Dear Treetops Families,
As I write my final Camp Journal entry for the summer, the first yellow and orange maple leaves have speckled the ground outside my window. Today, campers, with help from their counselors, are gathering the many projects they created over the summer from the various shops, collecting myriad clothing, shoes, and other belongings from around Camp, and packing their bags. Another incredibly special Treetops summer has come to a close. Throughout our last week together, we’ve taken time to recognize the many goals we’ve met (and exceeded), cherish the friends we’ve made, and celebrate the unique community we’ve built over the past seven weeks in our mountain home.
Week seven kicked off with a beloved Sunday tradition: the Bean Carnival! This special activity is named for the handful of beans campers used to receive as a form of “payment” for the various activity stations—a practice long retired after numerous bean plants sprouted up on the soccer field due to many spilled beans. It’s a day that celebrates whimsy and fun, as campers bounce from station to station choosing from activities like the slip and slide and camper/counselor dunk station to cornhole and, perhaps the most favorite of all: sock wrestling in the mud! Super campers also run a special station featuring a menu of fruit smoothies they make and serve to other campers. Delicious!
Community Day Monday brought additional opportunities for campers to work together and complete important jobs. Supers stacked wood at the Sugar House and weeded the lush annual flower bed, as junior campers came together to harvest beans and carrots, taking the opportunity for an occasional veggie snack as they went! We wrapped up the morning with the Senior Camp talent show, an incredible display of music, theater, and comedy. Performing campers were lovingly encouraged by their friends in the audience and beamed with pride as they took their final bow.
On Tuesday, we sent out our “Idiot Trips,” a nod to the idiotic number of miles these trips plan to hike, paddle, and swim in a single day. The trip participants depart Camp hours before sunrise and arrive back soon after sunset. The “Idiots” wear these names with pride—sometimes even literally writing the name across their foreheads—and return home with the knowledge that they are, truly, rugged, resourceful, and resilient, confident that they can accomplish incredibly hard things.
This week we also took time to celebrate our farmers, gardeners, and kitchen staff, and the work that we’ve all put in this summer to tend our gardens and animals and feed our community. One such celebration is Farm Fest. All of Camp gathered to sing songs in the morning before lining up on the road for a special parade of our farm animals and their camper-caretakers. The campers on barn chores took extra care grooming their horses, braiding their manes and tails, and adorning them with fresh-picked flowers, while others carried their favorite chicken—even our rams made an appearance as they were led by campers with halters and lead ropes.
After the conclusion of the parade, campers visited different stations where they could sample various foods—from pickled farm vegetables and stick biscuits in the Children’s Garden, to garden sushi by the Greenhouse, or handmade pizzas at the wood-fire pizza oven—or try their hand at a of game horseshoes, cornhole, the hay bale toss, or a game of Stump. The morning concluded with an award ceremony in which we recognized campers who consistently went above and beyond with their work on the farm this summer, each of them receiving celebratory awards such as golden horseshoes, golden garlic, or golden bits, to name a few.
Our gratitude for the farm and garden culminated with the Harvest Banquet, with a menu prepared by our talented kitchen staff that featured meat and produce grown right here on campus: farm turkey, accompanied by beans, carrots, potatoes, and kale from the garden. Campers dressed in their best clothes and we adorned the tables with tablecloths, candles, and fresh flowers from the gardens. The night wrapped up with our final square dance on the beach, where campers gleefully swung their partners and do-si-doed in the sand, as the sun turned the western sky hues of golden pink and lilac gray over the placid waters of Round Lake.
As we move into the final night of Camp, we’re cherishing these last hours, so grateful for the community we’ve built together, and grateful to you, our families, for entrusting us with your children these last seven weeks. Each and every one of your campers are, and will forever be, a cherished member of our Treetops family.
With so much love and gratitude,
Hannah Edwards
Camp Treetops Director