Camp Green Lane Blog Post August 6th

Today was our last Taco Tuesday.

Tournaments are wrapped and Leagues winners have been crowned. After starting the summer with a blank canvas filled with so much excitement, so much promise and what we foolishly felt was so much time, we’re sadly down to just a few hours left before we have to start packing.

Summers are short. Time passes far too fast. The older you get, the faster time ticks away. When you’re young, summer days and nights feel endless. Time spent at camp can feel enormous.

In reality, it’s seven short weeks.

We pack a lot into our days and our summers at CGL, but no matter how much fun we try to cram into seven weeks, this is always when everything sneaks up on you and reminds us that time at camp is limited. It really is a very short amount of time. Tomorrow, the sight of empty bags waiting to be filled will be a stark reminder the end of summer is here.

You get a few weeks here at camp. Maybe you put together a few summers, but even an entire CGL career, from Inters up to being a counselor, that can go by in the blink of an eye, too.

The end of Summer 2024 is here, and everyone in camp feels it. They’ve been feeling it for a while now. Ever since Color War broke, the sudden stop of summer has been creeping up on all of us.

So this week has and will continue to be about emptying the tank. Today was Choice morning (cabins chose their activities) and this afternoon was Challenge Day (cabins challenged other cabins in a variety of activities around camp) and tonight is Birthday Meal (when everyone in camp gets to celebrate their birthday at dinner). Tomorrow is Cabaret, and Thursday is Banquet and Firefly. Every day we have left is marked by a special event.

This week is about staying up late. It’s about filling the days—from the moment you wake up to whenever your head finds your pillow at night—with as much fun and memories and silliness as you can pack into it.

The last week of camp is sad. But it is also non-stop. Because we all know at the end of this week, it’ll all be over. Come Friday, camp will be closed for the season and the 10 part of living 10 for 2 will resume again.

Now more than ever, we’re reminded how different camp is from the world.

Our way of life between the arches is so different from our lives and habits on the other side. We’ll all be plugged back into our devices soon and spending too much time alone, thinking about something we call our “happy place.”

Camp is a happy place for a lot of people for a lot of reasons, as you’ve read all summer. Ultimately, camp is a happy place for us because of the opportunities it gives us to discover new friends, do amazing things, and discover exciting things within ourselves. All of which becomes possible when you put down a device, look someone in the eye and connect on a deeper, more meaningful level.

That should not end when we cross to the other side of the arches.

Every summer, my hope is that when all of our children return home and inevitably slip back into their homebound routines and habits—even the ones that drive us crazy—that they do it with the confidence, care and compassion that they do things with here at camp. That they attack life with the same energy they run to BB1 for Color War or the Dome for Midnight Madness: full of confidence, excitement, and with a friend’s hand in theirs.

Camp makes you stronger. It makes you more independent. It teaches you to solve problems. To fix things when they break. It teaches you how to live with other people, how to compromise and how to show compassion. Camp can make you tough, but it can also teach you what heart and determination and good sportsmanship look like, too.

Look around. The world can use so much more of that.

So this week when camp goes quiet and the lights are turned off and nobody is left to cheer and laugh and cry at this happy place, my hope is for all these little people to bring a little piece of camp home with them.

And to make whatever place they’re in a happy place, too.