Mission Moment: Lake Life in Alabama — New Skills, Different Challenges, Always Fun

Lake Martin, in Jackson’s Gap, Alabama, gleams like a sheet of mica in soft early sunlight. Soon, the stillness is broken by laughter and shouts of joy as campers, fueled by breakfast, caffeine, or sheer enthusiasm make their way to venues where they will try out new sports. They may glide down a zip line, play a raucous game of water polo, go tubing, enjoy a round of mini-golf, and watch darkness fall while toasting marshmallows over a campfire, loudly and jokingly chastising anyone who lets one melt and plop into the flames. 

This is Shepherd Center’s Adventure Skills Workshop (ASW) — affectionately known as just “camp” — held annually on the 130 wooded acres of Alabama’s Special Camp for Children and Adults (ASCCA). 

Kelly Edens, CTRS, Shepherd Center’s recreation therapy manager, finds the camp “very meaningful” personally. And for campers and their families, she says, it often represents a new beginning. “Seeing someone on their jet ski for the first time, or their water ski, when they didn’t think they could do it—you’re giving them hope,” she says. “Last year, we had someone who had been in a crash on their way to a family kayaking trip. One year later, he’s at camp, getting in a kayak with his dad.” 

For about half of each year’s participants, camp is their first experience with Shepherd Center — but it’s usually not the last. “They end up doing other things with us,” Kelly says. The other half are returnees, “coming back to camp as mentors, showing others, ‘Hey, you can do this.’’’ 

Staff members are as enthusiastic as campers. 

Gavin McClintock, CTRS, is an outdoor recreation specialist who serves as camp logistics coordinator. “Participants realize new potential in themselves that they may not have seen otherwise,” he says. “That is why I love ASW. It turns ‘I can’t’ into ‘I can’ and is often the stepping stone for a more adventurous life.”

“The emotions, smiles, stories, and bonds that are shared during this weekend are priceless and can make anyone happy, just thinking about them,” says recreation therapist and ASW schedule coordinator Juliana Heimann, CTRS. “ASW changes lives.” 

The Rush of Water Skiing 

Madison Russell, 24, a self-described “adrenaline junkie,” came to camp in 2023 and loved it — especially water skiing, which she tried for the first time. She attended a water ski clinic sponsored by Shepherd Center at Lake Allatoona a few months later, and returned to camp in 2024, skiing every time she could get her name on the list. 

A former Shepherd outpatient, Madison, a digital accessibility specialist for a publishing company, uses a wheelchair because of damage to her spinal column caused by a cyst, a condition called syringomyelia. She was 18, a freshman at Rochester Institute of Technology, when the first symptoms occurred.

At camp she is ready to move up from beginner status to an intermediate skier. Shepherd therapists help her out of her chair, into a life jacket, and onto a ski. They hand her a rope and the boat pulls her out onto the lake until she appears from the bank as a tiny speck in the water. The boat circles two small islands and heads back. As she returns, the crew watching from the shore cheers her on with whoops and whistles. 

Shepherd Center’s community is as significant to Madison as the opportunity to try new activities. “I knew I wanted to find other people with similar disabilities, but I didn’t know where to go,” she says. “Until I connected with Shepherd, I had no idea what I was doing. With Shepherd, I have all the resources I need.” 

Jumping into Adventure 

Casey Schumacher has attended Adventure Skills Workshop four times but never played inner tube water polo until 2024. She took to it immediately, grabbing the ball from players much larger and stronger as laughter and trash talk from the pool resounded throughout the camp. Casey, who’s in her early 30s now, was just 27, on a business trip from her home in Seattle to New York City, when she collapsed. Physicians still don’t know the cause, says her mother, Chris. 

Multiple shocks restored her heartbeat, but she was without oxygen for about 10 minutes. The result was an anoxic brain injury, which, in Casey’s case, caused difficulty forming words and walking. 

After four months of rehabilitation in New York, Casey returned with her parents to their home in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and enrolled in Shepherd Pathways, Shepherd Center’s outpatient rehabilitation program for people with brain injuries. Working with a multidisciplinary staff there, Casey made great progress, Chris says. 

“Pathways is wonderful,” Chris explains. “When she started out there, she was in a wheelchair, and when she graduated, she was using a walker. She’s been back two times since. Do you see a walker now?”

Casey strolls over to grab a towel to wipe the pool water off her face — no walker in sight. 

‘Living Proof’ 

His name is Ant-Man, he says, like the size-shifting Marvel superhero. Antavious Morgan’s dad called him that as a boy, and it stuck. He was driving a truck on June 13, 2019, when the brakes went out and he ran off the road and crashed into a tree. Three weeks later, he was in rehabilitation at Shepherd with a spinal cord injury. 

“I couldn’t do anything,” says Ant-Man, 34. “I couldn’t move. I had no sense of direction on how life would be. Going to Shepherd was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. They taught me how to do things on my own. It showed me that I could accomplish more than I thought I could.” 

After he graduated from the inpatient Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program, he went through outpatient therapy three times, and then Beyond Therapy®, a Shepherd Center program that promotes lifelong wellness and maximum muscle and neural return. 

He was at Shepherd’s Adventure Skills Workshop for the first time in 2024 to apply his confidence to some adaptive sports. Over two days, he propelled his wheelchair from lake to pond to field, making the most of his time. 

Two experiences stick out. He drove a jet ski, flipped it over in the middle of the lake, and fell into the water along with two therapists. “It was me and two other dudes,” he says. “That was the funnest thing! It was cool!” And he tried the zip line. “At first it was kind of scary, just looking at the height,” he says, “but I ended up going through with it, and it turned out to be fun.” 

Ant-Man wears a necklace with big sparkling letters that spell out “Living Proof.” He says it sums up his gratitude to Shepherd Center for the encouragement and inspiration he received along with the therapy. “Somebody motivated me,” he says. “I just want to spread that message.”

Written by Gayle White

This story is an excerpt from “Mission Moments: 50 Years of Rebuilding Lives One Moment at a Time,” a book celebrating Shepherd’s 50th anniversary in 2025.