Camp Fun and Whimsy
I love when we get to celebrate firsts here at camp! A very exciting first we celebrated recently was the beginning of our first ever Starter Camp. On Saturday, we welcomed four cabins full of brand new campers who’ll be here at camp until the close of D session. It’s always a joy to see new faces at camp and to know that, in no time at all, they’ll be the familiar faces of veterans in this space.
I also love that every day at camp is special. Camp is a place where whimsical moments abound! Goofy jokes shared at the table, silly songs sung outside the Dining Hall, and an air about the place that allows people to dance to the beat of their own drums. Camp’s the kind of place where even a snack can become a wonderful plot twist and a seemingly regular Tuesday can be turned into a holiday all its own.
Yes, every day at camp is special. For our Main Campers though, today just so happened to be a little more so! Most Sundays of the summer are actually called “Special Day.” We call it that because we change just about everything in our normal schedule on Sundays. We treat ourselves to a nice little sleep-in until breakfast at 9am, followed by an endless glut of pancakes! Each Special Day has its own theme, with all the activities and staff-run skits centered around it.
Today, that theme was Scooby Doo! Campers had the opportunity to chase ghosts through Brookside, paint their cabin’s very own Mystery Machine, and crack the case of our missing Program Leaders! In a moment of pure coincidence, we realized that even our snack had been on brand: puppy chow. I think that’s a Scooby Snack that’s worthy of the Mystery Inc. gang!
Our Mountainsiders have spent the day playing big games, having a Lake party, and anxiously anticipating their adventure placements! As we mentioned in our last update, the Mountainsiders concluded their last mini-adventures this week. Tomorrow night, they’ll head over to the Hunt Farm property across the road. We call this evening for Mountainside “Midsummer Night.” There, the community will picnic, watch the sunset, perhaps play a staff versus camper soccer match, and maybe find out which adventure they’ll be going on this summer!
Not to be outdone, the Riverside crew is getting right back at it! Though it seems like they’ve only just returned from their rock climbing adventure, they took a trip to the French Broad today in anticipation for their four day whitewater paddling adventure that they’ll launch into next week.
Our Young Leaders have been phenomenal additions to the community. Each meal, they set tables and serve food without fail. I’ve seen them crushing it by shadowing in morning program and this morning they built and ran cabins through an obstacle course of their own design.
So much of camp is made of of the small, unreplicable moments: a solved mystery, *zoinks* a puppy chow coincidence, a sunset picnic on the eve of one’s next great adventure. None of it would make the front page of our lives or feature prominently on most of the social media feeds we often frequent. But that’s exactly the point. Whimsy isn’t something we can schedule into our day. There is no way to “whimsy-max,” as the kids would probably cringe to hear me say. It’s just what happens in a place that gives people room to be a little silly, a little brave, and a little more themselves. New campers or veterans, Mountainsiders, Riversiders, or Young Leaders, we’re so glad to get to be swept away in the magic, the fun, and the whimsy of camp with all of them!
