Camp Green Lane Blog Post July 16th

Today was National Camp Kindness Day. We believe kindness is something we lean into every day here at Camp Green Lane, but today is a day when camps across America take time to practice intentional kindness.

Camp Kindness Day was created in collaboration with the American Camping Association in 2018.

Here at CGL, that means the Canteen is transformed on this day each year into a temple of kindness, its walls papered with post-its decorated with notes of compassion and empathy.

The sidewalks from the Circle and down past the White House and back to the Canteen are colored with chalked messages of love and kindness, and all throughout the day, campers and counselors scribbled letters to their favorite people in camp, expressing what they love about them and their friendships. This year, the “Kindness Brick Road” of chalk drawings and messages of love extended out the back of the Canteen to cover more ground.

It’s a nice day to pause and pay attention to something we try to foster instinctively here at camp.

The very definition of kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate. Camp calls on those qualities daily. CGL is a place dependent on love and kindness and we see examples of them every day, from simple acts of sharing outfits to wear at dances to giving up the last slice of grilled cheese for a friend at lunch.

Kindness is one of the great virtues of Camp Green Lane and we really do preach and practice it each day.

But every year on Camp Kindness Day, it’s nice to reflect on what it means to be kind.

And to appreciate all the kindness we’re surrounded by each day we’re at camp.