Greetings from Hilltop. It’s another glorious summer day on Orcas. Today marks the end of the first week of Second Session. So far, the session has been absolutely wonderful. The campers have settled in quickly, and Camp feels very much like home. It’s been great to see old friendships renewed and new ones form. It’s also been great to see the counselors start over again, after a bit of rest, in the middle of their own camp experience but taking the care necessary at the beginning of these campers’ experience. It doesn’t hurt that every day so far has been absolutely perfect summer weather.
Today is also our first camp Sunday. We don’t have a religious component to our program at Four Winds, but we’ve borrowed a good idea from religious traditions all over the world to have one day a week set aside for a slower pace, reflection, celebration, and service. Particularly at a long-term camp, that change in routine is very helpful for processing this experience. On Sundays, we sleep in for an hour and have a nice leisurely breakfast. Afterward, we go to a special place in Camp and have Sunday Assembly, in which a cabin or tent leads us in a discussion of a topic important to Camp. Today, Flying Cloud led us in a discussion of friendship at Moonraker Point (I was pleased they chose the spot, selfishly, because it’s probably my favorite spot in Camp). After Sunday Assembly, we have Sunday Work Projects, where every cabin has a job to help out the community. We believe pretty strongly here that in any community, it’s important for all members to both give and receive, and so being a Four Winds camper is not a passive experience. After that, we have lunch, and then an extra long rest hour. In the afternoon, we have a special Sunday afternoon activity, which today is Regatta Day, where we’ll do fun dock stuff all afternoon. For Evening Activity, we’ll have perhaps our oldest, and certainly one of our most well-loved traditions, Evening Fire.
Friendship was a great topic for Sunday Assembly. It’s funny, having done this for so long now, I sort of divide the Sunday Assembly topics into familiar standards and deep cuts, and Friendship falls well into the former category. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth talking about again, just the opposite. It’s a familiar standard for a reason. It’s so fundamental to the Four Winds experience. While our activities are amazing, there are other places in the world where a child can learn to sail or ride a horse. The friendships that kids make here are so deep, satisfying, and genuine that they’re positively intoxicating. If you have a camper who’s returned for a number of years and have ever floated the idea of taking a year off (for a completely valid reason), only to be met with a surprisingly desperate look from your child, chances are it’s the friendships that are behind that look.
I think sometimes campers think that because these friendships seem to happen so much more easily here than in other places that they can only happen here. We do certainly have some things going for us. The simple reality of living together is one of them. The culture of accepting each other without conditions runs deep here and is supported from every direction. And we have time, both in the micro sense of having plenty of time to sit on a log or lie in the bunks while heading towards sleep to have that great heart to heart and in the macro sense of a full four weeks together. But a lot of what causes these great friendships to happen can be recreated in the outside world. It takes time, vulnerability, trust, and openness for friendships to form, and these campers are building those skills here, and they’ll be better at them when they return to what we at camp call “the real world.” I believe that a big part of it is also making, building, and sustaining friendships in a completely face to face way, with no digital filter. While these kids will have more access to technology when they go home, they’ll also have practiced face to face communication for four weeks here, and they’ll be better at it.
I should probably get off my soapbox for a second and tell you what we’ve been doing all week. As I reported in the first blog post of the session, Tuesday was Rotation Day, which went well and got the campers sorted and oriented to the summer. For Evening Activity that night, we played Biffer Medic, an elaborate game of tag in which campers attempt to match clues to staff members. We started classes on Wednesday and had Cabin Adventure (in which each counselor creates their own special activity for the cabin or tent) for Evening Activity. On Thursday, all the 8th grade cabins left on our first round of intermediate cabin trips left, Carlyn left on her 3 week adventure to Canada (Carlyn parents, all is well the crew, and they’ve currently in Nanaimo, BC), and in camp we had Sports Night for Evening Activity. We had a Folk Dance on Friday (crazy costumes and line dances on the Craft Courts). Finally, yesterday the 8th graders returned and we had Age Group Night in the evening.
It’s been a great first week, and I look forward to seeing to seeing what these campers and counselors do with the next three. If the first week is any indication, it will be deeply meaningful, a ton of fun, and a welcome break from the pressures of modern life for children. Thank you for sharing your children with us. Until next week, be sure to follow our daily updates on Twitter.