By CAROLYN BRODEUR
As a camp counselor I planned carefully to make every day a new adventure for my campers. I left nothing up to chance (or so I thought.)
But summer camp more closely resembles “organized chaos” than it does a “well-oiled machine”, the craziest things tend to happen when you least expect them. Working with kids alone can be unpredictable and when you factor in nature and the outdoors, you’re in for a world of new surprises!
Summer campers often get to experience things that they never thought they would happen at a suburban day camp, it can be a very eye opening experience for some kids (and camp counselors, too).
There wasn’t a summer that went by that my campers and I didn’t have “a big fish” tale to recount. During one of my first summer camps, at a Boys & Girls Club day camp in Massachusetts, I had booked a field trip to Plum Island. I had planned ahead and called to ensure the beach was open and that there would be parking. My lifeguard and I packed up two vans full of tweens and off we went.
However, it was quickly apparent when we got there, that no one had told me that it was Greenhead (biting fly) season. We were swarmed by them the moment we stepped out.
We quickly made the decision to turn around and head back home (with a stop for ice-cream along the way). Even after we had gotten back in the vans there were still a few straggler flies. Some of the kids were crying and others were squishing the flies to protect their friends. You would have thought that such an experience would have put a damper on their summer, but it didn’t, it soon became the stuff of legends, complete with millions of flies, damsels in distress and heroes.
Animals always seemed to make an appearance during summer camp. One summer, some of our campers “rescued” three Starling fledglings that had fallen out of their nest, I ended up taking them in and feeding them, keeping them in a basket that traveled with me everywhere. Another time I had taken the group for a nature walk on the Winter’s Branch Trail behind the Manassas Boys & Girls Club and showed my group of campers the bat houses.
A few evenings later, as we waited in the parking lot for parents to pick kids up from a late field trip, we were barnstormed by bats chasing after bugs. The kids were amazed and in awe, and armed with information they had learned earlier that week they were not the least bit afraid.
It never surprised me that a suburban day camp could be packed full of outdoor experiences, I had grown up spending as much time outdoors as possible and learning everything I could about the world around me. But I didn’t have cable TV, or a computer, or video games. For many of the kids in my camps all of this was new and exciting, a real adventure. I relished in the excitement and thrill that I saw in my summer campers eyes when they experienced something new outdoors, saw a new wild animal for the first time, or learned something exciting about the world we live in. It made all my hard work worthwhile (even when things didn’t go as planned.)
If you would like to help kids open the door to a world of new experiences, then consider volunteering or working for a summer camp near you. You may have your own adventure stories to tell.
Carolyn Brodeur is the Assistant to the Regional Directors for the Boy & Girls Clubs of Prince William County/Manassas located in Dumfries, Dale City and Manassas.
