Being Away

Last night, the dogs and I left camp and headed home. This morning, I had to be a ACA visitor at a camp that is about 4.5 hours south of my camp, just 2 hours south of my house.

I have two entirely separate lives. I have my life at home and my life at camp. I love them both, but they are so different and it is so incredibly weird to switch back and forth. I had a difficult time pulling myself away from the fun of this week, but after being home for a few hours, relaxing with my boyfriend, I didn't want to go back.

Today, I visited a camp to re-accredit it for the American Camp Association. I am friends with the director. This is his second summer as the director of that camp. He was previously a YMCA Day Camp director like me and also like me, he came into the camp after the previous director had basically run it into the ground.

He and I had lunch when he started as the director and I gave him tons of programming and staff training materials. We talked after last summer and he'd had so many of the same challenges I'd had my first summer, so I was eager to see how he was doing the second year.

The camp was beautiful and I was a little awestruck. It was located in the bluffs and it was so picturesque that I was a little bit speechless. But as we toured, I started paying attention to the nooks and crannies and corners and I noticed that there were flaws and there was dirt and it wasn't perfect. And then I noticed that their arts and crafts area was just a little table in the corner of the basement of their dining hall. I noticed that their docks were old and crooked. I noticed that their bathrooms were dirtier than ours are! And I felt happy.

I wasn't being judgmental- I was not allowing myself to be blinded. Sometimes I am critical of my camp and sometimes I feel like we are so far behind other camps. It is easy to be blinded by a big climbing wall or gorgeous lakefront. But as I walked through I found myself thinking about my camp and how it was just as nice, maybe even nicer in some areas.

Last year and before coming to camp this year, I felt so hopeless. All I could see were the dirty nooks and crannies, not the beautiful parts of camp. But touring a beautiful camp that was so impressive and then comparing my camp and coming out ahead in some of the areas of comparison reminded me of how much I love this camp and how impressed I was when I first toured.

I don't want to give up. We have too much good to close the doors...