BIG Feelings for Camp with Alice
Do you know those people in your life you can always count on to listen to you and help make you feel better? That positivity is their middle name, and they live for the chance to make you smile? Let me introduce, Alice Hospitel, our new CIT Director, pottery expert, and one of my closest camp friends. Read below to get their thoughts on camp, kids, and why Stomping Ground is the place for them. BIG feelings people!” - Ray
I struggle with finding words to express most of the BIG feelings I have, but with camp it's the opposite. My friends', coworkers', roommates', parents'--who are supposed to cherish everything about me--eyes glaze over when I'm three dictionaries' worth into various stories, details of the daily schedule, hypotheses about George's complex and beautiful brain, and fun camper-sourced facts (DID YOU KNOW cassowaries can break a car window and have talons the size of baby carrots? a little birdie told me that one). And yet there are zero words that are quite as magical as the feeling of camp. Klee puts it best when she says "love explosion" and I equate that to the feeling of butterflies and heart palpitations as I write this (like RIGHT now) because I think about how much this summer changed my life.
As Lily P. and I were scrubbing the Pottery Barn on the last day of camp, and debriefing the summer, she said, "It's wild how at camp I fell in love with everyone because of their energy before I even got to know them," [not sic, very much paraphrased]. I have never been thrown into a group of sixty people like this and fallen in love with every single one of them so suddenly. The amount of love that is at camp, in the air, is tangible and intoxicating. Some of the hardest days I had were because I had to let myself catch up to how empowered I was feeling and had to let myself believe I deserved to feel this way! The staff culture is incredible, intentional, and nourished by the hard, hard work that Laura and Jack and the rest of the ad staff are constantly doing. I am so grateful for it.
I've been working with kids since I was a kid and it's always been grand, and I do believe that kids everywhere are incredible and magical and complex and just need the space and trust from adults to show us everything that they're capable of. Having believed this for a long, long time (speaking proportionally to my twenty-three years of being alive) could not have prepared me for experiencing how darn true it is. I spent 90% of my summer with my jaw dragging on the ground. I was flabbergasted and humbled by campers who demonstrated empathy, creativity, curiosity, kindness, softness, enthusiasm, and love--all things I've always prided myself on--in glorious and innovative ways. The world is changing and becoming more intentional and loving, and these kids are the ones DOING IT! And camp is letting them do it! Camp is helping them, giving them the tools to do it. It's letting them lean into these wildly human aspects of themselves that are so often suppressed for the sake of pragmatism or order. Camp is also helping me and telling me to be amazed. I had to share and listen and make judgment calls. I had to take chances and be vulnerable to mistakes, and I was forgiven by the young people who were disappointed by my decisions, and I was able to love and be loved in a community with young folks unlike any other.
You know how they say that the more you exercise, the more energy you get, and you're like "whaaaaat that makes no sense haha" and maybe that's just me because running makes me feel like my bones are falling to the bottom of my still looking-normal-from-the-outside skin? I think I unfortunately believe it now, and thus will start exercising, because I have never worked so hard in my life and I also have never been so energized. I got up easily every day, dancing to Nick's party playlist on the best of those days, and worked, interacted, played, and problem-solved with kids until I went to bed, save for three hours of off time that were still spent similarly but with other staff. I HAVE NEVER HAD THIS MUCH ENERGY. I crashed a few times and there were a few Dayquil days but, overall, I was ready to GO. As someone who was a student for far too long and spent far too much money to be stressed and tired all the time, this was a beautiful reminder of how capable I am, and I'm still working at carrying it into my every day.
I'm still not satisfied with the words that I've found here, and I'm sure I'll spend the next few months jotting down half-baked thoughts that could turn into sequels to whatever *~tHiS~* is, and regretting not having put them into this text initially. But I think the magic is in the inexplicability of this made up world a bunch of us signed up to be a part of. I get to feel something so special, and like I'm a part of something so special, and I'm so so grateful that it exists. The thought of summer 2020 is exhilarating and scary because I don't know how anything could ever top this summer, and yet I have so much trust that it will. Thank you for reading this bumbling mess, and thank you for caring about this special place in whatever way it is you do. See you next year?
