By Adam Kaplan
‘Tis (or was) the season once again. The holiday season has just completed its annual massive disruption of our lives. Depending on who you are, and what your experiences in life have been, this time of year is either one that you are passionately excited about or passionately unhappy about. Either you are one of those folks that gets excited about all of the family time, parties, copious eating, gift exchanging, and bright lights, or you get sweaty and anxious even reading about those things in this article! (Yes, I realize that there are folks that lie somewhere in between these two extremes, but it works best for the article if I categorize everyone into these extremes.) No matter what your take on the intense holiday season that we experience annually, there can be little doubt that it affects us all.
My recent trip to the mall and the subsequent HOUR sitting in traffic just to get into the parking lot availed me with a good deal of time to think about the whole concept of holidays in general. While admittedly, the frustration of sitting in my car waiting to enter the parking area did not predispose me to positive holiday feelings, I actually found myself feeling good about the whole idea of holidays.
Holidays can serve as the routine-breakers in our lives. Don’t get me wrong; I am a firm believer in the value of a routine. We are all comforted and stabilized by set practices and routines that we can expect from most of our days. In fact, one of the best ways to help a new camper get past his homesickness issues is to get him settled into the routine of camp life. Once he learns that routine, he is comforted because he understands that things at camp are fairly predictable and operate on a set schedule; he knows what to expect. Having said all of that, if our lives were strictly routine and never varied from that set schedule, they would be boring.
That is where holidays come in. They shake things up. They force us to stop the routine, think about new ideas, and do different activities for a while. This is really healthy for all of us. Taking a break from the routine serves as a sort of punctuation mark in our lives. These punctuation marks give us opportunities…
We pause and look back at what we have done and how our lives have progressed until that point. We take stock in our accomplishments and figure out what we could have done better. These punctuation marks also give us time to think about the future, to plan out how we would like to either subtly tweak our lives or maybe radically change them. Without holidays, without these punctuation marks in our lives, we might get so caught up in the routine and our day to day schedule that we might not take the time to reflect on our lives.
Camp, as a microcosm of life, proves this point as well. At camp, we work very hard to establish a routine early on in the summer. As I mentioned earlier, this routine is comforting to people who are away from home for the first time. And, truth be told, the routine is comforting for the rest of us as well. We like to know what to expect from life. At the same time, at camp we need times when the routine is shaken up a bit. We need events to help us reflect, consider, and plan how our time at camp is being spent. With that in mind, we build “holidays” into the camp calendar. Certainly, every Sunday we have something of a “holiday” and a break in the routine as we settle into our wonderfully reflective Sunday Services and Council Fires. Every Wednesday is also a “holiday” at camp with exciting Cruiser Days. And then we make sure that each session is peppered with other types of “holidays” to keep things fresh at camp. Whether it be Paul Bunyan Day, The Grand Pursuit, the Fourth of July, the Chef’s Cap competition, a visit from A.K. Agikamik, or the Northwoods Invitational (hopefully returning this summer!), the camp schedule is full of these special events. These events not only are a ton of fun for us all, but also help to punctuate our camp season, give us time to take stock of all that is going on, and allow us to fully appreciate how fortunate we all are to have this time at camp.
So…back to the grind and the routine this week. But take heart, National Bird Day (Jan. 5) is just around the corner!
And as I’m sure those of you how have been at camp know, there are an enormous number of cabins and screens at camp! I started this replacement project several years ago in the Axemen Village, and that year I was able to get two and a half of the seven cabins completed; The Annex, Axmen 2 and half of Axmen 4. In 2020, with more time for less urgent projects, I was able to complete the replacement of all of the screens in the Lumberjack Village. So, with not much snow on the ground at the end of November I decided it would be a good time to get back to this ongoing project. I knew that it was only a matter of weeks before the snow would accumulate to the point that I would no longer be able to drive into forcing me to spend all of my time inside the shop. So, I figured I’d work on replacing the screens in the Axmen village until the snow depth forced me in for the rest of the winter. I’m happy to report I was able to complete the rest of Axmen 4 as well as Axmen 2 and 3 before the big two-day storm that struck us on December 14th and 15th. That monster storm left camp buried in 16 inches of super wet snow and shut down driving into the Axmen Village for the rest of the winter.
9th – Alexander Averbuch, Dylan Varon