I dread driving up Camp Road, particularly when the summer has come to a close. Each summer when I drive past the towering stalks of corn, far taller than they stood two months prior, it feels surreal that the summer has passed so quickly, and the inevitable moment of re-entering the so called real world is finally coming to fruition. I dread this moment, but what I absolutely dread the most comes just a few hours later when I have no choice but to talk about Camp to my friends back at home and at school. Inside our beloved 200 acres, we find meaning in the camp experience, but what does it mean beyond the physical camp setting? This outside perspective on Camp is so difficult to grasp when people outside the camp setting can’t possibly understand the value in the camp experience and the collective, shared camp memories. Why is camp so valuable when, upon leaving, your experience seems so isolated?
I guess there is something powerful in an experience that goes from a collective memory at camp to such an isolated memory back at home. In a sense, there is emptiness in this type of experience. Nobody knows what you just experienced, what you just went through down Camp Road. The way that outsiders see Camp, however, helps us build some type of perspective on our summers. We do spend our summers on a 200 acre plot of land with bugs and uncomfortable beds, all the while missing out on our home friends and sleeping in every morning. That outsider’s analysis of Camp is accurate. The idea of camp, the idea of spending three and a half weeks, or for many of you, your entire summers, on the same plot of land is ridiculous when you really think about it. But I love when people tell me how crazy or even stupid it is that I go to camp for the whole summer. I love when people doubt the Camp experience. When I hear this doubt, I can’t help but smile because they have no idea what I, what we, just experienced down Camp Road.
Camp is more than just sleeping in a cabin or sailing on Seneca Lake. It’s more than singing songs by the campfire or playing knockout on the basketball courts. There is an inherent sense of worth in summer camp, particularly CSL, which simply can’t be explained from an insider to an outsider. The perspective of an outsider, to me, only makes me feel more strongly about my seemingly isolated camp experience. It makes me realize that while others don’t understand Camp, I do know and I will always know that there is value in what we do here. So maybe it doesn’t matter that the outsider’s perspective on camp is far different than mine or that the outsider never will truly understand the summer camp experience. Though looking beyond Camp Road gives us perspective on Camp as a whole, maybe all we need is what we know. Thank you and Shabbat Shalom.
Alec Jacobson
