C Session – Opening Day!

Dear Parents and Friends,

Thanks for a wonderful opening day and hope that drop-off went well for you and family.  It’s nice to see so many familiar faces and returning campers from previous years.  It’s been a pretty smooth day as we dodged a few rain showers here and there.  As many of you know we jump right into the program after lunch and everyone has had a chance to sign up for their Discoveries which will start in the morning.  Everyone in camp participated in their swim assessments and the following activities were open this afternoon: Tie-Dye, Archery, Mill, Pottery, Fine Arts, Crafts, Horses, Lake Fun, Camping Skills and Nature, Climbing, The Farm, and Sports.

I saw lots of campers who know each other get reacquainted as folks arrived.  This seems to be a phenomenon that most easily happens with girls and some of our oldest campers, Riverside, Young Leaders, and SIT’s.  The boys are a bit more shy or more cool about breaking back into those relationships.    That’s the way it’s always been.  It’s also pretty amazing to see the growth in many of our campers, both the physical and emotional maturity.  Anne and I have been here long enough to really see our campers come back as staff and they are just great people.  I guess we’re growing more than food at the Farm.

Dinner tonight was our usual child-friendly noodles and marinara sauce with fresh broccoli and salad from the garden as well as homemade bread, parmesan cheese, and of course the giant chocolate chip cookie for each cabin.  It’s a great way to break into our food realm, introduce the GV way of table etiquette and a generally good start to the day.  We had a little thunder and our Thor system told us we needed to stay inside just after dinner.  We usually have after supper games each night so tonight we went straight to the Lodge, sang some songs and then Lauren told a Tajar Story that Daniel (Head Counselor from Hillside) wrote several years ago.  It’s a great story and despite the fact that some of these children don’t really believe in the Tajar, they hold this folklore close to their heart. No older camper would dare say that the Tajar doesn’t exist.  That would not be “GV” as we say here.

Anne and I entertained our two grandsons tonight during dinner and the two-year-old was quite afraid when he came for staff training not long ago. I suppose too many big people for him.  Tonight when he arrived, he was all about being here and my guess was the fact that so many children were here and some were the size of his older brother, who is six.  He just marched around like he owned the place and listened quietly to the story in the Lodge after dinner.  That child-like intuition of the simple joys reigns supreme here.  We do our best to foster the wonder, awe, beauty, and innocence of childhood while campers are here.

 

Children grow up too fast and we want to contribute to appropriate growth as we partner with you.  Providing them with the appropriate challenge, making decisions on their own, stretching themselves and learning new skills in a new environment contribute to building healthy habits later on in life.  Outcomes are important to us.  While their time here is short we want to do our best to create a wholesome and fun environment to be in.  Thank you for contributing to this recipe as we mix things up and add ingredients to our mountain environment over the next 10 days and 3 weeks.  Stay tuned!