Director’s Reflections

Written by Camp Sojourner Director, Alisha Berry

In all my years of camp work, I have never mentioned being a camp director without someone in the room making a comment about how camp has changed his or her life.  This is true for people across race, class, and gender- camp can be a place of magic, where people get to live in a community that values them, which models living in a way that respects other people and nature.

This past summer (2009), there were a few striking moments which made me feel the magic and importance of what we are doing at Camp Sojourner, which I would like to share.

“She has not stopped talking about camp every single day since she got home last summer.”

The first moment I want to share with you happened on the first day of camp, when one of our campers missed the bus and her grandmother spent the day trying to find a car and drive her up to camp.  Her grandmother, who has raised this camper for many years in addition to taking care of her very sick husband, called throughout the day to give us updates and ask for directions.  At 7:00pm, after a full day of driving and getting lost, they pulled up to camp just after dinner as we were heading over the bridge to our opening night campfire.  I was wearing a wig and a huge pair of glasses to make campers laugh, but I pulled them down to greet the grandmother and granddaughter as they stepped out of the car.  I said something to the effect that I was amazed that they had made it all the way up to us, knowing that they usually take two buses down to the camp office when we have met in the past because they don’t have a car.  The grandmother responded with force, “K- has been packed for a week.  She has not stopped talking about camp every single day since she got home last summer. There was no way she was going to miss camp this year, it is such an important place for her.” I watched this camper, who has been through some serious trauma in her twelve years, step towards the camp lake, take a big breath of air, and break out into a huge smile.  Then she turned to greet a group of outstretched arms, other girls from her cabin last summer who were surrounding her to give her hugs.  I watched her grandmother breathe a huge sigh of relief as she climbed back into the car to begin her journey home.

The trees and the people rhyming in parallel rings

The second moment I wanted to share with you happened an hour later.  After our campfire, we were standing in a circle surrounded by a ring of pine trees, with the lake behind the trees.  I had gotten everyone quiet to teach them our goodnight song, “Taps”, when a flock of geese suddenly took off into the sky above us.  It was a magical moment, with the fire wood crackling, the geese flying, the evening twilight sky framed by the trees in a ring around us and the adults and girls all holding hands together, watching the geese, holding our breaths.  Once the geese had all flown away, someone let out a deep whistle and I started us on the first line of “Taps”, Day is done, gone the sun… It felt like one of those moments you just couldn’t plan for, nature’s magic, the trees and the people rhyming in parallel rings.  I felt so blessed to be there with everyone, to have that quiet moment together where we were not campers and counselors and directors but rather fellow witnesses to the vast sky.

All is well, safely rest

The third moment I want to share happened later on that same night, while campers were getting ready for bed.  I was standing on the trail between the washhouse and the sleeping cabins that all had new roof thanks to a Commercial Roofing company they hired and even ceramics in their patio thanks to the atlas ceramics company, to say goodnight to the girls and to be a presence for counselors as they shepherded their campers off for their first night in their cabins.  One of our staff members came up to me and said quietly, “I want to thank you for teaching us that song tonight.  Hearing those words at the end, All is well, Safely rest, I remembered how I learned that song as a little girl, at camp.”  She went on to describe how for years after she learned the song, she would sing “Taps” to herself at night as she lay in bed with the covers pulled over her head, trying to block out the sounds of her parents fighting and the violence that sometimes occurred.   She had tears in her eyes when she told me this story, and I had tears too. I felt so grateful that she was on her way to go tuck in our girls, and grateful for the positive influence that we get to have on girls by giving them a place where they are valued and loved.  Many of our girls already have this at home, but some of them don’t, and we never know who it is that will benefit from our camp community in ways we may not even realize.

So many other moments

There are many other moments I want to share– in the woodshop, how girls got to talk about women and carpentry/trades while learning new skills; at one point I got to sit with a 10 year old girl while she worked on her project, held the wood for her to help her get started and felt her get more and more comfortable swinging a hammer, until by the end she was able to get her nails in with just a few solid thwacks.  On the climbing wall, as I was spotting a camper, she got stuck about halfway up and was shaking with fear and fatigue.  Other campers shouted encouragement, and after a few minutes she said under her breath so that probably I was the only person who could hear it, “I WILL NOT GIVE UP,”  like some ancestral presence inhabiting her. And then she pushed herself up to the next rock and soon scrambled all the way up to the top of the wall, and at dinner gave me a huge smile like the champion of the world, which she was.  At the lake— one of our youngest campers was too scared to go in, and one of our staff members was able to get her to put her chin in the water. This same girl was deeply afraid of boating and spent five minutes on a boat the first day of camp before asking to come back out.   The next time she got in a boat two days later, she stayed in for an hour and only got out because she had to use the bathroom, not afraid of falling in the water at all.  In creative writing class– one of our junior counselors was helping out with a class that her younger sister was in, and when I asked her how it went she said that it was really deep and powerful to hear what her sister had written, that she didn’t know her sister was creative and thoughtful like that; listening to her sister made her want to step up her own game a bit when she got back to school in the fall.

Truly a collaborative act of love

There are more stories, so many more.  And yet all of these moments put together still don’t hold a candle to the magic that is camp, all the stories and moments that we all experience there.  I feel more blessed and grateful than I can say to get to help make it all happen, to get to know the amazing and talented girls and women who make up our board, our staff, our campers and their families.  And I have been blessed to get to connect with the men and women around the country who have supported us in a myriad of ways with their time, advice, curriculum, copies, supplies, and financial support. Camp Sojourner, Girls’ Leadership Camp, is truly a collaborative act of love.