Monthly Archives: August 2024

Campfire Tales | Week 7 (8/9/24) 

By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director

Camp is a place for firsts.

My first time sleeping over somewhere other than in my own home was at camp. Because I was a 5-year-old at the time, I was just too young to understand that when my parents left me in the bunk, they were not coming back for a while. My first time trying to swim was at camp – and so was my first time being pulled from the lake by an overzealous lifeguard who thought my dogpaddling was a precursor to going under. I never tried fried chicken before I went to camp and had it for the first time, and my immediate infatuation eventually led to my superstition of eating it before every basketball game I ever played in high school or college. The first time I was bullied was at camp. A bigger kid made me do something embarrassing that was just awkward enough that my friends never let me live it down. Unfortunately, my first time acting like a bully towards someone else was also at camp. A bunkmate who didn’t deserve the exclusionary tactics my close group of friends used to ensure that we would remain best friends was made to feel unwelcome, and that one summer was his last at camp. That was one of my first disappointments, and I think about it today.

My first time sleeping out under the stars was at camp, and so was my first-ever burger cooked in aluminum foil. The morning after, I found myself 100 feet away from where I started in my sleeping bag the night before – which can happen when you’re asleep on the ground without being in a tent – and that was when I got poison ivy for the first time. I got sunburned for the first time at camp. And athlete’s foot. And stitches. And then more stitches.

My first kiss was at camp. Regretfully, it was not with Ann. It was with a girl I thought was nice after an awkward social activity called, “The Dance”. There was very little dancing. We mostly stood around and tried to push our friends toward the girls while the counselors watched and kept egging us on. It was altogether horrible. After it was over, we walked from the Rec Hall without speaking a word. I was in a flop sweat, scared of what might happen. And then – with everyone clamoring around us – my first kiss became my first time giving in to peer pressure. Sometimes the firsts at camp have been hard lessons to learn, other times they’ve been mixed with some fear of the unknown or a healthy sense of curiosity with a touch of risk.

The firsts that have happened while I’ve been at camp for almost 50 of my 54 summers have been important, whether bittersweet or joyous. I scored 50 points in a basketball game for the first time at camp, I became a coach for the first time at camp, and I learned to juggle and spin a ball on my finger at camp. I played a song on the guitar for the first time in front of other people at camp, too. It was called “Mountain Dew”. It was about moonshine – or black-market whiskey – and to explain why that was a song we played at camp would take far longer than we have time for now.

The first time that my parents used camp as part of an ultimatum for me to work harder at school did not end up the way that I hoped. I was a couple of days late to arrive at camp because of a poor grade on my report card and can still feel the embarrassment I had to face with my friends. The same summer also brought about another first: the first time I had to face my parent’s vulnerability and learned of my mother’s illness while sitting in the camp director’s office. She would recover, thankfully. It was at camp that I first realized that I was good at something; being a camp director had become the thing that would anchor my career. Yet it was also at camp that I first felt like an utter failure as a professional, when the 2021 summer (our first here) tested everything I had ever learned and done before, and it took generous and timely help from others to prop me up and keep me on my feet.

Camp is essentially built to give our campers and staff members – and even our leaders – the chance for firsts. We’re outside of the comfortable environments of home designed to create a predictable routine, we tend to settle into things we like to do and do not like to do, and we do the ones we feel most comfortable with as often as we can. That’s typical, and that’s why camp is so important. There are many times that we try something new while we are at home, but at camp, we value and try to embrace the rapid succession of things that each of us is allowed to empower, to test, to push a little bit up against, and to add to the person we think we are or have always been. Even our veteran campers and staff here can attest to how frequently they’re given the chance to witness or engage in a first, and how – at Chestnut – we look to uplift those moments.

The last seven weeks – including all four of our sessions (First, Second, Full Summer, and Discovery) – have been filled with firsts for our campers and staff. I have witnessed countless examples of this. The first time a child stayed overnight in a cabin with a group of kids away from home. The first time a staff member taught a child how to climb the wall at Outdoor Adventure. The first time a camper jumped off of “#4” on the Wibit (the Aqua Park course in the lake). The first time a camper made a three-pointer at the Stadium, or the first time they stood on stage and performed in front of others during the Show. I saw kids use a sewing machine for the first time, and there were lots of kids that tried a new food in the Dining Hall. We had campers and staff who experienced their first Tribal (Color War), and our Varsity campers visited new cities for the very first time as part of our revamped trip programs. I saw kids play Skee-Ball for the very first time in the Canteen, and I relished the chance to watch campers and staff eat their very first piece of corn freshly grilled and dipped in a big container of melted butter.

No firsts were better this summer than seeing people begin relationships with each other that were important to them now and may stay so for a long time. Or those firsts when someone (camper or staff) was honored for the first time with the nomination and presentation of a Community Service Award during the Campfire while an entire camp applauded them and called their name. I saw a camper catch a touchdown pass in a flag football game and then they told me afterwards that it was the first time they ever caught a football. Ever. One counselor told me that when they said goodbye to their First Session campers it was the first time that they cried in public. There were so many more meaningful firsts, and I hope that our camp parents enjoy the chance to learn about them once our campers are home.

There has been so much more about Chestnut Lake Camp this summer that has been special; so many skills built, so many hurdles overcome; so many funny moments and powerful moments that will make up memories that can stay with campers and staff forever; so many lessons learned about life, so many times that an adult has positively guided a child, and so many times that a child has inspired an adult to care about more than themselves.

I hope that this summer – whether it was a camper’s first of many or a child’s final summer with us – was filled with meaningful firsts, and I look forward to creating more opportunities for them in the future.

Campfire Tales | Week 6 (8/3/24) 

By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director

I cannot remember the first time I heard the word, “Pickleball.”

As a competitive athlete for much of my life, I can admit to being slightly biased when considering what is considered a sport. One of our leaders at camp (Dan Craig, our Program Director) was sharing ESPN’s recent announcement of its 2024 “The Ocho” schedule, featuring an array of what I would consider ridiculous non-sports activities that are marketed as pseudo-athletic competition (such as the “Uncut Beard and Mustache Competition”, or the “Belt Sander Races”.) Whenever I heard more about Pickleball some years ago, I am sure that I placed it in a similar category.

Over time, I kept hearing more and more about how Pickleball was taking the world by storm as the fastest-growing sport in America. Courts (both outdoors and indoors) were cropping up everywhere, younger people were flocking to a game that had been a sport for retirees. Ann and I started hearing from our friends that they were starting to play. And then in 2021, our partners and friends at Trail’s End Camp informed us that they would be redoing their tennis courts with Pickleball lines. Before the summer of 2022, we did the same. But in all honesty, I had no confidence that anyone would ever care. How would something so silly catch on?

After a couple of summers of very tepid interest in Pickleball, we were preparing for a full renovation of our courts before this summer. Having heard the continued drumbeat of Pickleball’s growth in popularity (and even succumbing ourselves to the fad by playing a bit of it ourselves), we followed the lead of our partner camp and upgraded the courts to include not only the lines to be able to play Pickleball on the tennis courts surfaces but the construction of two permanent Pickleball-only courts under the lights.

This summer has had so many awesome moments and many take place in outstanding activity areas. The Lake and Pool have been as coveted as ever, Outdoor Adventure’s team has been superb at engaging kids in a wide variety of experiences, our Athletic programs have been outstanding at all levels, and the staff in Arts have been involving kids in wonderful projects. But there appears to be one runaway trend that has taken Chestnut by storm: Pickleball. Sport or not, it’s a thing here.

I am a sucker for Apache Relay, Tug-of-War, and Rope Burn in our Tribal Color Wars, as they represent old-school traditions and provide benchmarks in our celebration of rituals throughout the summer. I think that making a plaque to commemorate your cabin group in Woodshop will forever be important and never want to see that go away. And sports for me will always start with things like basketball and soccer and end with lacrosse and flag football, which are by no means new. But each summer, we experience things here at camp that represent something new; our campers may find interests or talent in all sorts of activities that could be as old as the hills or introduced just now by a creative member of our staff. But whether the thing they’re doing is old-fashioned or new-fangled, just doing new things for ourselves is a big part of camp. And it is our job to be open to these opportunities and to nudge and tease them out whenever we can in whatever ways are possible.

This summer has had quite a few great examples of this, ranging from the use of Ann’s Garden-grown cucumbers in the making of sushi at Culinary, kids getting into playing Badminton or Bocce at the new Office Lawn space, or the growing Beach Volleyball craze down at the Lake. But this is the summer of Pickle. Morning, afternoon, and night, there are people with Pickleball paddles in their hands and the sound of plastic balls being batted back and forth is present all the time. Being able to get 24 people playing simultaneously is awesome, and at times it seems like we could build 50 more courts and they would all be filled.

I may not recall when I heard about Pickleball for the first time, but I am grateful we jumped aboard. And even though I may still feel a bit unsure about where it fits in the pantheon of sports, I have learned the lesson again that was spoken by Ray Kinsella in 1989: “If you build it, they will come.” That’s what we do. We build the opportunities for kids to have a great time, and they come and do it.