Whew! We just sent off all of our amazing campers on their long trip adventures yesterday, and are finally getting the chance to reflect on the community building and leadership development we’ve witnessed this past week. We began with a service trip to the Merton House Nursing Home in Woodstock where we sang the residents a few of our favorite camp songs. Prior to our excursion, we had campers share why they felt that it was important to share their gifts both within our SAM community and beyond. On the day of our trip, we had a caravan from SAM Camp to the Merton House, unloaded instruments and song cards and sang for nearly an hour! Killington Cabin also performed their cabin trip skit and received enthusiastic applause from the residents. After we shared our singing, the residents asked to sing some of their favorite camp songs that they remember from their days at camp. Then we sang America the Beautiful and Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land together. After our morning at the nursing home, we spent the afternoon playing games in a nearby field and finished off the day with a trip to the beautiful Buttermilk Falls where everyone enjoyed the cool waterfalls.
After our service day trip, we dove right into our skit preparation for Interdependence Day. This event a grand, annual Farm & Wilderness celebration of our community. We began the day with a nine-mile hike to the Woodward camps, spent the afternoon swimming with Indian Brook, paraded down to the Fairgrounds to share our skit, eat delicious ice cream, and participate in a few contra dances. This summer, campers were an integral part of all parts of skit prep. They determined the plot line, manufactured props, chose costumes, wrote songs, and, of course, performed! The SAM skit this session involved fairy tale characters protecting campers’ rights to imagine. There were several rousing songs with impressive dances, and the skit ended with a rendition of Taylor Swift’s Trouble. Nearly all of our campers chose to have lines and recited them beautifully in front of the large crowd of nearly 800! We are so proud of all of the campers’ efforts to make the skit a success.
After Interdependence Day everyone benefited from “schmooze time”, where we offered a rolling buffet of breakfast food throughout the morning. Campers appreciated having unstructured time before diving head first into PACK OUT! This session, we sent groups to the Adirondacks; one group to the Mahoosucs region of the Appalachian Trail, another group to Flagstaff Lake in Maine, and a final group to summit Mount Mansfield, the tallest mountain in Vermont. Each of the trip groups worked together to plan their own menu, pack their own food, make a trip contract, play games, and spend the day getting to know each other before their explorations began.
In addition to all of our fun-filled days, we also took some time this week to get to know each other on a deeper level. A few days ago, several cabin staff facilitated our first Identity Night. On this night we learned about who has come to the SAM community this summer. The culminating activity on this evening was our Identity Circle. Campers were given a safe space to share parts of themselves that they wanted the rest of the community to know. When someone felt moved to share, they stepped into the circle and completed the sentence: “I am ____________” with whatever they wanted to share. Our staff was impressed with how open and accepting the campers were during this activity. It was an emotional evening, but the following morning, ourcampers came to breakfast with fresh smiles on their faces knowing that this community is a safe space to be themselves.
Later in the week, our Social Barometers (selected 14-year-old campers who give suggestions every morning after meeting about how we can make our community stronger and more inclusive) led a community spectrum activity. Each of the Social Barometers took turns asking questions like:
- At camp, I feel like I am part of an exclusive group.
- I need help standing up for myself
- I spend most of my time with one or a few other people
Everyone was given the opportunity to stand along a spectrum with strongly agreeing at one end and strongly disagreeing at the other end. Campers were then given the chance to share why they stood where they did. The goal of this activity was to help campers feel connected to the larger SAM community. Both staff and the Social Barometers were pleased with the outcome of the afternoon. We noticed more people being conscientious of others after the activity.
Now that campers are off on Long Trips, they are applying the community-building lessons to their trip groups. We can’t wait to hear all of their stories when they return on Saturday!
— Aliza Resnick, SAM Program Director