Dear Treetops Families,
As Camp Director, any season other than summer is an entirely different pace. Once my campers depart, followed shortly thereafter by my staff, campus is hushed. As beautiful as it is to look across Round Lake, still and serene, free of swimmers, boaters, and buddy checks, the quiet and stillness disarm me after the breakneck pace of July and August. It takes me a couple of weeks to adjust to my new normal.
Along with the many preparations for the upcoming summer—speaking with prospective families, enrolling campers, interviewing and hiring summer staff, purchasing program materials and equipment, to name a few—I also carve out some time for one of my favorite pastimes: reading.
This month, on recommendation from a Camp parent, I began reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, published last year. I imagine many of you may have also read it, interested in the content as parents, educators, or just folks concerned about the long-term effects of smartphones. While I have yet to finish Haidt’s book, it is clear to me that, in many ways, Treetops is an antidote to the many ailments of our current screen-addicted culture.
One of Haidt’s evidence-backed claims is that children need play, and in fact “play is the work of childhood.” The ever-present smartphones and the attention-sucking games, social-media apps, and other digital distractions not only pull the user’s attention away from the world around them and into their device, but also rob the user, particularly adolescent users, of this much-needed play. Haidt writes:
“Physical play, outdoors and with other children of mixed ages, is the healthiest, most natural, most beneficial sort of play. Play with some degree of physical risk is essential because it teaches children how to look after themselves and each other.”
Reading this section brought to mind the free play that children experience daily at Treetops, particularly at Waiters’ Bell, when children and staff congregate outside the dining rooms as table setters rush to set dishes, cutlery, and meals on tables. During this time, while counselors are all around, on the field, in the Uphill Grill or Cabana, lying in the grass, or chatting with one another, the children play—whether that’s by tossing a frisbee, kicking a soccer ball, playing tag, climbing trees, practicing cartwheels, or doing a log roll down the hill; they are free to simply play. There are no organized, adult-led activities at this time, and little policing by staff. And by and large, the campers figure it out. A routine part of the day, for fifteen unstructured minutes, three times a day, campers lead themselves, and they choose to play.
In 1951, more than seventy years before Haidt’s book was published, another book, Summer’s Children—a photographic peek into a summer at Treetops, captured by Barbara Morgan—posited the same emphasis on play. Long before smartphones and social media apps, former Treetops Camp Director Helen Haskell argued in her foreword preceding Barbara’s iconic images, the importance of summer camps and the maintenance of these institutions as “children’s worlds.”
“… camps can give a child space and time for his restlessness, scope for his jokes and fun, and a chance for unscheduled explorations. In a world geared totally for his own age group, the youngster’s own plans can be considered, his help respected, and his happiness and security thus increased.”
Though these two texts were written in different centuries, the ability for children to imagine, explore, and play, free from strictures and distractions, is essential for the healthy development of the whole person.
Each summer, I joyfully look on as campers stretch and grow over their weeks at Treetops. I hear them speak up for themselves, and see them carrying on a thoughtful conversation at the dining table. I watch them as they carefully consider and choose their activity periods, and look on with pride as they heed the kitchen’s plea and volunteer to help in dish pantry. I watch campers organize a card game with peers, help a friend climb a tree, and make an announcement at Council, serenading folks to “save their forks” or urging people to please not take their napkins out of the dining room. I see campers proudly pass their clothesliners swim test, canter a horse for the first time, confidently captain a sailboat, and triumphantly return from five-day trips.
For over a century, Treetops has provided a space and community for campers to play, to learn, to grow, free from the stressors of the outside world. Whether that be world politics or even war, a home life that may be unstable or in flux, or the nagging pull of the metaverse.
I feel grateful for and proud of Treetops’ long legacy of providing a world for children, a world free from the pressures to grow up and free to do the vital work of tending to their own childhoods. Among the many transforming and long-lasting impacts that Treetops provides, it also gives children the time and space to simply play.
With gratitude,
Hannah Edwards
Camp Treetops Director