If you have been following the weather reports over the past few days… (ok….admit it, as much as you pretend to be living your own life there, one of the first things you do in the morning is check the Lake Nebagamon weather report! It’s ok… rest assured that your children are CONSTANTLY asking me about the weather back where you are!). Anyways, if you’ve been following the weather, you will notice that we are about to experience a few pretty hot days up here. With daily temperatures approaching the 90’s for the next three days and quite high humidity, we will likely really be feeling it.
Well… let me clarify. When I say “we will be feeling it” what I mean is “we ADULTS will really be feeling it feeling it!” You see, the whole complaining about the weather thing… that is a grown-up thing. I mean think about it. Can you remember the last time that you were sitting at the dinner table with your 11 year old and he broke out into a riff about how the humidity was really dragging him down? It just doesn’t happen. They seem impervious to it all. Rather, the only evidence we will likely hear of the kids being affected by the weather is when one might say, “Hey, I’m kinda hot….let’s go swimming!” And, luckily for your kid, he is in a place where, when he is kinda hot, he gets to go swimming!
With this in mind, we are going to be hosting an all-camp beach party this afternoon. There will be all sorts of fun and games down at the waterfront to make it the place to be in camp (well….if you ask me, the waterfront is always the place to be…but I don’t usually say that aloud given that we have 15 projects NOT located on the waterfront!) We will set up a beach volleyball net for some gaming. We will be blasting some Beach Boys music all afternoon. There will be some picnic tables in the water for playing cards while wading.
But mostly….we will just be spending a ton of time splashing around in a lake in the North Woods.
I love this part of the camp experience. The Camp Nebagamon beach is not a waterpark, not a fancy swimming pool with fancy pool toys, no giant blobs, and not a beach resort with jet-skis and wakeboards. This is a lake…..just a plain old lake (ok…well maybe not a plain old lake….we are talking about, hands down, the best lake in all of Wisconsin!) with the only adornments being a pretty rudimentary waterslide and a diving board attached to a wooden raft. The fun in this lake comes from one primary source – the kids themselves. The games played at the lake are largely kid-invented games, with kid-invented rules, and kid sensibilities dictating them (with staff making sure that kid-safety sensibilities do not rule the day!). They are great games that involve running in the water, splashing, and excellent flying knee drops (performed with just about the same levels of reality and true contact as one would expect in the WWF!).
As much as I, as an old guy, truly struggles in the heat and humidity of days like this, well, days like this are also what summer camp is supposed to be. You are supposed to spend the day outside and get all sweaty. You are supposed to not mind the fact that you don’t all quite smell as pretty as you might! You are supposed to spend the day down at the plain old lake splashing around with your friends and making up games to play in the water. Who can do the best underwater handstand? Who can hold their breath the longest? Who can dominate a game of 500 while being splashed? Summer stuff…..lake stuff…..kid stuff….camp stuff.
Personally, I am really good at holding my breath underwater…..I am headed down to the lake right now to show those runts what it takes to be the boss!
All is well in the North Woods….
