Hi, my name is Phoebe. I’m eleven, and I was in second shack last year. I think that one of the reasons that Runoia is such a great place to be, is because everyone there is like family. Everybody is so nice no matter what. Currently, my cousin, Erin, is a counselor and it was just my sister’s last year as a camper. I also had a cousin, Megan who went to camp too. Although I have some real family there, I also have all of my friends who seem just like sisters to me.
Another great thing about camp is that it doesn’t matter if you are way older than your best friend or way younger than her either. Camp is like a whole other world where everybody is super nice.
Now last but not least, the counselors at camp make everything super fun. All of the activities would not be the same without them. In the shack, they are always there to comfort you if you get homesick, and out of the shack, they are always willing to help you try new things and achieve your goals.
To sum it everything at camp comes down to being a great community. It is pretty much just one big happy family
If you live in Maine or really anywhere in the north east you have to develop your relationship with the weather, particularly with snow. The cold is manageable; you can wrap up in layers, crank up the heat and stay indoors pretending you are living in the Caribbean. Snow is a whole other ball game (speaking of which there is a big game this weekend that we assume 90% of our camp community will be watching!). You think that you are ready for it get your snow tires on, pack a blanket and shovel in the car and clear your decks of anything likely to get buried but then it still catches you by surprise.
As we dig out from this 2 foot monster blizzard I am reminded of a couple of things:
The terrifying sound of plows waking you from your slumbers in the middle of the night actually means there is some hope you can get out of your driveway in the morning! Awful driving conditions result in bonus days off school and work to have fun family time. Shoveling is an endless task, children may appear to be good shovelers but are easily distracted by large piles of snow to be jumped in. Chickens hate snow!
Once the shoveling is done and multiple hot cocoa’s drunk there is time to enjoy the quiet beauty, a ski or snowshoe across the field checking out animal prints or time to reflect by the fire with a good book.
This time of year we hear from families – mostly new families but some returning families as well – about their daughter being nervous about going away to camp this summer.
We have some ideas to help you out and so do the experts. This article gives you some ideas on supporting your nervous camper: How to handle summer camp anxiety
While validating her concerns is a good idea, it’s also okay to acknowledge her concerns and redirect her from focusing too much on summer camp right now. It is a long ways till summer and your daughter will have a lot of life experiences in the next 6 months. She will mature and grow helping her with the idea of being away. In the spring some of the tips suggested in the above article will help.
Here’s one of our favorite camp psychologist, Dr. Christopher Thurber’s ideas of how to help your child adjust to the idea of camp: Click Here
Or, for a quick look right now, here are some of our ideas:
Get your daughter involved in the packing process and buying a few new things for camp will engage her
Share that it is okay to be nervous and it is a normal feeling, tell her about times you’ve been nervous to do something and how you coped
Let her know you want to help her and together you will come up with a plan
Practice with sleepovers and weekends at grandparents’ home helps
Address specific questions she has will help reduce her uncertainty,
Look at our video and interacting with the camp map will get her involved
View our YouTube videos and if you use Facebook, checking out our posts and pictures are good ways to see the fun parts of camp.
1906 – Lucy Weiser and Jessie Pond scout locations for Camp Runoia and land in Belgrade, Maine.
1907 – Camp Runoia opens on the Northeastern side of Hatch Cove on Great Pond with 7 campers, a cook and Miss Weiser and Miss Pond
1910 – the first Camp Runoia Log Book was written recording the history of the summer events
1914 – Miss Weiser secured the land known as the Wentworth Farm on the Southwestern shore of Great Pond.
1915 – in the winter, the first camp building was hauled across the ice of Great Pond to establish the camp kitchen on the new property
1915 – in the summer, campers arrived to camp on the present site of Camp Runoia for the first summer
1916 – new buildings were erected on the property including an addition to the kitchen and cabins 1, 2 and 3
1917 – The Runoia Lodge was built
1918 – Camp Runoia operates throughout World War 1
1939-1945 – Camp carries on during World War 2 albeit a difficult time to get supplies and food. Campers helped to farm and build at camp to support their summer camp experience1952 – Betty and Phil Cobb met each other at Phil’s grandfather’s camp, Camp Wyonegonic, Denmark, Maine
1953 – Betty and Phil Cobb married and that summer visited over 50 camps in New England searching for a camp for sale.
1954 – Betty and Phil worked with Lucy Weiser for the summer and bought Runoia at the end of the season.
1991 – Pam Cobb bought Runoia from her parents, Phil and Betty Cobb
2012 – The Tabell Family Foundation donated a gift to scan and preserve the Runoia Logs!
2013 – the 60th summer Runoia has been owned and operated by the Cobb Family
2016 – will be the 110th anniversary summer of Camp Runoia!
The name Halloween is said to derive from the Old English ‘hallowed’ meaning holy or sanctified and is now usually contracted to the more familiar word Hallowe’en. It is also known as All Hallows’ Eve or All Saints’ Eve and is celebrated on October 31st the day before November 1st All Saints’ Day in the western Church.
Possibly evolving from the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain, modern Halloween has become less about literal ghosts and ghouls and more about costumes and candy. The Celts used the day to mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, and also believed that this transition between the seasons was a bridge to the world of the dead. Over the millennia the holiday transitioned from a somber pagan ritual to a day of merriment, costumes, parades and sweet treats for children and adults. (History.com)
The modern celebration of Halloween which has often been replicated at summer event days or EP’s at camp is a complicated mix of traditions and influences. Typical festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, playing pranks andtelling scary stories.
Dressing up in a fun costume is the Camp Runoia favorite Halloween pastime! Hopefully our camp Facebook page spotlight on creative costuming has given you some camp themed easy ideas! It’s amazing what you can do with a few props and a bunch of dress up clothes!
Put your arts and crafts skills to good use and enjoy trick or treating!
October is an interesting month in the camp Runoia office. It is finally a time to breathe and reflect while enjoying the beauty of the seasons changing around us. Camp in the fall is so quiet with the merriment of summer long gone, the days getting shorter and a chill in the air. Flip flops are no longer the footwear of choice and layers are the way to dress as you never quite know how the day will turn out.
Our days are filled with pondering, questions and often discussion. There are many aspects of the camp business to reflect upon as we contemplate the past season and plan for the next. What site and facility jobs must be accomplished before the snow flies? how many spaces will be open for new girls? which staff are invited back? what were the summer highlights? where do we need to improve? how will winter tasks be distributed?
There is time to spend looking through the thousands of photos from the summer, to miss the happy smiling faces and reminisce about people and events. There is more time to chat on the phone with returning and prospective parents and to connect together as a team to share our hopes for the next season.
As the last leaves get raked off of the archery field we are glad for this time of change and hopeful that when the leaves appear again we will be ready to greet the spring and be well prepared for our new 2015 season of camp!
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.
Peaceful Moment by Great Pond
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.
Campers Enjoy The Lake Day and Night
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 end of February comes quickly with the short calendar month and the longer days in Maine’s winter season. Every day the sun shines longer and brighter and we dream of the days when we hear the screen doors slam, girls voices in laughter, song and friendship.
So much happens at camp.
Wilderness Trips Build Lifelong Skills
There’s growth and learning, building of lifelong skills in activities and receiving support to navigate independently within the community of camp. Other aspects:
Becoming your personal best
Finding friends and building relationships throughout the summers of youth and beyond.
Working through the agony of defeat and experiencing the glory of trying something for the first time.
Guiding our Runoia campers are dedicated youth professionals; coaching, supporting, and making campers laugh when they thought they were going to cry. Basically camp counselors become the adults campers treasure and look up to for years to come. Counselors focus on campers building skills, increasing self-esteem, learning to advocate and being the “stand up girl”. They also create a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the process.
Skill Building at Camp Runoia…… Happens All Day Long
Our parents are thankful Runoia is so much more than s’mores and fun. Sure we have that going on, but, the depth of camp: learning about yourself and what you contribute to the whole, intentional youth development and life skill building is farther afield for your every day camp program.
One parent sent me an email and this link this week:
A letter to a daughter which applies to all young girls and woman – so perfectly written and seems to fit with the Camp Runoia way so wanted to pass it on:
When I read Dr. Flanagan’s letter to his daughter I had to share as he so eloquently expressed the message my husband and I hope our 14-year-old daughter and 16 and 18-year-old sons live by. I only hope my husband and I are teaching these lessons daily by our example. I am a bit disheartened at the direction corporate culture has taken, not only increasing these societal expectations on young girls but also more recently targeting young boys as well. The eternal optimist in me knows we have wonderful examples all around our children – teachers, neighbors, camp counselors, scientists… to name a few. We simply need to help our children and ourselves understand these are the people we need to emulate rather then the false role models created by corporate marketers.
This week Camp Runoia recognizes National Eating Disorder week. We encourage parents to take stock in the Runoia parent’s declaration (above). Also:
Explore resources with your children that include media literacy*, including awareness of advertising and marketing manipulation of girls (and boys).
Help your children to understand how they are marketed toward to “fit in”, “feel good about themselves” and the falseness this perpetuates at the risk of their own youth and their self esteem.
Leadership Skills Happen at Every Age Group at Runoia
Hats off to camps around the nation that delve a little deeper into the camp experience; to the camps practicing 21st century skill building, youth development and creating communities to belong to without fear of prejudice, exclusive cliques, look-ism or humiliation.
Thanks to our Camp Runoia parent who brought Dr. Flanagan’s letter to our attention enabling us to share with our camp community, peers and professionals in camp.
And, finally, how many days before we are back in our camp “bubble” where our girls can take pressure off themselves, rub a little dirt in their palms and grow into the young people they will become? Not too many – its nearly noon and the sun is still high in the late February sky!
*www.hghw.org is a girl-serving organization teaching media literacy and much more – check it out!
