Summer Camp Planning Officially Under Way

This past weekend was one of my favorites of the year. It was the Summer Camp Leadership Staff Spring Retreat. For two nights and three days we travel north to Wisconsin to use a beautiful cabin in the middle of the woods. There is no running water (we have to haul it all up the hill), no electricity (lights are all propane lights), no heat (we use a large wood burning stove) for us to use. Three full time staff and seven summer staff to talk summer camp with very little sleep and lots of banter. It is at this weekend that we begin to set the tone for the coming summer. We go through every possible detail no matter large or small from what was learned as a whole last summer to what should be happening between 6:45 and 7:15 on Sunday evening during the summer. All of that is well and good. All of that is important that we discuss it. But more importantly I love watching the group come together. I love watching a group of college age kids grow from a summer staff who in some sense follow a schedule for the summer to a confident young adult who helps create a schedule that will have an affect on thousands of children for a summer. I love seeing them debate the philosophy of why we do things, to debate with one another and at the end realize it was all okay and that they are still friends and in some ways deeper friends. I love going deeper into the reasons we do what we do, and in some cases finding out that we can in fact do it better. I just love it. There are a thousand laughs, and inside jokes (like the guy that became the dolphin of the mammal world), and deep discussion about what we are trying to do as a summer camp to enhance and touch the lives of children. If you are a parent who is contemplating sending your child to camp for the first time, the parent who is on their fifth kid coming to camp and is a legacy, or somewhere in between. You can have confidence in the fact that every aspect of camp has been debated, deconstructed, analyzed, challenged and built to become the best possible experience for your child. It now is not just a couple guys who work full time trying to make a difference, but now a team of 10 who are sold out to the camp experience. In fact the relationships we built are done in three days. Now give us a week with your child and imagine what we can do?