I have been an extremely errant camp blogger recently, with only myself and unforeseen circumstances to blame. It has been a reflective month for me, this November. Not the least because of camp.
How do any of us end up at camp?
The answer is probably fairly straightforward for those "legacy" campers I know, who attend camp because that's just what their family has always done and their summer vacation fate was set in stone from the cradle.
For the rest of us, the answers are probably pretty multifaceted. Me? My best friend in the world swore that Girl Scout camp was the greatest thing ever invented, and had my parents and I convinced the summer I was 12. With only ten days of memories, I had only a faint warm fuzzy camp feeling in my heart. It took a midterm college English paper about my experiences working for the Park Service to recall the inherent goodness of outdoor, community living and the joys of sharing a room with a half dozen other girls. So I applied. I picked the camp that would most impress my working cowboy peers at school (despite it being boys' only) and my life changed forever with the signing of a little two-month contract.
Where did you find that initial pull to come to camp, or send your child? Somehow, I think almost all humans share some personalized but intrinsic need to share a place and a purpose. Camp fills that void and then lends us just the right amount of freedom to create ourselves more fully. I hope more people stumble upon the spark that brings them back outside.
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