Campers Archives - Page 26 of 28

Life Lessons at Camp Runoia

Posted on October 9, 2014October 18, 2016 by Pam Cobb

LIFE LESSONS

Life Skills: Learning on Camping Trips at Runoia

Earlier this year, one of my friends asked me “what’s the best place you’ve ever been? And I answered “camp”! Although this is only my second year here, I cannot begin to describe how much camp has impacted my life. I truly feel as if I have been here forever. Camp is all about making life long friends, as well as memories and I am so thankful that I have been able to have that experience.

The hardest part about camp for me is saying goodbye to all of the people I’ve become so close with because I’m not certain when the next time is that I will see them. You meet people, make memories and then you say goodbye. However, I’ve learned that that is what makes this camp experience so special. Being here has also taught me to live in the moment and to take every opportunity that I am given, and I am so thankful for this life long lesson. To all of my friends here at camp, you know who you are, past present and future, I want to thank each of you for letting me into your life. I love you all.

To the Camp Runoia Directors, thank you so much for keeping the Camp Runoia traditions strong and for sharing them with me.

Written by Rose B. for the Camp Runoia Log, August, 2014

Posted on September 29, 2014October 18, 2016 by Alex

The international camper perspective:

You may wonder what drives our international parents to send their girls thousands of miles from home; to a place they have often never been; to have an experience that is not only challenging in itself but must be conducted with English as a second language!

This Runoia parent sums it up beautifully:

“I have been wanting to get in touch with you since the girls came back from their camp experience to let you know what an amazing, rewarding and joyful experience it has been for them! Even V. who had a more difficult start, came back announcing she wanted to repeat next year! And the friends they have made: they are already in contact via mail with some of them, and plan on keeping it that way…

And from my side, I feel they have not only improved their English, but gained self-confidence about their capacities to go beyond their own initial limitations. So once more, thanks for all of that! And indeed I will enroll them for next summer.” (Camp Runoia Mom from Spain)

While improving English skills may be the initial drive it is apparent that the whole camp experience is what the girls take home.

International campers and staff add diversity to our Runoia population and provide opportunities to share cultural exchanges.

In 2014 we had campers and staff representing more than 10 different countries!

It is a win, win for everyone.

Hardy Girls Webinars – Education and Training for a Great Start This Autumn

Posted on September 22, 2014October 18, 2016 by Pam Cobb

The Hardy Girls Healthy Women Training Institute welcomes you back after a marvelous summer! Check out our first webinar series of the year:

The Hardiness Webinar Series!

October 7th, 2014 – 1pm-2pm
Introduction to Hardy Girls Healthy Women

(FREE!)

New to Hardy Girls Healthy Women? Join HGHW President Kelli McCannell as she discusses everything you need to know about HGHW! McCannell will give an overview of the history, its incredible researched-based programming, and everything HGHW has to offer girls and the adults that work with them!

October 24th, 2014 – 3:30pm-4pm
Allies In Action: Girls Advisory Board (GAB) Panel

(FREE!)

What is GAB and what do they do? Join Girls Advisory Board members as they discuss their experiences on the Girls Advisory Board. GAB will talk about the importance of youth engaging in feminist activism and how adults can better support and empower girls.

November 5th, 2014 – 2pm-4pm
From Adversaries To Allies: Building Girls’ Coalition Groups
($100 – Includes curriculum – GREAT FOR EDUCATORS!)

Are you ready to take a new approach in your work with girls? Want to find a way to address girl fighting, teach media literacy skills, and empower girls to change their world for the better? Hardy Girls Healthy Women and its acclaimed girls’ group curriculum From Adversaries to Allies: A Curriculum for Change has been turning adversaries into allies in middle schools for years. Our research-based guide and its supplement Becoming a Muse brings girls together in the face of a culture that tells them girl-fighting and bullying is the norm. This pairs nicely with our “How To Get Buy–In” webinar on Nov. 25th!

November 12th, 2014 – 2pm-3pm
Summer Sisters: Empowering Girls at Summer Camp

($30)

For many girls, summer camp truly is a magical time where they can “just be me.” But why is that? Who are these girls the rest of the year? And how can we help them hold onto the magic of camp all year long? Hardy Girls Healthy Women created an exclusive activity guide Summer Sisters: A Guide to Coalition Building at Camp & Beyond just for camp professionals and other staff to help find the answers to these important questions. All participants in this webinar will receive a free activity from the curricula and information on how to train staff and roll out these activities at your camp or summer program.

November 19th, 2014 – 2pm-3pm

Adventures Girls: If She Can See It, She Can Be It

($40 – Includes Adventure Girl Program Guide)

Do you want to inspire girls in your community and help them defy gender stereotypes? Build an Adventure Girls program at your school or organization! Adventure Girls is an interactive program for girls in grades 2nd—6th grade that provides girls with the opportunity to meet women who are defying gender stereotypes and challenging notions of what a girl or woman “should” do or want to be. It models the idea “if she sees it, she can be it.” Dana Bushee and Jessica Leighton will cover the origins of the program, the impact on girls, and what we’ve learned from our 10 years of experience.

November 25th, 2014 -1pm-2pm

How to Get Buy-In: Making The Case for Girl Groups
($30- Goes great with Girls’ Coalition Group Webinar on 11/5!)

This webinar will share strategies on how to get institutional buy-in for Girls Coalition Groups from experiences in schools, training muses, and working as a muse. Christine Bright and Lida Holst will discuss avenues on how to effectively build girl groups, how to sustain the work with administrators and parents, and how to partner with girls to create activism. Register today!

For further descriptions of each webinar (and for registration) go to: hghw.org/webinars

Networking

Posted on September 18, 2014October 18, 2016 by Alex

Yesterday the Director team was lucky enough to spend the afternoon networking at Migis Lodge on the shores of Sebago Lake in Raymond with a hundred or so other camp directors. We embraced the late summer sunshine while enjoying our end of the season Maine Summer Camps organization meeting, lunch and fellowship.

It is always great to hang out with other directors to hear about their summer adventures, trials and successes. The conversation themes are often common ones: how awesome 4^th of July was, homesick campers, how well new site or equipment worked and either reveling or bemoaning the weather! Although the style and affiliations of our camps vary greatly we all share a true passion for engaging children and youth in the camp experience.

It is empowering to spend time with like-minded camp professionals, to get validation for the work that we do and to share our challenges and successes amongst others who truly understand . We learn from each other, are always willing to share our knowledge and ideas and work for the common purpose of getting more children to have access to a summer camp experience.

We hope that as you are networking on the soccer sidelines, at PTO meetings, in the office, at the gym and everywhere else you travel in your daily lives that you will speak to others about the intrinsic value camp has had for your daughter.

As open enrollment begins October 1^st a plug for Runoia is always appreciated too!

Fireworks on the Lakes – Seeking a Balance with Belgrade Select Board

Posted on September 16, 2014October 18, 2016 by Pam Cobb

Camp Runoia prides itself in being active in our local business community helping to bring people to the area, being involved in our local conservation groups, The Belgrade Lakes Association and the Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance and believing in sustainable practices at camp and in our communities. All of our year round employees serve on boards, volunteer at events and/or coach sports or participate in races, fund raisers and friend-raisers around the state, in New England and beyond.

Here’s a recent letter to our Select Board representing the importance of balancing fun and life on the lakes:

Belgrade and the lakes in and around Belgrade is such a beautiful place to enjoy with your family and friends. I can see how everyone wants to show off the fun of fire works when they come up for the weekend or have friends or family visiting. With fireworks readily accessible, we are hearing fireworks nearly every night and certainly every weekend night of the summer on Great Pond.

Fireworks used on a continual basis are disruptive to people, animals and the environment.

Our Camp Runoia campers are frightened by the loud booming and cracks and whistles that carry on nightly. Their sleep is disrupted causing adults to have to console them and stay up with them until they can fall back asleep with hopes that another round across the lake doesn’t wake them again.

Our horses, a herd of over a dozen, who are stabled during the day for lessons and out in pasture at night, run in fear during the fireworks causing injury and overuse of adrenaline, wearing on them and making them not fit for work the next day. Often we have to get the horses from the pasture and bring them into the stables during fireworks that are close by. Additionally, the loons, the wildlife around the lake and the lake itself are experiencing loud noise, chemical exposure and plastic and paper fragment waste on a regular basis.

We hope Belgrade will be smart about fireworks and restrict usage to a few key dates of the summer for people to enjoy them and for those of us with people and animals who are disrupted by them can be prepared and keep everyone safe while enjoying the beauty of the lakes in each and every way.

The Natural Beauty of the Night Sky Wows Us

Coach!

Posted on September 4, 2014October 18, 2016 by Alex

In the blink of an eye I have gone from Camp Director to coach. I still have my clipboard but have traded my flip flops for cleats and am now on the field instead of Great Pond. The transition from camp back to home life is often a fairly rapid one as school starts here before Labor Day and there is not much time to switch gears. While saying goodbye to our camp friends is tinged with sadness we are excited to get home and reconnect with our local friends that we have not seen all summer. All of the kids seem to have grown a foot and the forest is as always trying to take over my backyard!

The end of summer in Maine is perfect; gorgeous days and a little chillier at night. There is a hint of fall in the air as red leaves begin to appear on the trees and apples and pumpkins become available at the farm stands.

Many of the summer folk have headed home and the roads are quieter and the lakes less busy. Loons begin to gather for their winter migration and the calls echo longer in the crisp air. Geese fill the air flying south and hang out on the soccer field snacking in the sunshine. Lately a pack of coyotes has been howling just behind the house, sometimes living in the Maine woods can be quite an adventure. There is a feeling of wrapping things up yet also the new beginnings of the school year and changing season.

I am ready for game day, for fun competition and outdoor exercise, for embracing this fall cycle of the camp season. I eagerly anticipate the new enrollments that come in everyday and while I long for the long, busy, people filled days of summer I am content with the shorter, less intense reflective days of fall.

Only 293 days until camp!!

Bittersweet Endings at Camp Runoia

Posted on August 29, 2014October 18, 2016 by Pam Cobb

Bittersweet Endings

The end of camp is also a beginning.

The end of camp means saying “see you later”.

The end of camp feels like an amazing high quality chocolate bar that you never want to end and savor it to the last nibble. And ultimately, can’t wait until you allow yourself to taste it again!

The summer season in Maine ends with cool nights, bright days and feel of autumn high in the air. The bittersweet vine begins to form its bright berries that make us smile in the darkening days of fall. The golden rod flower stands erect and bright in the mellowing sun. Afternoons end all too quickly and dusk settles in as we yearn for the long summer days.

Ending anything great is hard to part with – like the end of a good novel or a challenging game or a zip on the Runoia Dragonfly.

The good news about the end of camp is you have your memories, your friendships, your totems of the summer experienced. Be they symbols as in an award for accomplishments, an emblem like your art projects, a feeling you hold near and dear, or the growth others notice in you, these parts of summer stay with you like the bittersweet vine continues to grow. The good news about the end of camp is that Runoia will be there for you in 2015 and beyond.

Although camp ending is bittersweet, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam:27, 1850 sums it up so well:

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

And as we sing at Runoia “And when I get back home again, I’m gonna study hard and then, back to canoes and paddles”

Happy Back to School!

Camp Runoia News – Limerick Style!

Posted on August 12, 2014October 18, 2016 by Pam Cobb

Camp this week was a blast

We made each minute last

Playing out on the lake

Riding horses and ate cake

Our time here went by too fast!

Trips this week were so fun

Canoeing and hiking got done

Fun days at the beach

Mountain peaks within reach

We made it through thunder and sun!

Capture the Flag was an EP

Also we had a birthday party

Sunday was The Dot

Monday football was fought

Lip Synching skits were the key

Blue White playing has begun

Kayaking, swimming and a run

The tri brought new game

Of Ironwoman fame

At CR sporting is fun

The end of summer ‘14

Mixes our thoughts in between

With family in sight

And tears of delight

Hugs with friends makes quite a scene!

Canoe Trip on Great Pond

Posted on July 31, 2014October 18, 2016 by Alex

Our younger campers are off for an overnight canoe trip on Great Pond. So nice that they can leave directly from camp and enjoy time in tents, cooking outside and time with their cabin group.

A trip on the Belgrade Lakes for our Runoia campers

Our Runoia campers get out to hike and canoe throughout Maine and enjoy the outdoors.

Runoia paddlers heading out for a canoe overnight

Runoia Parents Letters to the Directors

Posted on May 28, 2014October 18, 2016 by Pam Cobb

Today we received a letter from a parent wrote about her hopes for her daughter’s summer at Camp Runoia. They hoped she would continue to “get close to nature” as she has during the previous two summers at camp. We find these letters from parents helpful for raising our awareness of campers’ needs and goals and also guiding us toward continual improvement of our staff training, facilities, marketing and product. It sounds so business like but guess what? Maine camps are businesses! They are also people and community oriented and based in country, even wilderness, settings.

As the spring pallet has now arrived in full green and we see flowers, hummingbirds, baby osprey, apple blossoms. We pause at every sunrise and take in every sunset. We notice the phase of the moon, the level of the lake water and weather as it comes and goes. We celebrate the natural world around us and are in awe of so many delights in the woods, fields and lakes of Maine. Might this be reason their daughter felt close to nature? We hope so.

In honor of Maine, its natural beauty and the seasons around us, here is a Longfellow poem to enjoy:

Sunrise on the Hills

I stood upon the hills, when heaven’s wide arch
Was glorious with the sun’s returning march,
And woods were brightened, and soft gales
Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.
The clouds were far beneath me; bathed in light,
They gathered midway round the wooded height,
And, in their fading glory, shone
Like hosts in battle overthrown.
As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance.
Through the gray mist thrust up its shattered lance,
And rocking on the cliff was left
The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft.
The veil of cloud was lifted, and below
Glowed the rich valley, and the river’s flow
Was darkened by the forest’s shade,
Or glistened in the white cascade;
Where upward, in the mellow blush of day,
The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.

I heard the distant waters dash,
I saw the current whirl and flash,
And richly, by the blue lake’s silver beach,
The woods were bending with a silent reach.
Then o’er the vale, with gentle swell,
The music of the village bell
Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills;
And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills,
Was ringing to the merry shout,
That faint and far the glen sent out,
Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke,
Through thick-leaved branches, from the dingle broke.

If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget,
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills! No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.