by both campers
and staff when the
whim strikes. They
are inspirational and
devotional. If a nail and
wood and paint can
bring the universe’s
focus onto these delicate
souls that briefly
populate these grounds,
then the rough composition
and thought is
practically holy.
And Dan Mathews
knows it.
Mathews first came
to Camp Twin Lakes in
the late 1990s. He would
volunteer two weeks of
his time-off from being
the director of therapeutic
recreation for the City of Savannah to be a volunteer
staff member for Camp Big Heart, an annual camp
for children with developmental disabilities. He saw
what the camp meant to these kids.
“They want the same thing everybody else wants,”
says Mathews, Camp Twin Lakes chief operating offi-
“Everything is possible.
Even the impossible,” the
sign reads.
“Kind heart. Fierce mind.
Brave spirit,” another sign
reads.