There’s something that happens at camp after just three sleeps. The nervous energy of arrival day starts to quiet, and makes room for the joyous energy that fills the camp. You can feel it in the Lodge during cheers, the ski docks when encouraging friends, and the giggles that can be heard in the villages in the evenings before bed. The unfamiliar becomes familiar. And somewhere between the first night and the third morning, kids stop arriving at camp and start living there.
I’ve been watching it happen all week, and I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been doing a little bit of the same thing myself.
This is my first summer as camp owner, and while Birch Trail isn’t new to me, seeing it through this lens has made everything feel both completely familiar and completely new at once. I’ve found myself noticing things I want to hold onto, and things I want to make sure I never stop seeing just because they become routine. This letter is about a few of those things.
The first afternoon is something else. Campers are walking around in cabin huddles; the older campers moving with the easy confidence of people who know exactly where they’re going; and the newer ones drinking it all in, trying to map the place in their minds. There’s a particular kind of energy to it: excited, a little overwhelmed, full of possibility.
The weather hasn’t exactly cooperated these first few days, except for a couple pockets here and there. It seems Otto Cranque (son of Emmanuel, the operator of the weather dome that we have over BT and Lake Pokegama) has been slacking on the job. And so, it was a bit chilly for swim checks. Yet, every single camper I was with in the morning got in that lake and completed their test.
Some girls screamed and jumped in before anyone could say a word. Some were hesitant, and then watched a cabinmate go, and went. Some had a harder time, and they got there with encouragement from us and from the girls swimming right beside them. And some just quietly lowered themselves into the lake and took off like it was nothing.
Every single one of them got in the same lake. Every single one completed their test.
That’s the beauty of camp. We are not all starting from the same place. We are different in how we get there. And yet we get there together. I don’t think there’s a better summary of what we’re trying to do here all summer than what we did at the waterfront.
When our first full day of activities brought rain, that same spirit carried through: making the days count. That adaptability is something I think you all put in your daughters long before they got here. We’re here to give them opportunities to practice their bravery, their resilience and their joy in this community.
Then came yesterday morning. I was heading to a morning meeting with the leadership team, and I thought about the first day, when so many girls were already awake and moving at that hour, buzzing with the newness of it all. Yesterday morning, the path was quiet. That silence is a good sign. It means they’re sleeping like campers who are making the most of every single day.
And then, on a walk later that morning, I passed two girls from M1 figuring out their morning logistics. Nothing unusual about that. But then one of them said, casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world: “Ok, I’ll meet you there in a bit, I just need to go drop this off.”
She was talking about dropping off the cabin mailbox. Each cabin has one, and it’s a different camper’s job to bring letters the cabin wrote to the mail box each day. This camper knew what her job was. She knew where she was going. She split off from her cabinmate without a second thought, and went to do her errand.
I know that might sound small. But I stood there for a second after they walked away, and I felt something I think you would recognize too; that particular mix of pride and wonder you feel when a child does something independently and doesn’t even realize how remarkable it is. In just three sleeps, this place has become completely hers, and completely her cabinmates’ and they were talking and acting as if they had known each other and had been living here for months.
In our world that makes it increasingly hard for young people to navigate much of anything on their own, your daughter already feels enough of a sense of home here after three days that she could split up from a friend, run an errand by herself, and find her way to a place she now knows.
And we’re just getting started.
Color your days bright,
Beebs
