As we approach the end of May and beginning of Summer '24, here's a little something different on the ol' Camp Blog.
Here at 4-H Camp, we love to count summers and recall seasons past - and one of the ways the current Summer Staff keep track is our annual staff coffee mug. It's a little annual tradition I helped get going my first full-time summer, and a casual count on my office shelf revealed that we're up to TEN of them. Seemed like a good opportunity to take a quick look back at ten years of summer camp:
(I was going to notate when some beloved long-term members of Summer Staff had their first and last seasons - until I realized we had WAY to many beloved long-term staff members to call out individually! Suffice to say, take away #1 from these ten mugs is how many wonderful people have given so much to our 4-H Camp community over the past ten years.)
Summer 2014
Well, after two-ish decades of being a camper, counselor, senior staff member, volunteer, and seasonal summer camp director, I joined the 4-H Camp staff team full-time as the Program Director. See, if you stick around summer camp long enough they just end up letting you stay.
We kicked off the summer with our first ever Lantern BBQ (and post-summer we also introduced our very first Winter Gathering).
We held our first Spy Week, and there was a memorable "medieval health check" that is still brought up from time to time.
Somewhere during all that, the concept for an annual staff coffee mug was invented.
 |
| (And that winter another new resident moved to 4-H Camp as well.) |
--------
After years of dreaming, our Lakeside Amphitheater was constructed and premiered in Summer '15! It was not just, as a designed, a wonderful spot for Opening and Closing Campfires. It also has become emblematic of our focus on communal gatherings - a spot for all of Camp to get together for Battle for the Island launches, all camp-game instructions, Morning Meetings and more.
Themes included the one and only VIKING Week and our first go at Jurassic Camp.
Our current Assistant Director, Mechu, joined the team as a first-year counselor!
--------
Summer 2016
A big one! Let's see. We added a 7th Session of Summer Camp to the schedule, we completed a renovation of Cabin #11, and oh yeah - it was our first summer without long time Camp Director Jim Tavares!
Jim had been the Camp Director my entire tenure on summer staff, and we had always assumed he had at least another 15 years left in him, but after a decade and half of shepherding L.G. Cook 4-H Camp through several institutional transitions, Jim was ready to set off for some new adventures of his own.
So, that left a small batch of us long-time Senior Staff to try to do the seemingly impossible, and run a summer of 4-H Camp without our fearless leader Camp Director Jim.
We premiered Camp Monopoly, there was a Paintbrush Rebellion, and a Heroes week which was an appropriate because pulling together to run Camp without Jim certainly felt like a heroic task.
It was not always easy, but it was exciting, and it brought the Staff of 2016 together in way that only accomplishing the seemingly insurmountable can.
---------------------
The very first co-counselor I ever had, our very own T-NIVI, also proved that if you hang around here long enough they let you stay by joining the full-time staff team as our Logistics Director. (25 short summers after his first year as a camper.)
As renovations go, small but mighty, we created an outdoor picnic table area, and in training our Staff created the legendary "slate machine of twenty-seventeen" to beautify the space.
It was our first Broken Time Machine week and we may or may not have accidentally semi-permanently tie-dyed the White House bathroom.
And, our future Program Associate and 4-H Camp at Rutgers Gardens Day Camp Director, Shanna, joined the team as a first-year counselor as well.
...TO BE CONTINUED!
(Yes, I know that wasn't ten coffee mugs yet, but I figured if you're indulging me to spend time dedicated to the nostalgic qualities of customized drink-ware, the least I should do is give you a break everyone so often. So - ...TO BE CONTINUED!)
No comments:
Post a Comment