Camp Nebagamon

By Adam Kaplan

There can be little doubt about it…spring has sprung. The signs are unmistakable. Whether it be the 70-degree day followed up immediately with a 40-degree day, or the rain followed up by the snow, followed up by more rain, followed up by a frustratingly short peek at the sun, followed up by hailstorms. Yep…spring is here. I have always maintained that spring should be renamed MUD. IT’S ALWAYS MUDDY!! I don’t get it…what is so great about spring?!?!

Oops…sorry for that opening paragraph, it has been raining here for days and it’s getting to me! Let’s start again:

There can be little doubt about it…spring has sprung. The signs are unmistakable. The trees are growing their green summer foliage, flowers are blooming, temperatures are on the rise, hibernating animals are emerging from their slumbers and re-entering the world with the zeal that comes from enduring a long and hard winter. Everything is headed in the right direction.

Yeah…that paragraph feels a lot better. Thanks for bearing with me…I feel better now.

During spring’s preceding season of winter, the world goes dormant. Trees shed their leaves so that they can focus on maintaining their cores while the climate becomes challenging. Fish retreat to the bottom of the lakes they call home in order to avoid the ice. They slow their hearts and metabolisms so that they can survive the difficult conditions. Many animals retreat to caves and dens to hibernate and sleep through the winter so that they can survive the hostile conditions that Mother Nature has inflicted upon them. In nature, winter is a time of seeking shelter, shutting down, and just trying to get through it. Winter is tough.

But that all changes when the spring arrives. Spring is a time of rejuvenation. When spring comes, the whole world seems like it is getting a fresh start.

Never has this been more clear and more poignant to me as it has this spring…as I think about camp.

We have just finished the longest winter in Camp Nebagamon’s history. For the first time in 92 years, camp remained dormant, captive to winter, for more than a year and a half. All was in hibernation at Nebagamon. No tennis, no sailing, no canoeing, no swimming…no kids. Winter was tough and long.

But spring has most definitely sprung at camp. This week, our caretakers have been clearing camp of all of the limbs and trees that winter knocked down. They have been blowing the leaves off the grounds to clear our paths (can you imagine what a job that is…leaf blowing all of camp?!? THANKS JOE, ANDY, AND CODY!) In just one week, more of our full-time staff (Briggs, Fornear, Louis and I) will be heading to Nebagamon to start all of the at-camp work that we need to do to get ready for the summer. A few weeks later, our Pre-Camp crew will arrive and begin the laborious (and seriously cold!) work of putting in all of camp’s docks, cleaning all of camp, and setting the table for more to arrive. And arrive they will. The next group will be our staff, the large group of men and women who have committed themselves to bringing Camp Nebagamon back. The collective team will be working every single day to make sure that camp is rejuvenated.

But, if you really think about it, it is not just the grounds that are experiencing spring this year. We all are. The world has been going through its longest winter in a century. As the animal kingdom does every winter, most of humanity has retreated to make it through this winter. Like trees, we too had to shed for the winter, but instead of leaves, we shed our interpersonal interactions to maintain our cores as the climate became challenging. Like fish, we were forced to slow our worlds down to survive the difficult conditions. (And yeah…some of our metabolisms slowed too…that’s why your pants don’t fit anymore!)  And we too went into hibernation, confined to our own caves and dens to survive the hostile conditions inflicted upon us.

For our children, this has been a particularly difficult and long winter. This extended winter has denied our kids of interpersonal interaction, and connection, and playtime, and other kids that they so desperately need. They have had to miss out on so many experiences critical to their well-being.

But so much of that is changing. Our long winter does seem to be abating and giving way to a springtime for all of us…like none before. While the winter still has a firm grip on so many in the world (and we cannot forget them even as our spring is upon us) there can be little doubt that many of us are starting to see our own personal leaves budding, flowers blooming, temperatures rising, and that sanguine feeling is back again. Rejuvenation…it feels just on the horizon.

And come June 21^st, our campers will experience that rejuvenation like they never have before! (And, no, it is not lost on me that for the first time in memory, our summer at Nebagamon will begin on the very first day of summer rather than in the waning days of spring as per normal. Kinda ruins my metaphor here, but I wasn’t going to change our start date just to make my article work better this month!) They will arrive at camp and begin to nourish themselves with all of the things that winter has denied them. Much like all of those animals who have just woken from their hibernation, I expect these kids will have an unmeasurable fervor about this emergence and will hit the ground running in a way that we have likely never seen at camp before. (I am both thrilled and terrified about this!!!) They will get to cast off their screens in favor of skits. They will eschew X-Box to play box hockey. They will get a chance to live a life less governed by social distance and more governed by social connection. Our campers will be rejuvenated.

Spring has indeed sprung for Camp Nebagamon.

It’s worth the mud…