The Case for Sleep-Away Camp

Contributed by Mark Standen, co-executive director of Camp Kawanhee for Boys in Weld, Maine

I’ve been involved in youth camping in one way or another since 1960, when I arrived at a traditional boys’ camp in western Maine as one of its youngest campers. Since then, I’ve observed the camp experience from many different angles, as camper, counselor, trip leader, parent, camp board member, and now as a co-executive director.

Camp is, first and foremost, a fun time. It is a welcome release from school and the pressures that attend it (and, in some cases, from school friends and the pressures that attend them). It is fun in its own pure way, perhaps in a way that is only possible when children are keeping their own company, guided by college-age mentors who live with them and give them much to aspire to, surrounded by abundant opportunities for play and adventure. Friends are made quickly at camp, as though kids are as keenly aware as grown-ups that summer is indeed short and they’d better get on with it. Once camp friends are made, they tend to last, often long after a camp career has given way to college, a livelihood and a family of one’s own.

Although I cannot claim to be objective, I have always been partial to camps that provide experiences that are difficult to realize back home. Sports camps certainly have their place, but they tend to provide more of what kids are already doing at their schools and rec programs. The most worthwhile camps, in my view, are those that provide kids with the opportunity to experiment in trying out new things, pushing beyond the familiar, taking a dare to struggle and to succeed. There are countless ways to struggle and succeed at camp, the footrace, the tennis match, the clay piece turned on the lathe, the model sailboat chiseled and rigged by hand, the biscuits baked in a reflector oven, navigating a tough rapid in a canoe or kayak, and on and on. It is an integral part of the culture of the liberal arts camp that all of these pursuits are affirmed and respected. Camp is a fertile place for finding new passions, and some of those discoveries are profoundly life-changing.

Free time is also essential to the mission of camp. Children are busy, and their schedules at home and at school are often tightly-packed. Although a typical day at camp conforms to a schedule and has a predictable rhythm, camp is at its best when each day affords campers the opportunity to manage their own time and make their own choices. These are the spaces in which kids can figure out what makes them tick, what gratifies them, what matters to them. Learning to keep one’s own company and the company of one’s peers, deciding on the spur of the moment to shoot hoops or go fishing, having an uninterrupted hour or two to talk with friends, these are tremendously important ingredients of a day spent at camp.

It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. Camp is a village, populated with people of different ages, from different places and backgrounds. If camp is a village, a camper’s family consists of a camper’s bunkmates and counselors, those eight or ten people with whom a child lives in close quarters, eats meals, solves problems, learns to get along. The influence of a young adult counselor upon his or her campers is powerful and overwhelmingly positive.

We live in a time of cell phones, computer-generated images and other manifestations of a virtual world. Summer camp reminds campers and counselors alike that there’s something so much better out there in the threedimensional world. That a text is a poor substitute for a face-to-face conversation around a campfire, that star-gazing from a sleeping bag can inspire more awe than a computerized fantasy, that a spontaneous pick-up game can be at least as fun and instructive as a game that requires uniforms and coaches. Kids need camp now more than ever, and so, I believe, do the rest of us.

I went to Camp Kawanhee for seven years - loved every minute of it. It is a special place in Weld, Maine, on beautiful Lake Webb about 1.5 hours northwest of Portland - surrounded by the mountains of Mt. Blue State Park. Kawanhee is run by a non-profit foundation and will be celebrating its 100th anniversary next year.

If you would like to learn more about it go to www.kawanhee. com or you can call me at 973 964 6446, happy to tell you more. By the way, the The Kawanhee Inn is close to the camp. A fantastic place owned by a former camper and NJ resident. See http://www.kawanheeinn.com for more information.