I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all the time I’ve spent at camp and I’ve worked out that over the last 6 years, since my first summer at camp, almost 24 months of that time has been spent living and working at my favourite place in the world. So in all that time, there’s surely got to be some great stories and amazing memories, right? Absolutely… and once I started writing these down, I couldn’t stop. There are memories that make me smile, cringe or just start laughing out loud and I can’t help thinking ‘only at camp‘. It’s a place full of magic, a magic that doesn’t simply go away when you leave it… the memories are forever.
1. Driving around camp in the Tahoe (our epic rental car) on my birthday (2015)
2. Color War break 2017: The moment the video cut to static and all the kids and counselors went mental (2017)
3. Lying down in the back of the van with a camera filming the first lip dub video (2012)
4. During a massive storm when a tent platform split and we had to fix it in the pouring rain at night… and I was wearing Crandals (2016)
5. Doing the high ropes training and being caught in a huge storm in the middle of the woods and all piling into the instructor’s pick up truck (2012)
6. Speeding through the woods in the gator with the Camp Director in the rain to make sure everyone out on their overnights was ok (2015)
7. Turning the job of firewood distribution into a point scoring game (2013)
8. Getting the flatbed and trailer stuck going uphill from swim beach, loaded up with the teepee poles (2015)
9. The moment I realised camp would forever be my favourite place in the world – it was during a closing campfire my first summer, I just remember looking around at all my friends and the awesome kids and thinking that I wanted to be in that moment forever (2011)
10. Dancing on the bench at Oval with my best friends, all dressed in tie dye on Monday Funday (2015)
11. At the end of a Performing Arts Showcase when we put on an Ed Sheeran song and the whole camp started singing along… it was emotional (2016)
12. The first time hearing the ‘Shaving Cream’ song and absolutely dying with laughter (2011)
13. When the Student boy campers did an impersonation of me in their closing campfire skit (2014)
14. The first time I went wakeboarding (2011)
15. Visiting camp in the winter and walking across the frozen lake (2015)
16. When our tent fell down and then ripped open on staff overnight during a storm and we had to walk back to our village in the middle of the night in the rain (2014)
17. When it was too wet to do overnight so we basically just had a huge sleepover with all the female counselors in one of the buildings (2013)
18. Coming back to my tent to find that my campers had drawn awesome pictures and made signs with my name on and stuck them all over my bunk (2012)
19. The moment I went wake surfing and finally managed to let go of the rope and keep surfing the wake behind the boat (2017)
20. Opening a letter from one of my campers to find the coolest friendship bracelet for me that she’d been working on all summer (2012)
I could go on forever… what are some of your best camp memories?
Summer Camp Secrets 