By Adam Kaplan
I am sure that we are all feeling a bit unsettled these days. The world that we inhabit seems to be full of chaos and bad news. Every day we are slapped by shocking, upsetting, and frightening events. Our society seems off-kilter. Chaotic, depressing and hostile American politics continues to rear its ugly head. The news cycle is dominated by tawdry courtroom drama. Angst and anger asserts itself into our college campuses. And then there is the Middle East…It seems as though the world has gone mad. If it were not for the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce union, one might feel that our planet’s love reservoir has run dry. Truly there is little that feels stable and predictable these days…
Luckily, for most of the readership of these articles (which, by last count, includes eight to ten die-hard campers, a couple of first year staff members, and, sometimes, my dad), June 1st means that an escape from the turmoil of “the real world” is not far off. Depending on your role at camp, some of you have already checked out of the “real world” and are up here at camp braving the icy waters of Lake Nebagamon to get camp ready for the summer. For others, this break will come in about ten days when you arrive at camp for our eight-day staff training week. And yet for others, this break will come in just under three weeks, as the first buses full of campers arrive. Then, finally, yet one month later, the patient campers that comprise our second four-week session will arrive. I know that I speak for most of these groups in welcoming our self-imposed exile from the intensity of the “real world.”
For all of us that choose to break from the rest of the world each summer, we welcome this escape. For those of you that are less familiar with our modus operandi at camp, you may be interested to know that we deliberately do not read the news during the summer. (Ok, I admit I read the news, but I don’t tell anyone!) In fact, the closest that we come to sharing current events with the camp family is the morning ritual of reading the baseball scores. (And, in truth, the only reason that we do this is to give the kids an opportunity to wake up and exercise their lungs with cacophonous cheers…often coming from kids that could not name a single player on virtually any team in Major League Baseball!!)
One of the benefits of this self-imposed exile is that we truly get the sense that our entire world consists only of the hallowed grounds of Camp Nebagamon. As a boy, I can distinctly remember how it felt to be completely oblivious of the fact that there was a world at all beyond the camp gates. This separation allows us, each summer, the space to create as perfect of a world as possible inside the camp gates, free from all of the bad news and challenges of the “real world.” In leaving all of these things behind for a month or two, we afford ourselves the time, focus, and energy to connect with each other in a way that the outside world sometimes doesn’t allow. We get in touch with ourselves, get in touch with each other, and get in touch with nature. Anyone that has ever been to camp knows that the friendships and connections that are forged here, away from “reality,” are significantly different and more substantive than virtually all of those that exist in the outside world. We abandon the disquieting intensity and stress of the “real world” in favor of a world that is safe, consistent, and enduring. Every summer, the Camp Nebagamon world is exactly as positive of a place as WE make it.
In the Camp Nebagamon world, the NASDAQ means nothing and CNOC means everything. We forget about Tax Day and focus only on Cruiser Days. The tech bubble is meaningless and blowing the biggest bubble on Guinness T. Nebagamous Day can make you a hero. Salary caps are worthless but the Chef’s Cap is priceless. The unpredictability of the political world is replaced with the unpredictability of the week’s dessert menu. Fears about global warming are washed away with that first leap into Lake Nebagamon in June.
To be sure, despite my lamentations in the first paragraph about the current sorry state of affairs with our species, our decision to shut out the real world for the summer is not strictly about giving ourselves a break from the bad news out there. It is not a simple decision to bury our heads in the sand. A big reason for this approach is to prove to ourselves that there is a better way to be a part of a community. There is a better way to treat each other. There is a better way to manage disagreement. There is a better way to seek compromise. And, sure, there is a best way to make the perfect s’more. With these experiences and with the lessons learned at camp, we hope to send folks out into the world after the summer that are equipped to lead with kindness, compassion, and level heads.
I have great faith that the “real world” will settle down a bit…it has to. But in the meantime, see ya later “real world,” we are all taking a well needed break from you. See you in August.