Summer Camp

Summer camp is one of those things that, if you’ve done it, you probably have great memories, perhaps even friends you made that you are still in contact with or maybe some token you hung on to that you made during craft time that evokes memories of your time at camp. If you didn’t have a summer camp experience, well, none of the experiences I mention will likely resonate at all. Camp could be enabling, it could be freedom and autonomy, it could be self-discovery and exploration, but what I recall most is that it was incredible fun that has stuck with me for all my years.

My own experience with camp was through a summer program that I was part of when I was a kid. It was called SPEAR (Serving People with Education, Arts and Recreation). It was run out of a Lutheran church a few blocks from our house. SPEAR was originally chartered to summer activities and support for children in the area during part of the summer in Spokane. Mostly, I think it was an opportunity for my Mom to get us out of the house for a few hours several days a week during the summer.

When our family discovered it, I was in the oldest group. There were crafts, snacks, games and outside activities and the general sorts of things one would do in a day-camp scenario. It was probably only 2-3 hours a day a few days a week.

The highlight of the summer, though, was the five days we got to go to overnight camp at Camp Lutherhaven on Lake Coeur d’Alene about an hour outside town.

We’d take the yellow school bus from the parking lot of the church would pick up kids from several other SPEAR programs around town and make our way out to camp. There were older people, but still young, probably 17-20, acting as our Counselors.

My initial recollection of camp revolved around the stress of finding out who was in your cabin, because it was a combination of folks you knew and new folks from the other programs. There were lots of activities to keep us out of trouble including archery, frisbee, football, kickball, crafts, swimming and canoeing. The food was served in a large lodge with lots of tables and we ate cafeteria style and each cabin had to clean up it’s own area. At night there was a campfire and there were camp songs and skits. This was a slightly religious program and camp, sponsored by the Lutherans, so there was a bit of religious material, but was the opposite of pushy.

The dominant feelings I recall are nervousness to start out with, followed by a great deal of fun, culminating with regret that it was coming to an end too soon and we’d all be going our own ways again.

I stayed with the SPEAR program and continued on to become a “Junior Counselor” and then a Counselor that was paid for my time. I think it was the first job I was paid $100 for my time during the summer. I would have done it for free, it was so much fun. My friend Mike and I were co-counselors of the little kids group and we would come up with activities like paper plane contests and various races to try and burn out their energy.

I recall two boys, fraternal twins, who joined as five year olds. They were very shy and had never been away from their parents for any length of time prior to this experience. Over the summer, Mike and I were able to coax them out of their shells and get them socializing with the other kids and by the summer they were as loud and rambunctious as any of the other kids. I recall taking quite a bit of pride in that. I even ran in to their mother a few years later and she told me they still talked about that summer and how much they enjoyed their time with us.

That last summer we worked as Counselors before we turned 16 and took jobs elsewhere, we also got to be Counselors out at Camp Lutherhaven. We were definitely on the young side but we’d been doing this for a while and we did have a more senior Counselor looking over out shoulders, but we did our job and we got to hang out with the other Counselors after hours when the kids would go down and we were part of the team. One of the evening activities to wind down after a day of dealing with kids involved everyone sitting in a big circle and massaging the shoulders of the person in front of us while the person behind did the same to us. A big daisy-chain massage.

The camp was well maintained and it wasn’t particularly wild, but one time when Mike and I were running across a porch to get somewhere, we leapt off the porch in one direction and a skunk that we’d apparently scared from under the porch raced off in a slightly different direction. Each of us decided it might be for the best if we kept going so it didn’t escalate from there.

Another time Mike got in to a jousting match with a cranky goose. We’d been swimming in the rather large swimming area when a goose came on to shore. It spotted Mike who was on shore at the time and Mike more or less stood his ground as the goose spotted him and leveled its head and spread its wings, clearly disliking the cut of his jib. Then it honked and took a run at him from about six feet away, probably intending to bite him. Mike had his legs spread and as the goose approached, like a combination of leap frog and matador he sort of hopped over the goose as it ran through his legs. This happened another time or two before the goose decided to go elsewhere.

After I grew up and had kids of my own, of course I wanted them to have the camp experience as well. When my son was around seven, we sent him to his first overnight camp at a place called Camp Namanu out in Sandy Oregon. Like me, he was nervous and a bit scared when he went. When he returned he was filled with stories of activities and fun and friends. He was especially proud that he had to take care of himself and shower every day, brush his teeth and keep his area clean. We were impressed because these were things we were struggling to get him to do at home, so he definitely experienced some growth while there!

A few years later, when he was dealing with cancer, there were two or three years where he and and sister went to another camp on the Oregon coast called UKanDo. It was focused on kids with cancer and their siblings, so the activities took the kids situation and limitations in to account, but both kids enjoyed their camp experiences enormously.

As with many things, camp now comes full circle.

My daughter took a summer job working at Camp Namanu as a counselor. It’s not her first experience as a counselor as she had helped with her school’s Outdoor School before, but this will be her first time as an adult counselor. I really enjoyed talking with her about what her camp name would be, because that’s a big deal to her. When she did Outdoor School, they had camp names and she chose Oracle, which she thought sounded cool. Unfortunately, she was a counselor for fifth and sixth graders and they kept hearing “Orca” and she got tired of trying to explain that it was Oracle and what that meant, so she finished camp with a slightly different camp name than she started. She’s bound and determined to not see that happen again.

Camp can be, and was for me, one of those singular and transformative summer activities. It was part of me becoming more independent and social. It was eventually part of me becoming a working person and responsible for my own group of campers. Eventually it had a similar effect on my own kids and I’m thrilled to see my daughter carrying that in to her own adulthood as she begins to influence young lives for herself.