Last Saturday and Sunday camp hosted its annual Visitors’ Day Weekend, with over three hundred visitors coming to see what the children have been doing this summer. We were fortunate to have gorgeous weather, ensuring that campers, staff, and visitors alike could enjoy the true sounds and colors of camp in full swing.
The first visitors began arriving on Saturday in time for morning council. After singing a handful of camp favorites, counselors introduced an array of activities for campers and visitors to choose from, including preparing sushi with garden fresh veggies in the camper kitchen to making tie-dye t-shirts or leaf print towels in the craft shops to hiking up Trouble to visiting the animals in the barn or Dexter pasture. Campers showed their newly honed skills in the riding ring or on the climbing wall, and the waterfront was a hub of swimming and boating activity. An incredible array of craft and ceramic creations—everything from colorful homemade prayer flags and ceramic wind chimes to intricate weavings, beautifully sculpted and glazed pottery, and woodwork—were on display around campus.
After the visitors’ departure on Sunday, junior and senior camps gathered together in the Quonset for the annual Senior Camp talent show. Singing, acting, and comedy routines graced the “stage,” garnering both laughter and applause and reconnecting campers to each other.
On Monday morning, senior camp turned its attention to the chicken harvest. A first-time experience for many, the chicken harvest challenges campers to better understand their food choices and also highlights the farm-to-table process of raising and caring for the animals we harvest here.
In Junior Camp, counselors dressed in fanciful costumes and trotted on horseback right into morning council. It was Gymkhana! A Treetops tradition, Gymkhana is a special event in which campers and counselors alike participate in games on (bareback!) horseback, including carrying an egg on a spoon from one side of the ring to the other, or musical chairs on horseback, which requires both strategy and a lot of dismounting when the music stops.
Another highlight of the week was the “Back-to-the-70’s” junior camp overnight trip. A group of campers and counselors set out on their hiking overnight only to discover a funny character named “Old Mountain Bill” (played by veteran Senior Camp counselor Bill Localio) already ensconced in their campsite. Old Mountain Bill was a Treetops camper in the ‘70s and joined the group, showing campers the gear, food, and methods of his era. Campers donned wool sweaters, checked out Bill’s canvas backpack, collected water in an old felt hat, slept under a tarp, ate hard bread with sardines, and cooked stick biscuits over an open fire.
Back at camp, Square dances and July birthday suppers rounded out this week’s lively host of events.
I so enjoyed meeting and talking to many of you past weekend—thank you for taking the time to visit your children and share in their experiences at Camp. As week four draws to a close and we celebrate summer birthdays and get ready for square dances, I am struck by our amazing community of campers and staff as well as all the things we do here. I am very much looking forward to week five!
Don’t miss the Week Four Slide Show, below. Allow it to advance automatically, or drag slide bar to advance rapidly.
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