Camper Blog: Little Details That Make Me Grateful
There is something enchanting about Camp Greystone.
This spirit pulls you in and spins you around until you are a different person once you leave. In my nine years at camp, I have discovered things about myself and embraced parts of my personality that I would have never discovered on my own. Some of these things may be little, but all of them have impacted my life.
I discovered a new passion for improv, fencing, knitting and crocheting, and backstage. Greystone has also made me more comfortable in my own skin. I go to camp knowing that people will love me as I am.
Something about this past year at camp felt different, in a good way. I immediately clicked with everyone in my cabin and we were able to get along smoothly. This kind of close connection to others is something that I deeply experience at camp. Everyone strives to make you feel your very best as a person.
Council Fire still proves to be one of my favorite evening programs. Of course, there is the beautiful stillness of the woods at night, the crackling noise of the fire, and the presence of people who you love. This unique experience is unlike anything I experience at home. It offers a serene moment of self-reflection and silence.
I will be a Junior-Senior this coming summer. It sounds crazy as I write it. I will enter the eleventh grade after the summer and face the terribly complicated world of college searches. Camp is a place of slowing paces and a break from academics. I say this, yet I still finish many of my summer reading books during camp’s rest hours. I will participate in Senior Celebration this year, and most likely cry (like this past year) at Five Year.
I’m sure every young girl who watches the Senior’s Five Year speeches starts forming her own. This is particularly true to me. I do not know how I am going to fit so many hours and years of memories and experiences into a five-minute block. I could go on for hours about friends, love of the arts, counselors, and the camp itself.
Or, I could talk about some of my favorite memories, like watching my entire cabin jump into the lake on Banquet day, hearing the songs from Godspell sung by people that I knew at camp (which, and I did not realize this until after camp was over and I was listening to the songs on my own, makes the songs so much more personal), our Cabin 5 “mirror dance parties”, and linking arms after Five Year and going through the line for Crackers and back to our cabin without breaking the chain.
Little details like those are what makes Camp Greystone special to me. The people I have met and skills I have learned will stay with me forever.