One of the grand moments of going off to camp is feeling independent and having the opportunity to reinvent yourself. At Camp Runoia you have the chance to be a different person than you are in school or in your neighborhood or with your parents.

I do not imagine any young girls are scheming about this prior to camp. “When I show up at camp, I am going to be a courageous girl who helps others and is always kind and respectful to adults.” Or “I cannot wait to get to camp where I can be the first one up in the morning to help others with their morning chores.” In fact, it’s not something we even bring up with campers. It just happens and most campers reflect on it at some point during the summer.

A transformation occurs when girls come to camp that is purely organic. The tendency is that within a short period of time, girls drop their “baggage” from the school year and leave it somewhere between the parking lot and beginning of the two mile road to camp. Layers of pressure unload or the steam slowly seeps out from the pressure cooker of life.

Within the first few days campers unpack more of their emotional “stuff and become a little more carefree. They try something new without fear of humiliation. They stand up for others without being excluded from groups. As the summer session carries on, more and more of this happens around them and they find that being their true selves is easy and burden-less. Hallelujah!

Camp Runoia, where diversity is celebrated, people are included and valued for who they are and how they grow and what they contribute to the camp community. This leaves a lot of possibility for girls to try being someone else when they get to camp.

Unlike famous 19^th century female writers with pseudonyms “nom de plumes”, many who wrote with male names in a male-dominated profession, some campers truly try out a slightly different persona. They try behaving differently and receive speedy feedback in the form of gratitude, attention, cheers, acknowledgment and adding value. This phenomenon may come in the form of a personal victory of getting up in front of a crowd when they

have previously had stage fright or they find themself climbing to a high height when they have been scared of heights in the past. It starts with talking in front of a small group when it’s their turn and builds to performing in the talent show. Or climbing a little bit higher on the climbing tower and then trying the Runoia “Dragonfly” zipline at the end of the session.

Small steps to success lead to large distances covered in life.

Camp Runoia – building lifelong skills

I love November and it is tied to Thanksgiving and being thankful, being around loved ones and feeling warm and fed. Thankful being the key word.

When I saw a note that said “if you left your brand new board here, we have it, call us”, it reminded me when we returned a woman’s purse and how good that made US feel (needless to say the woman!). The fascinating part of that story is that we found the purse on a hiking trail in Carrabassett Valley. When we found the ID in the wallet, it was for a student from the Bahamas. Seriously – what do we do with that? Well, when back at the condo, we searched Facebook for the purse’s owner and I shared one friend with that young woman. What are the chances? I texted my friend and viola! Purse returned. And, I digress.

November is the ultimate month for paying it forward (now a verb – the entire action of doing something for someone else after someone does something good for you).

We use the phrase liberally – giving to someone else when you don’t expect anything in return or passing along a good deed or surprising someone else with a good deed. Perhaps it’s a stretch from Lily Hardy Hammond in her 1916 book In the Garden of Delight, nearly a century ago. It was brought to current day society through Helen Hunt, Kevin Spacy’s sweet film based on a novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde – written and directed by two women, btw. Haley Joel Osment who launches a good-will movement. I hear the phrase more frequently now that social consciousness is a school yard and coffee shop subject. Maybe the film helped provide momentum for the movement – good stuff!

Overall, we just want to do GOOD. When I think of the camp experience and all the focus we have on helping others, thinking of others, including others, working as a team, giving to others, I feel #camp is all about Pay it Forward. As a camp business, we want to create good feelings, provide great experiences and hope that all the people we connect with do the same for others. #MaineCamps are exponentially doing good with thousands of campers and staff every summer and those campers and adults are going into their home communities and doing GOOD there.

So, greet November with a warm hug – go do something good for someone else with no expectation and see how great you feel. Pay it forward is easy and effective and far from overused.

Tag: camp runoia

Reinventing Yourself at Overnight Camp

Pay it Forward – Overused Phrase? I don’t think so!