Boys Camp
Page 6
REAL BOYS CAMP STORIES
Tom Gibian
Summer camp is both a place and a state of mind. Summer camp is for everyone, including you, whether you go to a real camp, or experience Camp Wolf Trail through this series, or even make up your own camp. Tom Gibian has known the magic of camp all his life. He started as a camper when he was a young boy, became a teen counselor, and served as a staff person as an adult. Tom is also the father of several campers and counselors. He certainly learned to love and appreciate children along the way. Now he spends most of the year as headmaster of Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland. In his essay below, you’ll learn that even after all these years, Tom still carries the joys of camp around with him every day.
Turn off the air-conditioning. Roll down the car windows. Take that first deep breath of sun-dappled mountain air.
You don’t need a GPS to tell you that you’re leaving behind the everyday world that’s sometimes dull and predictable, full of handheld devices, microwaved meals, and yawns of boredom. You’re climbing to where the air is sweet, coming nearer to the place where you’ll connect with yourself and recognize the best in others.
You’re going to camp.
At camp, there are no report cards, no one really minds when you shout or sing at the top of your voice, ripped T-shirts are the height of fashion, and even the morning walk through the woods from your cabin to the dining hall is extraordinary.
You’ll be sunburned, dirty, mosquito-bitten, and possibly without your toothbrush from the day you arrive. You’ll find out that salamanders can be caught, held, stroked, and released. You’ll climb up steep rock walls, paddle through white water rapids that bounce around boulders, and hike along narrow, twisting paths. You’ll make so much noise at dinner that you’ll practically raise the dining hall roof.
At night, around the campfire, you’ll hear your friends tell stories about gigantic obstacles they’ve overcome, doubts they’ve blown to smithereens, fears they’ve stared down, friends they’ve supported, and high fives they’ve extended. And you’ll tell your own great stories too. You’ll feel unbelievably connected to your new best friend who is sleeping in the bunk above you, even when you don’t know his last name yet.
You’ll learn your camp’s crazy and amazing traditions, like celebrating Christmas in August or smearing pudding all over your body and then diving into the lake. You’ll figure out—without a dictionary or a guidebook—the wonderful, ever-changing vocabularies that are created, shared, perfected, and discarded to be replaced by other, different perfect words from one camp generation to the next.
You might set forth on ten-day wilderness trips carrying everything you need in a pack on your back. You might launch candle-carrying homemade boats that reflect their candlelight on the lake water during silent ceremonies.
Camp is the place where you’ll experience homesickness for the first time. And, more importantly, for the last time, as you move toward independence, toward who you really are when you get to choose and to make decisions for yourself.
At camp, you’ll find out what your own quirky, unique talent may be. You’ll find it out noisily, happily, and naturally, not because you don’t have any responsibility but rather because a lot is expected of you. Others will depend on you to find dry firewood, wash out pans in a stream, and divvy up food that you and your friends separately lug up and down trails until it can be collectively cooked, eaten, and thoroughly enjoyed. You can take on the responsibility of walking “Sweep” at the end of the line of hikers, which is a chance to make the slower kids laugh, the day-dreamers marvel, and the hustlers pace themselves while you point out a dozing rattlesnake or simply how sunlight comes through the tree canopy to light up the path.
The experience of camp is real and authentic, immediate, unfiltered, joyful, and spirited. Camp will change you. And when everything doesn’t go as expected at camp, and you can be sure that it won’t, you’ll find out that forgiveness can be experienced in two ways—both given and received—that gratitude comes in waves, and that happiness is simple.
Stick the ANIMAL TRACKS card from the back of
your book in your back pocket and start exploring!
Keep a lookout for animal tracks:
•in your yard •in the park •on sidewalks •on the playground
•on the beach •in the woods •near a pond •in snow.
Keep track of the tracks you see.
Use a felt-tip pen to put a check next to them on your TRACKS card.
Make tracks!
Kick off your shoes, get your feet wet, and make tracks yourself. Hey, you’re an animal too!
Paws and Claws
Make your own track card by tracing or drawing your pets’ paws. See if your friends can identify whose-foot’s-whose.
Put Your Foot In It
Do this outside: Ask your friends to put their bare feet in paint and then step on paper. See if they can find their own feet.
Zoo-Do
Next time you go to the zoo, bring a pencil and some paper. Sketch any animal tracks you see. Better label them too!
Animal/Vegetable/Vehicle
Bikes, skateboards, leaves, acorns, bugs—all sorts of things leave tracks. In a small notebook, draw the most awesome ones you see.