Once, when I was a unit head for the oldest unit (the equivalent of kibbutz age campers, entering 10th grade) at URJ Crane Lake Camp in 2008, there was a giant storm.
The storm shook the ground. There was hail, lighting struck in blinding columns of energy on the campground itself, and buckets of rain blowing horizontally made stepping outside feel like submerging underwater. My unit had been at Limmud (Jewish education) when the rain started, so we had sheltered in the old dining hall building. As we played cards and waited for the storm to pass, I received a frantic phone call - one of my female bunks was missing three campers.
These three girls had developed a particular talent for sneaking out of Limmud, taking advantage of the fact that the rabbinical faculty rotated and didn’t necessarily know each kid by name right away. Steps had been taken to correct the issue, but on this day, that was hardly relevant; three campers under my care were missing. We radioed each major indoor area on camp; no one had them. We sent the cabin-next-door’s counselors into their cabin: no dice. I grew increasingly frantic. Feeling guilty and acting every bit of the impulsive 22 year old I was, I acted against the specific directive I had been given to shelter in place and ran out into the storm searching for my campers.
I ran all over the camp. My feet hurt, my clothes were soaked, I felt scared, and I started crying. I had failed these three girls by not being harsher and more specific about why it was bad to sneak away; I had failed their parents and my boss the camp director by not being a better supervisor.
Finally, exhausted, I made my way to the highest point on camp, the rec hall. There I found the girls, composing a love song to a cute male lifeguard and giggling endlessly. They could not have been safer from the storm or more perplexed with my dishevelment. They laughed at my state, and I was so relieved that I collapsed into fits of giggles alongside them.
When I arrived at Greene in Mid-May, It had been a decade since I last spent a summer at camp; ten years I spent being a chef in high stress, high volume kitchens. Ten years of needing food to be served perfectly cooked at the exact right moment; ten years of answering to bosses and customers with expectations beyond reason. And yet, as I struggled to sleep before the first night of camp, the feelings that I felt as a 22-year-old unit head came rushing back into my head. Stress, anxiety, fear; they all felt so tangible at camp in a way that even the most demanding kitchen I ever worked at never did. Why, I wondered, did it feel this way?
A camper came to camp this summer, and it immediately became clear it was not the right fit for them. They acted out continuously, punched and kicked their counselor and members of our camp care team, and after almost a week of attempting to work with the camper and their family, the decision was made for that camper to go home. After the camper left camp, I watched a member of the camp care team and one of the camper’s counselors collapse together in tears. In their eyes, they had failed that camper. All they wanted was to bring the magic of camp to every single kid that comes through Greene’s gates - regardless of why, they had not done so with this camper. And the feeling of that weighed upon them like boulders.
And then I began to understand my own stress and anxiety. Like every other camp staff member, I play a role in making sure that every camper has the most incredible, life-altering, world-view shaping, community-orienting summer possible. Fear of a negative yelp review has nothing on the collective weight of the hopes, dreams, and desires of every camper, parent, staff member, and alumnae who knows what transformation and growth is possible at camp. If you understand that power, nothing less than every ounce of energy you have available to put into this holy work is acceptable. And that knowledge is stressful.
Another believer in the transformational power of camping and being outdoors, President Theodore Roosevelt, once noted, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” As I look back over this past summer, the moments where I made mistakes and fell short, the moments where I had to push myself through exhaustion or wanted to tear out my hair in frustration, I can’t help but smile at the tremendous gift of working hard at work worth doing. For the past two months, I got to pay forward the stress and anxiety that was felt on my behalf to create camp magic for hundreds of campers. I can’t wait to do it again next summer.
(OK, I can probably wait.) (At least a month or two.)