If you think walking on cobblestones is difficult, try running barefoot through the woods.
For every time you’ve sworn at the uneven sidewalks outside the front gates, I’ve cursed at protruding tree roots and thorny green briar bushes that seem to be purposefully mauling my legs. Believe me, I have more than a decade’s worth of scars, and one nerve-damaged pinky toe, to prove it. Why on earth would anyone want to keep going back to the middle of some God-forsaken forest for 11 years? It’s called summer camp, and I go back because I love it.
I’ve been going to the same camp every summer since I was eight years old, the last four working as a counselor, and it’s been the most consistent presence in my life. Of course, more recently I wasn’t giddily running to different activities—I was initially far more absorbed with trying, in vain, to find cell service. Sometime between when I was a kid and today, I appear to have gotten attached to the idea that it was far more important to take life seriously than to let loose a little. Thankfully, camp taught me otherwise.
No cell coverage, coupled with barely any electricity, absolutely no internet, and only cold running water may not seem like the best amenities ever, but it’s not that bad—I challenge you to consistently get hot water for a shower on the upper floors of the Southwest Quad. Still, I’ll be the first to admit that camp is a little on the rustic side.
The ten weeks I spent working at camp this summer were essentially spent without any resemblance to the real world, and I think it’s that aspect of camp that made me fall in love with it. Yes, the counselors are some of my closest friends, and I do actually enjoy hanging out with children on a daily basis, but the most enchanting thing is that being at camp means leaving behind any trappings of real life.
There’s something delightful about receiving a letter, especially since snail mail was my only contact with the outside world, and there’s something magical about sitting around a roaring bonfire night after night watching the stars come out and listening to some of my best friends play guitar. The only mail I get here at Georgetown is from Capital One telling me my account balance is sadly dwindling, and I have yet to see more than four or five stars from Healy lawn. Coming back to school and the real world, with its money worries and scholastic stress, was a blunt reminder of how camp is my escape.
There are times when I feel that if temporarily moving into the library and giving up on sleep altogether in order to pass a physics exam is what it means to grow up, I’d honestly rather not. I won’t pretend that I can be a kid forever, but sometimes life gets way too serious, way too quickly. Every once in awhile, we need to understand that we’re all just a bunch of twenty-somethings and real life isn’t yet quite as important as we make it out to be.
Here at Georgetown, we’re bombarded with reminders that there’s a real world out there. In fact, by all accounts it seems to be hurtling towards us. But somewhere between the career fairs and the internships, we all need to just take a deep breath and realize that it’s not going to kill us if we don’t get the interview, or an A, or if we don’t get that introduction to the guy tabling for Deloitte.
If life is always about getting somewhere, we sometimes focus in too narrowly on the future and entirely miss the now. When I step out of the car at camp the first day of summer, I realize all over again that it’s all right to be a kid sometimes.
This past summer was my last at the camp, with summer classes and internships having a stranglehold over my future summer holidays. While it breaks my heart to know that I won’t be going back, if I hadn’t spent so many happy years at the camp, coping with the stress of college would definitely not be as easy as it is. I certainly wouldn’t be able to take a step back and laugh at how silly the intense focus I sometimes have on schoolwork can be.
It’s impossible to say in how many ways my life has taken its current course because of the camp, but I do know that camp changes lives. It certainly changed mine.
That’s really good! I know, I hate leaving camp!