Smiling

Everyone who has anything to do with camp is smiling a lot these days.  That may confuse some of you because you know that, actually, the final days of camp -- the one when the campers left and the next one when the staff left -- were major crying fests.  Ending camp and leaving friends is very emotional, and even stressful, so crying is completely understandable.

However, once the crying has ended there are a lot of smiles because camp was so much fun and every time we think of it we can't help but smile.  Camp memories are joyful.  Camp friends are one-of-a-kind.  How lucky we are to have them both.

So my prediction was correct (see blog below).  The blogging team just couldn't find time to write one more in-camp entry.  That's how busy we were, night and day, which is a good thing.  The Week 8 Musical Review (Wednesday) and Campstock V (Thursday) were even better than we had hoped, and our final week of camp was just amazing.

What happens when it's all over?  Once the campers are safely on the buses for their final Friday night trips home, all the staff who are not bus counselors organize quickly into work crews and spread out across the campus to finish cleaning, sorting, boxing, labeling, lugging, and storing.  Because we are using a school campus, there's no time to waste as we want to finish everything up so Blair can get ready for the return of their students.

Our staff has its official farewell at a late-night banquet Friday, followed this year by a slide show and a video presentation, then a dance party and campfire and perhaps some sleep.  Morning came early on Saturday as everyone had to be up for breakfast, a last few chores and then the departures of the staff.  This last step takes several hours, but once our staff has headed off, we have a 10-person work crew that stays until Sunday night to be certain everything is tidy and in perfect order.  And this summer a couple of us -- Duncan and I -- stayed until Monday morning.  And that was it.  We disappear very quickly.

But I've definitely been smiling all this week as I look back at the photos and think about this 20th summer of CK-NJ.  We'll be talking about this summer for a long time, while also planning for Summer 2011.  We've already been receiving ideas from staff, parents and campers (thank you) and are ready to start putting together the ideas, the staff and the program for another unforgettable summer.

First, however, it's time for a brief pause.  Teri, Jeremy and I will actually stop working on camp (and maybe even stop thinking about it, though that is difficult to do) and each find our own way to relax and rejuvenate.  When we come back together, the conversation will be lively and the ideas will be flowing, and the camp cycle will begin again.

Best of luck as you go back to school or to work or just try to figure out what you're doing next.  One thing I know about each one of us -- we'll be smiling every day because we had the summer of our lives.

Tom

August Days

On August 3rd, I set up this page and started to write a blog entry and  . . . poof! . . . just like magic, it's suddenly August 9th (and then, poof again, it's August 12).  That's frustrating because I wish we had more time to keep up with the blog during the summer, but it's actually a good thing because we have been so busy at camp that sitting down to write is hard to do.

August days at camp bring mixed feelings.  We're still enjoying ourselves and are discovering new activities all the time.  But we're also seeing that the end of the summer is just down the road.  So the best thing to do is make the most of every day we have and enjoy all that camp has to offer.  Let me share a few August moments.

We had our "Weird Show" (which is a weird name for a show, right?).  It's called that because it has an unusual mixture of performances: percussion, gymnastics and dance.  The campers and staff from each program area (and there's a lot of overlap), create unique performances which end up blending into a really entertaining evening.

We had a spontaneous mini-water world, with one of our gigantic slip-n-slides.  It's just a way to get wet, but there's something fun about doing it this way.  Speaking of spontaneous and creative, Free Style Walking has broken out on the campus and you wouldn't believe the enthusiasm for this extremely creative, very wacky and quite aerobic workout.

Fitness, as it turns out, continues to become more and more popular among our campers, which means that our activity called "fitness center", as well as jogging, yoga ("broga" for boys and "yogirl" for girls) are chosen by lots of campers.  That's why last night's mini-marathon and track events were a highlight of the week.

August brings sounds of Campstock to our campus as both campers and counselors form up bands and rehearse for our final night music festival.  Also in preparation for Campstock, tie dyeing starts to be a constant activity as everyone creates their festival garb.  And in the creative arts department, the discovery of different colored and patterned duct tape has opened up a whole new world of crafting.  Strange, but true.

The Week 8 musical is also very much in evidence.  This year it's a series of scenes from different shows, which means we actually have several complete sets of actors-singers-dancers-directors-choreographers-designers preparing mini-shows.   It's a good way to give the large number of talented staff and campers enough to do.

We're not known much for nature study at our camp, but I got to help lead a couple of walks -- we called them perambulations -- into the woods on the blue trail to Lake Genevieve.  It's amazing how a simple stroll in the woods can yield so many fun discoveries as we found evidence of the old Girl Scout camp (but no old Girl Scouts themselves).  We heard birds, found a katydid, saw deer bones, saw some really cool thistle and cattails, skipped rocks, watched frogs hop and made some new friends.

We're also not an extremely competitive camp in terms of sports, but we have recently held a large soccer tournament and are about to have a mini-RobLouJen tournament.  Danny has also been leading us weekly in Ro-Sham-Bo (rock-paper-scissors) tournaments and I have yet to get past the second round.

The social dynamic in August is a little different because we have a combination of campers who have been here since the beginning of the summer and campers who have just joined us.  It's a friendly mixture and a more mellow feeling than the first weeks of camp.  This is the time of the summer, also, when we get more people asking for tours (looking ahead to 2011) and alumni visiting.  Everyone realizes that summer is drawing to an end and they'd better get their camp visit in ASAP.

Tonight was our Week 7 Talent Show.  Once again, we enjoyed a wide variety of acts and were treated to innovative techniques in hosting a talent show.  After the show, we walked out into a drizzling rain, so the evening programs for our older divisions are being held indoors.   That's not such a bad thing; we've really been needing more rain this summer (strange for a camp director to say that).

Well, one of my jobs (though it's much more fun than a job) is to work with Teri to co-lead out staff assistants.  This means that we have a bunk meeting every night and I don't want to miss it.  Tonight we are splitting into two groups: one of first-year "staffies" and one of the second-years.  Bunk meetings with the staff assistants, all former campers, are always fun, interesting and even inspiring.

We hope everyone who is not at camp is having a great summer, though we truthfully can't imagine that you could be having as much fun as we are.  Perhaps Teri, Jeremy or I will get a chance to blog again before summer is over.  If not, we'll see you afterwards.

Tom