Camp Green Lane Blog Post July 19th

Today was Rookie Day, when Camp Green Lane hosts future campers and their families for a day of activities. I always wonder what those little ones are thinking, seeing and eventually remembering about their first CGL experience.

What was the most fun activity? Did they make a new friend?

For some, today was the very first step of a journey that may stretch several summers into the future.

A lot of current kids around camp remember their own Rookie Days, or before it, when it was called New Ventures. I talked to a few campers who remember meeting their summer brothers and sisters as Rookies, and here they are, some of them 10 years into their CGL experience, still standing alongside those same people. Forever friends.

So what’s it like to step foot on this ground for the first time, as a youngster, and look out into a Camp Green Lane day?

“I saw large bold letters atop the arch but could not read them as I barely knew how to,” Abe from the Greeks wrote of his initial CGL experience as a 7-year old for a paper he gave me permission to share parts of for today’s Blog.

“It was not fear that held back my excitement, but rather confusion. I was unable to fathom why everyone was so excited to be here. Won’t they miss their family? It’s just a few cabins and a lake in the middle of the woods–nothing luxurious, just shacks filled with mosquitos. What is there to be excited about? Looking back now, I would not trade those cabins for all the money in the world.”

Camp is temporary. We’re only here a short time, but the relationships we make here are ones that will last forever.

You learn that over time.

So a lot of little eyes fell on CGL today for the first time. They saw the Lake and lots of new, exciting things.

And perhaps when they looked beside them, they saw someone who’ll be standing there a long, long time.

A forever friend.