By Drew Demery
The coolest thing about summer camp is the opportunity to make new friends and feel accepted for who you are. For someone like me, a classic loner who floated between cliques, summer camp was perfect for finding my humanity as well as my identity.
Sure you can learn new skills, get bulls-eyes and go on amazing adventures, but those will always come in a close second in my mission for camping. For me the number one best thing about camp is the sense of community and belonging it creates. This community is vast, diverse and trained to be inclusive. I’m not just speaking from a staff member’s point of view here, but I also believe the children are trained to be inclusive. Counselors are always (at a good camp) rewarding kids who are kind, inclusive, respectful and compassionate.
This setting was perfect for me, somebody who didn’t have a lot of close friends but had a fair amount of friendly acquaintances. These acquaintances were friends that I might just say “hey how’s it going” in passing or “like” their status or smile at in the hallway. But I’d never tell them anything really meaningful, hard-hitting or substantial. It’s largely because of this kind of on-the-surface interaction that I found myself lonely, depressed and isolated after my first year of college. Then I signed up to be a camp counselor, went through adversity (both manufactured and organic) with my peers (people who were trained and rewarded for being compassionate and inclusive) and created real friendships. I finally had people I could trust and that set the stage for a meaningful life.
It’s because of these kinds of success stories (camp staff see it every week) that I will always find more value in the community building aspects of camp than the hard skills and even the adventures. In an ever isolating world, camp has the power to bring us together and thus create a better tomorrow. I know that I can go and develop skills by myself: I can go to the backyard and shoot archery all day long and eventually be great at it. Just like I can also go on adventures by myself and take some great photos, but what I can never have is a successful community of one. When we unite, include and care we create meaning.
