Little Things

Every summer I get the same question from LOTS of campers: “What do you do at camp when we aren’t here?” It is a simple question with a complicated answer.

We host some big college events (Wofford College brings their entire Freshman class to camp this week, RUF will have three Fall Conferences at camp next month, and we will have an Alumnae Weekend to close out the year in October). We also do a lot of preparations for next summer… most of these are little things that you might not even notice.

These past two weeks have been very busy with these “little things”.

• We are planting grass… the fall growing season is very important to the lawns looking great next summer. Some of our grass dies every summer, weeds grow, and the nutrients in the soil run low. This time of year we fix all that! We spray the weeds, we spread fertilizer, and we plant thousands of pounds of grass seed. In a month, camp will be absolutely beautiful with a thick coat of new green grass. When springtime arrives, this new grass will be fully established and ready for a big summer.

• We are fixing cabins… every Tentalow, Bungalow, and Cabin is getting rewired to allow each bunk to have two plugs easily reached by both the upper and the lower bunk. We started doing this with our cabins several years ago and have decided to make every cabin the same in this important way. No more awkward stretched cords to a few outlets that are hard to reach. Every girl will now have two outlets dedicated to her exclusive use; and that outlet is located above her mattress so it is easy to reach. While we are replacing outlets, wiring, and breakers we are ALSO replacing every window screen in camp (tight clean screens are a delight to a camp director).

• We are fixing things you will never see: new septic fields, renovations to our well houses, renovations to the water pump house, removing dead trees, planting new trees, repairing roads, and repairing rock work.

Sam and his “Merry Men” are working hard every day and will do so all year long with the goal of making camp perfect. I will show you the progress on the blog. It is going to be our BEST SUMMER EVER!