Greetings from Hilltop. We’re just about one week into First Session, and we are off to a wonderful start. I’m a fan of telling our staff that the feeling of Four Winds as a magical place in the summer isn’t automatic, but rather the result of the cumulative choices that all the campers and staff make. The campers and staff are doing a wonderful job of that. They’re having fun, they’re making great new friendships and enriching old ones, and they’re trying new things, trying the thing that makes them a little bit nervous. It’s exactly as it should be.
Camp has a way of warping your sense of time; in some ways, it feels like quite a while ago that the campers arrived, and in others, it feels like this week has flown by. It’s been a great one, getting everything sorted out as we need to at the beginning of every session, but more importantly, establishing our community.
Last night was Age Group Night, during which each age group had its own activity planned by its counselors. While Age Group Night was going on, I was running around camp checking in on things, taking care of little items on my checklist, and I was struck by how happy and engaged everyone was. We had our staff meeting late in the evening last night, as we always do on Saturdays, leaving the CTs to keep an eye on the campers while the counselors have a chance to touch base. Before the meeting, I ran into the senior counselors, and they were positively glowing about how happy and engaged their kids were. Many of our counselors do an activity called “rose, bud, thorn” at the end of the day, in which the campers report something that went well that day, something they’re looking forward to tomorrow, and something that was tough.
The senior counselors spoke about how their campers’ rose was, in many cases, making new friends and talking to people they haven’t really talked to before. For our senior campers, many of whom have been returning for several years, this can sometimes be a little bit of a challenge, but it is the way to make the most of this experience, and it’s fantastic to hear that they’re doing it.
Today is Sunday. We do things a little bit differently on Sundays. Four Winds has no religious component to its programming. We welcome people of all faiths and none at all, but we do borrow bits of wisdom from religious traditions all over the world. One of those is to take one day a week to step away from the usual routine, slow down a bit, focus on our values, on giving back to our community, and to reset for the week ahead.
We do that on Sundays at camp by sleeping in a little bit, having breakfast, going to a special place in camp, and having a cabin lead us in Sunday Assembly, in which we discuss a topic that’s important to camp. Today, it was Top Gallant talking about integrity and trust. After that, we change clothes and do work projects so we can give back to our community. Community was one of three words that our founder, Ruth Brown, chose to describe what Four Winds was all about, the other two being simplicity and creativity. Community comes up quite often in the Four Winds conversation, but there’s a risk that it can be one of those words that can lose its meaning. I like to say that in a community, everybody contributes and everyone receives, so it’s important that the campers have opportunities to contribute. Work projects are a huge part of that. After the work is done, we’ll have lunch, rest hour, and then a fun afternoon activity. Today, it’s Regatta Day, which is one of the favorites, and all the campers will go down to the dock and enjoy what the waterfront has to offer. After that, we’ll change back into our uniforms, go to flags and dinner, and then have Evening Fire, one of our oldest and most beloved traditions at Four Winds.
This first camp Sunday is already off to a great start. As we look forward to the rest of a wonderful day, we of course we still have three weeks ahead of us in this First Session. This is the real benefit of a longer-term camp: most kids in our country don’t get to go to camp at all. Those who do mostly go for one week. If these campers had gone home after seven days, it certainly would have been a positive experience, but they wouldn’t have the opportunity that the next three weeks will offer, and that additional benefit doesn’t just add on, it multiplies.
In one week, campers can have fun, meet new friends, and prove to themselves that they can be away from home. In four weeks, they do all that, plus they can make deep, genuine friendships that are much harder to make in the real world today, thanks to our digital filters and cultural challenges, than they are at camp. They’ll be able to try out new personas, figure out what kind of adults they want to be, overcome challenge, and lock in the benefits of real sustained growth that will benefit them throughout their lives.
I know those four weeks are a sacrifice for families in terms of time and money, and often their own anxieties. Thank you for making that sacrifice. It’s an honor and a privilege to share this experience with them, and I can’t wait to see it all unfold. Until next week, be sure to follow our daily updates on our Instagram stories. Keep those letters coming, and feel free to call us in the office if you need an update.