All summer, the river was still. Except, of course, for the bass and catfish cutting through the clear water, glinting in warm spots of sunlight that peaked through oak trees in the Texas Hill Country. The water was cool and bubbled gently in the breeze. Shade danced across the muddy patches of bright green summer grass on the banks.

Just outside of Hunt in Kerr County, Cypress Creek branched out from the Guadalupe River and trickled past cabins nestled in its meanders. The creek was home to swimming, diving, kayaking and canoeing. It saw generations of young girls learn how to fish. It was the kind of place where girls felt God’s presence. The kind of place where nothing bad ever happened.

Until it did.

Education junior and summer camp counselor Kristen Hibert didn’t grow up going to summer camp. In fact, the idea of leaving home had always made her nervous. Two years ago, a friend introduced her to Camp Mystic, a near-century-old Christian camp for girls.

“That was very much a God thing, because I was always terrified of leaving my parents when I was younger,” Hibert said. “So that was really big out of my comfort zone. But there was no hesitation with wanting to apply.”

When she arrived as a counselor in the summer of 2024, she was swept into a new world of tradition and faith.

“Everyone called it a slice of heaven because you just felt God’s peace there,” Hibert said. “I was met with so much love and just experiencing God’s creation and all of its fullness, rainbows every time it rained, the trees covered the river. It was just so beautiful.”

This summer, she came back in late June and was assigned to the youngest cabin at Cypress Lake, Camp Mystic’s upper site, where the girls were just 8 years old and many were away from home for the first time.

“We reassure [the parents] before they drop their kids off that we’re going to take good care of them,” Hibert said. “They’re terrified coming in, and we tell them, ‘You’re so brave for signing up.’”

And so her life at Mystic began again. It was built on joy, sisterhood and, most of all, teaching fishing. She connected with the girls on the banks of the river, watching them cast lines into the water.

“Fishing is always so fun because they dam it off, and it’s stocked with huge bass that have been there for 30 years,” Hibert said. “They have catfish and sunfish, little bluegill, and you have these little 8 year olds who are catching 12-pound catfish, doing their hardest to reel in this huge monster fish.”

Every so often,  Richard “Dick” Eastland — the longtime owner and executive director of the camp — would drive girls to the Guadalupe camp to cast lines in a different pond.

“He would come over in his truck and bring the Cypress Lake girls over to the Guadalupe,” Hibert said. “They thought that was so fun that they got to go into the other camp and fish in their pond. He taught girls how to tie fishing knots and how to put on a hook and how to toss a fish back in safely without hurting it.”

For six days, Hibert lived in this peace. She enjoyed dining hall food, cotton candy skies and tucking her campers in each night with prayers and promises of tomorrow.

“It was some of the best moments of my year,” Hibert said.

On July 3, every girl showered, brushed their teeth and chattered until Taps played, just like usual.

“Everyone was in bed at a decent hour, and I didn’t think anything of it,” Hibert said. “No one did.”

Then, the rain came.

“I remember it just felt weird,” Hibert said. “I don’t remember what really woke me up, because it wasn’t even bad outside yet. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, and a few minutes later, the rain started just pouring like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Thunder and lightning weren’t far behind.

“Next thing I know, I’m woken up by the worst thunder I’ve heard in my life,” Hibert said. “The whole cabin lit up like someone had turned the lights on. I had this pit in my stomach. It just kept getting worse.”

Little voices called out that it had woken them up, too. One camper came up to Hibert’s bed, sobbing, “The thunder’s in my ear.” Hibert prayed with her, asking for Jesus to give them a little peace of mind.

“She knew something was wrong, and I felt so bad,” Hibert said. “I couldn’t do anything.”

When they finally got out of bed on July 4, the power was out. The morning bugle call Reveille hadn’t played to wake them up, like it was supposed to. They lingered there in the cabin until senior staff brought them cereal. “Ration the milk,” they said. “Shelter in place.”

“I knew then, something was wrong,” Hibert said. “Because we’ve never had to ration anything before.”

At noon, Hibert and her co-counselors were finally called to a meeting. The senior counselors stood before them, still in last night’s soaking wet clothes, she noticed. With them was a pale-faced Catie Eastland, the director of the Cypress Lake camp.

“She said that during the night, while it was raining, the Guadalupe camp [was] completely destroyed,” Hibert said. “Everyone just falls to the floor and starts sobbing. While they were running from their cabins, a huge surge of water had come and completely wiped out a group of eight-year-old girls. Before that, Dick was the one who was leading them to higher land. And she had said, ‘Knowing Dick, he’s probably driving them in this truck to San Antonio.’”

Holding on to that hope, Hibert and the other counselors returned to their own campers.

“We just kept telling them everything’s gonna be okay,” Hibert said.

At dinner, the Cypress Lake girls were finally told what had happened and that they needed to go see their families. They were loaded onto buses, complaining about their belongings and the fact that camp was being cut short.

“We knew it was bad, but driving out of camp, big chunks of road were taken up out of the earth, and really big, sturdy oak trees were completely knocked down,” Hibert said. “You looked up and there were cars wrapped around trees. There were kayaks up 90 feet in trees, and then, looking into the Guadalupe River, it was like a raging sea. It didn’t feel like you were in the peaceful Hill Country.”

At the reunification centers, relief and grief battled.

“I’ve never seen a parent hug their child so tightly,” Hibert said.

Hibert had to borrow a phone to get in touch with her own family. She dialed her mom’s number.

“I ended up calling her at night from a random number, and she picks up, which she never does,” Hibert said. “The first thing she said was, ‘Kristen, baby, are you okay?’”

Her mom drove five hours that night to come pick her up.

“That whole time, I was just sitting with my campers and my co-counselors and girls who I thought didn’t even like me,” Hibert said. “Everyone’s praying for each other.”

She made it home eventually, gravely aware of the girls who didn’t.

“There was a lot of survivor’s guilt, and I think there still is,” Hibert said. “I was never angry. I had a lot of confusion, because I didn’t understand why the Guadalupe camp and not us. But there was just a sense of gratitude because we saw how awful it was. It was very evident that God’s hand was over the Cypress Lake camp. We didn’t understand why, and some of us still don’t. We never will.”

Now, Hibert spends her days studying at “Quadbucks” or pouring herself into her Christian women’s organization, Delight Ministries.

“I’ve kept in contact with some co-counselors,” Hibert said. “But, I feel like everyone’s doing their own thing now, and not that anyone has gotten over it, but I think we all have the same mutual understanding of, ‘I’m gonna give them their time to grieve on their own.’”

In the six days that Hibert spent as a counselor and fishing leader this summer, Camp Mystic had been her peace. The destructive water in particular  was the hardest image for her to reconcile with the camp she knew.

“Fishing was where girls found peace,” Hibert said. “It’s a beautiful pond, and the water’s still. Compared to when it happened, the waters were like a raging sea. It was unrecognizable. And just really sad, because the place that the girls had the most fun turned into something that devastated and took so many lives.”

Yet even in that devastation, Hibert remained steadfast in her faith. It was what Mystic girls did.

“I never doubted that God was good,” Hibert said. “I never doubted that he was with those girls in their final moments.”

This story was originally published on The Battalion on October 1, 2025.