Spring Cleaning: Part 2 - Spring Cleaning...For Your BRAIN

So, like every other resident of the North East, I cannot wait for spring to arrive in earnest. (In earnest as in, when it's actually warm.) The following are just a few reasons I can't wait for spring:

- I need to soak up some much needed vitamin D from the rays of the sun.  (Now, the sunshine itself does not actually carry vitamin D, but rather when the ultraviolet B rays hit your skin cells, a reaction takes place that encourages your body to manufacture vitamin D. How do I know this? I googled it 15 seconds ago when I realized I had no idea how vitamin D from the sun worked.)

- One word: Sandals. Shoes are tiny little prisons for out feet, and mine are ready for parole. Sandals. Sandals. Please.

- And the point of this here blog I'm writing right now...

I AM TIRED OF BEING COOPED-UP INSIDE!  

An interesting phrase. Cooped-up. As in trapped inside a chicken coop, an uncomfortably small space or enclosure. And what does this lead to? You got it, another idiom. Cabin Fever: when someone is shut in with nothing to do for an extended period, often resulting in extreme irritability and restlessness. And how has cabin fevered manifested itself this winter? Probably the same way it's manifested itself in all of our lives...
I've been staring at screens for-what-seems-EVER. 
Cell phone screens. 
Computer screens. 
TV screens streaming more netflix than you can shake a stick at, and you can't even shake a stick cause you can't get a stick cause it's been too cold to go outside and find sticks.
You can get vitamin B from the shining of the sun, but you can't get it from the glare of a battery powered LCD screen. And thinking about all that got me excited about summer camp. (Doesn't everything?)

As you know if you've been here, our Summer Program is tech free for both our staff and campers. And it's awesome. When else do you get six whole days free of buzzing, beeping, ringing and all the screen staring that goes with it? 

A visual representation of our technology policy.

At Summer Camp, texts are talking bunk to bunk, calls are yelling across the bowl, picture messages are pointing and saying "hey, look at that", and social networks only get as complicated as choosing where to sit at a dining hall table.

"One therapy for cabin fever may be as simple as getting out and interacting with nature. Research has proven that even brief interactions with nature can promote improved cognitive functioning and overall well-being" - Wikipedia (I can cite Wikipedia, cause this isn't for school or anything...)

The lesson? Cabin fever is best in our cabins, with the constant company of your summer friends, without the screens, and where you can go play outside whenever you want. 

Provided the weather finally gets nice, that is.

Spring Cleaning!

Yes, even if the weather refuses to admit it, it is Spring Time. (And the weather does refuse to admit it. I'm looking at a pile of snow that has been outside my window for so long it's technically become a glacier.)

Over the next several thousand years, this glacier will carve a magnificent valley right in front of the camp office.

To celebrate the changing of the seasons, we held our annual spring cleaning Community Service Day on Saturday.  Various campers, 4-H groups, and friends of camp came on up for a couple hours to help us take the dining hall out of mothballs and prepare for the upcoming spring and summer seasons.  

Tables were scrubbed, floors were mopped, wood was chopped, porches were swept, leaves were raked, archery nets were hung, surfaces were wiped, boxes were moved, and pizza was eaten. Plus, the mighty Hobart dishwasher awoke from it's winter slumber, and every single dish in the dining hall was sent through it. 

Special thanks to all of our volunteers, it was a fun morning and gave us a great head start to getting camp ready for warm weather and everything that comes with it.

Here are some pictures from Saturday and thoughts on camp, courtesy of some of our campers who gave up a Saturday morning to help us tidy the place up:

The dish is always cleaner on the other side.

"Living in the 21st century, it's nearly impossible to find a place where people aren't attached to their iphones, ipods, tablets, or computers. It's even more difficult to find an accepting community. A place where flaws are considered beautiful and where being different is considered enticing. Finding LG Cook started off as a way to pass the time during summer, but its steadily grown into one of the most important things in my life." - Luci

Volunteers volunteering to be Volunteers-In-Training. Only a few more summers and they'll can earn the privilege of doing the whole camp's dishes after viking dinner.

" We had a great time working at the HOBART.  Camp is the one place on earth I can be myself and be with people who are also comfortable to be themselves at the magical place of L.G. Cook.  I suffer from camp depression, which is when you stay away from camp too long and miss it a lot. So going to this community service was a taste of summer which I am waiting for. Only 99 days now till session one." - Courtney