For those of you who followed me this summer, this post may come as a surprise. With summer far gone, there's not a whole lot you'd expect to hear from me, now that I'm back in the midwest (and have been for awhile).
Yes, summer is long gone (for now), in fact it snowed where I'm at last night, and pretty much everywhere else in the midwest. (Seriously, I have friends reporting snow from every state in the midwest). So while winter is clearly on it's way, the summer still remains in our hearts, a statement which holds true to many people I know.
Spending a summer at camp is a game changer, and often life-changer for most. I find very few who walk away with summer camp without a change in perspective from when they first arrived. And this has held true no matter what camp you may visit. j
When I was in second grade, our family moved from a very dense, populated Wisconsin City to a small town about an hour north. My father took a job a Christian camp in Central Wisconsin, and so began my journey into "camphood" as I'll call it. Ever since I was young I flourished at camp. I loved it and everything it stood for. Camp became my second home, and the place where my strongest relationships have bloomed. I though for years that there was no way I'd ever find a place I loved more than here.
Until last summer, that is.
If you've read at least one of my other blog posts, you'll have realized somewhere along the lines that this past summer I took a step out of Wisconsin, and lived at another campground in Northern California for about 12 weeks. Going into the journey I felt a mix of emotions. "Would I ever come to like this camp the same way I grew to love the campground I grew up at?" I had no idea what the summer would hold, but I figured since it was camp, and I would be cooking (probably the third thing in the world I love most) I knew I'd like it, at least enough to stay. But what I didn't expect, was how much I really would come to love Northern California and CRM, my summer home. The people I worked with last summer were such a different group than I had ever worked with, and they were greater than I ever imagined. For those of you who know me well, or have visited Sky Lodge, you'll know that it holds part of my heart that will never be replaced. But if you've gotten the change to sit down and talk with me about this last summer, you'll have seen the excitement in my eyes as I shared with you the stories from my adventures in California.
I know I hadn't really given a "last post" about my summer. I wrote my last post at the beginning of the last week. I had intentions of writing a summary blog post during my final hours of travel back to the midwest, but it never really did happen, did it. I guess I just couldn't come up with a way to end my journey. I can't come up with the right words to describe the end of my summer. There just aren't words.
The last night was probably my favorite (and least favorite, since I spend the last full day of camp in bed, sick). But that night we had our final staff meeting around a campfire. Our boss, Vicky, told us all about the journey we had just embarked on, and how she had seen it evolve from beginning to finish. She shared with us her favorite moments and the impact we had made that summer. The rest of us too went around the circle and told our favorite stories and how we landed in the middle of the woods of Northern Cali for a summer, stuck with 15 other we had never met before.
Most of us talked about how we had no idea what it was going to be like going into it, but how we were SO thankful we had taken a leap of faith and trusted that everything would turn out okay. And it did.
So here I am thinking about what next summer holds. I already have a few options. I can stay in Central Wisconsin and work at the summer camp where much of my history has been laid, or travel again out west and visit a new favorite place. I still haven't decided at all which I will choose, or even if there's a third option. There's so many things I want to do, but I can't be everywhere at once.
I'll leave you with this. Take heart. Where have you invested your time and heart in. If you haven't, there's no better time than now. Life is short, often too short, and we need to think of others around us more than ourselves. Find what you love, and pursue it. Take chances along the way. I know I have, and while it hasn't been the easiest thing I've done, it certainly has been the most rewarding.
