A Great Story!

 A note from BJ Murray - Summer Camp Director~

I love a great story.  Who doesn’t?  Growing up I was a reader, still am.  I would often imagine myself in stories I read or movies  I watched. Sometimes would act them out either with friends, or have imaginary friends that would play the different characters.  Or, we would have our GI Joes (it’s an action figure not a doll) and Star Wars figurines and either re-enact the movie or make up our own stories as it suited us. 

Think about your favorite stories, what was it, who was the main character, the hero, what was the challenge? Here is the point, Camp makes for a great story.  When you are a camper you create this great story of adventure, friendship, overcoming odds, and more.  Camp allows you to create your own band of brothers and sisters taking on challenges.  It allows everyone the chance to be a hero, because camp is about finding out what is best about you, and everyone gets to see that.

Camp allows for incredible memories which turn into the stories that campers tell their own kids someday.  How great is it to think that someday you or your kids will be able to say “Oh yeah, I know how to ride a horse, rock climb, and shoot a bow and arrow.  I know how to cook a meal over a fire, how to paddle a canoe and I know 10 songs off the top of my head.”

To me that is a great story.  It’s one of the reasons I love camp so much.  It has all the elements of the perfect story; a protagonist (camper), adventure (program areas), culture (arts and crafts, songs, the Arty Show), relationships (new and old friends), a challenge (maybe a touch of homesickness, fear of heights, you name it).  And at the end of all great stories the hero comes out finding out more about who they are, they have new friends, a new outlook on life, and overall are typically better people.  Camp gets to be that great place to live out your own story, and that is just cool.