Why I’m Writing About Camp

I really do think camp matters now more than ever.  And I also think being a camp professional is getting harder.  The systems that support camps are getting more and more arduous to navigate:  the insurance, the liability, the parents, the referral networks, the challenging behaviors, aging properties, aging leadership.  There is just… a lot.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I want to help people stay in love with camp.  Because I am still very much in love with camp.  I love summer camp as a place.  I love summer camp as an industry.

But maybe more than anything, I love this strange social practice we call summer camp.  I love thinking about what happens when we take a bunch of people, put them together for a short period of time, and essentially create a little world.  A micro-world.

We refine our values.  We decide how we are going to live together.  We talk about what happens during conflict.  We learn that we have to rely on each other.  We decide what community looks like.  And then we try it.  Sometimes beautifully.  Sometimes… less beautifully.

Because camp is not somehow a place that stands outside of the rest of the world.

As much as I believe camp shows us some of the very best of humanity (and I really do believe that)  it is also not immune to the disruption of pro-social norms that we are experiencing in the larger world.

The erosion of community.  Fear of each other.  Individualism.  Exhaustion.  Distrust.  All of that comes through the camp gate too.  Maybe we get a watered-down version of what is happening in the rest of the world.  But we still get it.

And I think camp has the potential to be different precisely because we get to create these temporary little worlds.  For a short period of time, we get to practice another way of being together.  That possibility fascinates me.

So, who am I to talk about all of this?

Hi.  I’m Chris Rehs-Dupin.  And my relationship with camp is a little complicated.  Which is probably why I want to write about it.  I have been a camp director.  I am a parent of kids who go to camp.  I am a lover of summer camps.  I visit summer camps.  I work with summer camps.  I think about summer camps probably more than a person reasonably should.  And these days, I get to experience camp largely from the outside.

That has become one of the things I value most about my work.  I can walk into a camp and notice.  I can ask questions.  I can listen.

I can look at a problem without also having to worry about whether tonight’s staff coverage is complete, whether the health center needs me, or whether a parent is waiting for a phone call.

And, because I am not the person currently standing in the middle of the emergency, I can use my regulated nervous system to analyze what is actually happening.

I can help people slow down.  Locate the ACTUAL problem.  And then work toward a values-aligned solution.  I love that.  I love helping people solve problems.  Camp lends itself to some of the deepest and most beautiful creativity:  the Hobart isn’t working.  There are one hundred dish bins of pudding bowls.  Dinner is still coming.  Okay.  What are we actually solving?  What is the actual need that has to be met?  In the short term?  In the long term?

That is camp.

I also know what it feels like to leave a role you love.

As a former director, I am deeply grateful for the people still doing direct service.  I also eventually had to recognize something about myself.  With my neurotype, my own history, and what I need in order to stay healthy, staying engaged in the camp industry meant giving up my title of director.

I needed to find a way to work that was still beneficial to camp, but also allowed me the life I needed in order to stay whole.  That was not an easy realization.  But I think it has made me better at understanding something I want to talk about a lot here:  The goal cannot simply be to keep people in camp jobs at all costs.

I want people to discover how they can use their own inspiration to build the best possible programs, in the best possible places, while also understanding their own humanity and matching their human needs with the type of program (and the type of work) where they can really excel.

Sometimes that may mean staying exactly where you are.  Sometimes it might mean changing how you lead.  Sometimes it might mean finding a different camp.  Sometimes it might mean changing your relationship with camp entirely.

I just want people to stay in love with camp without feeling like they have to disappear inside of it.

And I want camp people to feel appreciated.

I want you to know your work matters.  I want you to feel inspired to keep going, or to re-evaluate.  I want you to feel permission to take care of yourself while you are doing this work.  Because I really do believe that people, when they are taken care of, are able to live up to their potential.

And taking care of yourself starts with… yourself.  That big agency you work for might not do it.  The parents who call at all times of the day and night are certainly not used to handing out the kind of gold stars that make a job well done feel recognized.

And camp professionals can get very, very good at caring for everyone except themselves.  I want us to talk about that.

I also want to talk about parents.

Because I am one.  And being a parent changed the way I understand a lot of the things I used to complain about as a camp professional.

As a visitor, I sometimes notice that there is very little patience for parents.  But parents are being taught constantly that the world is scary.  That camp is scary.  That every decision we make about our kids is somehow life or death.  And then we ask those parents to hand us their children and trust us.

That feels worth exploring.  What if the ridiculous question isn’t actually ridiculous?  What if there is a question underneath the question?  What if what sounds like:  “Do you have lifeguards?”  actually means:  “Please tell me how you are going to keep my child safe.”

I want to stay curious about things like that.

Mostly, I want to tell stories.

Because as a storyteller, camp is ridiculous.  The stories practically write themselves.  I believe everyone has a camp story worth telling.  And maybe more importantly, everyone who has spent enough time at camp has a story they can tell themselves on a bad day.

The story that reminds them why this matters.  The kid who finally found their person.  The staff member who figured out they could do something they never thought they could do.  The night everyone was exhausted and something completely ordinary became hilarious.  The impossible problem that somehow got solved.  The moment someone said, “I can be myself here.”

The story that keeps you engaged.

Every other week, I want this to be a place where I get to blah blah blah about my unique experiences as a lover of summer camps, a visitor to summer camps, a parent, a former director, a storyteller, a problem solver, and, sure, a summer camp theorist.

I want to help people slow down enough to notice what is actually happening.  I want to celebrate the people doing this work.  I want to question things we probably ought to question.  I want to tell camp stories.  

And, more than anything, I want to help people stay in love with camp without asking them to sacrifice themselves in order to prove that love. Because camp matters.  The people who make camp possible matter too.

I think it is worth talking about both.