Greetings from camp!
Brad Herzog here. I’ll be updating the camp family a few times over the next couple of weeks as a temporary pinch-hitter for Adam. Yes, it’s early summer, so I like to think of it in baseball terms. If you prefer, it’s a call to the bullpen. Bring in the big gun with the blazing fastball. Of course, in reality, I’m well aware that I’m just another seasoned veteran with an equally middle-aged set of eyes.
Adam and I met here on these 77 acres way back in 1978 – I was a fourth-grader in Swamper 4; he was a fifth-grader in Logger 1. Actually, I first set foot on these hallowed grounds exactly 50 summers ago – as a five-year-old attending my first week of Family Camp in 1973. The trees were shorter back then, and I swear the hills seemed less hilly. That was so long ago that we arrived at camp by covered wagon, and there were only 33 stars on the U.S. flag. I may have that wrong, but my memory isn’t what it used to be.
The world has changed quite a bit since then, but Camp Nebagamon… not so much. Sure, there have been additions here and there – a few new songs and structures and events and activities. But in the big picture, they are merely tweaks – adaptation in a constant pursuit of perfection. The look of camp, the feel of camp, the vibe of the place… that remains so gloriously familiar.
You don’t fix what isn’t broken.
And one of my favorite constants of Camp Nebagamon is the way folks step up when needed. This is a camp full of pinch-hitters. Bullpen strength. Pick your baseball metaphor.
Which brings me to… tennis. Every year, we compete in what we call the Northwoods Invitational Tennis Tournament, usually against one or two camps in the region. Yesterday, we hosted our friends from North Star Camp. And we had a mission…
“WIN OR LOSE, BE A GOOD SPORT.”
For more than 80 years, a banner has hung prominently in our Rec Hall, shouting those seven words. Since the days of Joe DiMaggio and Ben Hogan, Nebagamon campers have absorbed this while inhaling their grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Food for the soul amid nourishment for the body. We take the notion seriously. This is not a win-at-all-costs environment. It is a compete-with-class kind of place, a summer haven where participation is as valued as much as achievement.
Still, campers feel good about winning, and they often get that chance when this Northwoods Invitational rolls around – in fact, 21 times over 29 tournaments. After all, there always have been a bunch of talented racquet-toters around here. (Well, not always. Somehow, I was on the camp tennis team decades ago… until it became clear that, as a tennis player, I was pretty good at archery. Or to put it another way, as comedian Mitch Hedberg once did, “The depressing thing about tennis is… no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall.”)
But this year during the Northwoods Invitational, we hit a bit of a wall ourselves. Or more accurately, we faced a challenge – because we are sending a remarkable number of wilderness trips out this summer. On the day of the tournament, nearly a dozen trips were out – some 80 campers, more than one-third of the camper population! Several of these campers are pretty adept at tennis, but they were literally hiking and canoeing through the woods of northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan… right at the time of the Northwoods Invitational.
So it was time for some campers to step up. Some doubles players became singles competitors; some alternates became our older-boy doubles tandem. They filled the void – and did so admirably. Yes, Camp Nebagamon came out victorious. But in my eyes, that was merely a win atop a triumph. Both sides exhibited impeccable sportsmanship. And between matches, I heard Nebagamon and North Star opponents talking about everything from which schools they attend to whether their Cruiser Day is on Tuesday (North Star) or Wednesday (Nebagamon). It just didn’t feel like an adversarial atmosphere. It felt like a net win for everyone. As one counselor’s pre-lunch sermonette put it: “Love in tennis may be worth nothing, but love for tennis is everything.”
Of course, that behavior – filling in to fill a void – is hardly unusual in these parts. Over the past couple of days, I’ve heard numerous anecdotes that warm my heart.
There’s the story of a junior counselor who stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, having taken it upon himself to tidy up the Big House kitchen. Noticing how exhausted he looked the next day, a fellow JC offered to take over his role as the village’s MOD (“Man on Duty”). There’s the tale of a Lumberjack camper who joined a bunch of younger boys who were making miniature birchbark canoes at the Nature Lore project during the first project period. When he saw that they were having trouble finishing, he stayed to help during the ensuing period.
I have been told tales of friendship (the Axeman camper who found a cabinmate feeling a bit homesick one morning and sat with him for a half-hour, talking him through the moment)…. and support (the older brother who knew his younger sibling was struggling to achieve a swim rank, so he cheered him on throughout the process)… and responsibility (the LJ camper who saw six paddleboards that needed to be put away after a project period – and simply did it). Yes, parents. I’m talking about a teenaged boy.
These tales of stepping up at Camp Nebagamon seem to be an hourly occurrence, whether it’s a 14-year-old lugging a smaller boy’s pack on a lengthy canoe portage, or a 20-year-old spending his free time writing skits and monologues for an upcoming Sunday Council Fire.
I find it to be a ripple effect of tone-setting: Administrators and veteran counselors model a pay-it-forward and all-hands-on-deck attitude that new counselors and campers absorb. Very quickly, the notion becomes not an effort, but rather an instinct.
At camp, it’s just What You Do. You pitch in. You help out. You step up.
All is well in the North Woods…
