A #Runoiagal – She is adventurous, but cautious. She is intelligent and she is full of inquisition. She loves to laugh. She likes to explore. She appreciates herself. She cares for the world and her family and friends.
In just a few short weeks, we are going to welcome “home” many experienced Runoia Gals and many new.
Together we will make magic happen!
Magic Sunset
Here is a poem written from one of the youngest campers this year at Runoia. She is beyond excited to come to camp and meet new friends, try new activities, gain autonomy in her physical and emotional abilities. And she is beyond excited to smell the moss and kiss the horses!
I thought I saw nothing…
But it might have been something.
I saw something blue,
But it could also be black
With big white clouds
All the blue connects
Big Beautiful sky!
Where birds fly everyday
I thought I saw nothing…
but it might have been something.
Trees swaying in the wind
The wind smells like the moss and flowers
I am the forest!
Big beautiful forest!
Where birds rest in nests every day.
Here is to all the Runoia Gals that ever have been and ever will be!
Imagine yourself eight years old; you are at sleepaway camp, far far far from your family. You are taking in the fun and action that happens day-in day-out at camp.
One day, as you merrily cruise along in your eight year old world, you are invited to go camping to “Fairy Ring”. Wait, it gets better. Not only do you get to camp at Fairy Ring, you get to have magical s’mores (AKA dessert before dinner) and you spend part of your afternoon building fairy houses for the fairies of Fairy Ring.
S’mores for Supper?!
Consider your eight year old mind fathoming a camp out where the fairies actually live? When said fairies come to visit before bedtime, you can hardly believe your eyes. Flitting between tall pines and the evening dusk, a movement, a glow, a fairy appears!
Fairies Flitting for Fairy Ring
The very next morning, when you wake up, the fairies have left you with your very own fairy rock painted in bright colors and glittery-gold.
This tradition at Camp Runoia has been going on since the beginning of time!
As I sit and listen to the wind bring in the sound of the peepers through the open window, I am reminded of how special this time of year is. It is mother’s day. And the world around me is bustling with life and new energy. Today I saw the red robins moving with intent and determination to build nests, I watched a hawk fly with such grace and glory from tree to tree. I see the red and the gray squirrels moving and collecting bounty. The world has awakened from the quiet hibernation of winter and the white stark horizon is now 30 shades of green. It is spring and it is a celebration of life.
Being a mother is my greatest accomplishment. I reflect on this day that it is not actually a celebration of my work, but that of my children.
Three in The Nest
It is their momentum and their exploration that feed my soul. Spring is also a time of change, and as with all growth there is change.
Chris and I are embarking with our family on great adventure. Our commitment to join the Runoia family is beyond exciting! We are determined and dedicated to bring our enthusiasm to camp and offer our love, our life, our experience, our connection, our intent, our passion, and our good will to Great Pond. We could not be more thrilled to travel to Maine with our beautiful children and share some of the greatest experiences that we could dream of with your daughters!
Courage!
We promise to be kind, gentle, honest, and to encourage them to find the best of themselves. We support growth and experience. There is so much that the land and the programs at Runoia will teach us all this summer! And as spring blooms with life and spiritual awakening, I resonate with E.E. Cumming’s words “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
Joy
At Runoia we encourage and support what spring begins in growth all summer
Growth!
long. My wish is that as you send your daughters from your nest to our woods, that we provide them with the safety and comfort, courage and the wisdom, the strength and the bravery, to expand their physical and emotional skills to their full potential, becoming exceptional young women.
Happy Mother’s Day. Happy Spring.
Find out more about Kyleigh and Chris Mercier here.
This has been a summer of strong women. And strong young ladies, too, growing up and into strong Runoia women to be reckoned with.
Strong Runoia women who can cross an ocean and a language barrier to sing absurd songs that wouldn’t make sense even with ten translators. To make friends with girls whom they may never see again but whose lasting impression are faces made into a camera lens or peculiar slang phrases or dance moves learned that will impress people back home.
Strong Runoia women that can chance a return to their camp home, knowing how much they’ve changed in a year or three years or seven years since being here last and still walk bravely through the Runoia gates, on time for their date with fate.
Runoia Co-Founder Jessie Pond
Strong Runoia women who after seemingly endless days of rain and clouds can be with each other and still manage to cast and reflect enough inner sunshine to light up their whole cabin for the… tenth day straight.
Strong Runoia women that can make magic with the most minimal of props – turning a boa into the base of a winning Miss Tacky Runoia costume, a deck of cards into a full-fledged casino, a small garden gnome into a summer’s worth of amusement.
Strong Runoia women that may complain when the shack pix are always in use and seating on the dining hall benches is snug, but can only truly rest easy when all of their cabin-mates are sleeping in rooms beside them, returned from Fairy Ring, Oak Island, Gulf Hagas and the most strenuous of “out-of-camp trip” locations… The Loft.
Strong Runoia women that can turn any moment into song and re-imagine any song for the perfect moment. Bonus points for performing said song costumed and in front of the entire camp.
From Early Years Runoia Teams
Strong Runoia women that can enter the fold and begin to gather Great Pond memories and experiences while sharing their own knowledge of the Great World Outside Runoia (GWOR for short)… Bonus points for making said memories or experiences while costumed and in front of the entire camp.
Strong Runoia women who have seen enough to know all, yet can still accept that a new camp tradition can be begun at any moment because in fact, all of the most special ones we share were once new too.
Strong Runoia women that can carry forth all these very most important traditions while allowing camp to grow and change and flex with the years. Who knew that each strong women that comes through the gates is a new vessel for the continuation of those traditions while also being a catalyst for equally essential change and freshness.
This Log is dedicated to all the strong Runoia women and young women of 2009.. and of course, the men that are strong enough to them here.
Carrie Murphey, one of the new ones
Dedication to the 2009 Camp Runoia Log by Carrie Murphey
As a 20-years-old Hungarian girl it was quite a big deal for me last year when I decided to apply for a summer camp counselor program at Camp Leaders to work and travel in the U.S.
So on June 17th 2014 the biggest adventure in my life had started. I was really excited when I said goodbye to my parents at the airport but surprisingly not scared at all. I was facing a 10-hour flight from Budapest to Boston and when I arrived at camp I’d been awake for almost 24 hours. Fortunately a ready-to-sleep bed was waiting for me at camp.
Hamming it up with Mark on the lake
I had expected that I will learn thousands of new things during the summer: food, animals, games, songs, places, language, traditions, rules, different cultures and many new people. And my expectations weren’t false – I had widened my perspective in many ways.
Hungary is a really small country in Europe – only about 36,000 sq miles so as the State of Maine. Now you can imagine how unbelievably huge is the U.S. for me that I only realized first during my one month travels after camp.
I have learned Runoia terms like EP, QP, Mahadin, Lodge, Gaga, green machine, CIT etc. I had the opportunity to join flag raisings, hear loons at night, celebrate 4th of July, sit on a yellow school bus, eat Gifford’s ice cream and dirt pudding, and sing all the Runoia songs at campfire while eating marshmallows. And of course I was able to teach my favorite activity, sailing for the kids.
Laura out sailing with campers
I’m really grateful for that summer at Runoia where I’ve met a lot of wonderful people who I am able to see again hopefully in a few months for the summer of 2015.
Laura Meszaros, from Hungary, lived in junior end and taught sailing in 2014.
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!
Runoia Giggling
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”
Here is to all the Runoia Gals that ever have been and ever will be!
