Author Archives: Jeff Carter

It’s been a very special time at camp the last couple of days, that time between our July Mini sessions when just the full Second session girls are here at camp. After the first July mini session finishes, we go from about 210 campers to 130, turning Rockbrook into a smaller camp filled with well-adjusted camp girls. These are girls who are fully settled into the routines of camp, now comfortable with each other, and able to feel more at home rather than just “on vacation.”

That’s one of the benefits of coming to camp for a longer session. Camp life begins to mean more and matter more. With extra days at camp, these girls have more time to deepen their friendships, strengthen their relationships with the camp staff, develop more advanced activity skills, and begin to absorb some of the more nuanced qualities of the Rockbrook culture. Better habits can begin to form too— for example, being quicker and more cheerfully willing to help with chores, smiling and saying “hello” to everyone, even getting better sleep after our full, active, screen-free days. Some of the things about camp that are different from home, and maybe strange at first— like living this close to the weather, using a flashlight every night, walking up and down the hills, and the temperature of the lake —now become delightfully familiar.

I noticed an example of this familiarity today talking with a couple of 5th graders after lunch. They had hung back to get a drink of water before rest hour, and I bumped into them outside. I said hello, and soon we were having a 10-minute conversation about lunch (They loved the taquitos and guacamole.), their activities (They had swimming next. “That’s good,” they reassured me), and their favorite muffin flavor (Funfetti). I learned that one has a brother who goes to High Rocks, and the other is an only child. For both of them, this was their first summer at camp. They were here for 4 weeks, and they were doing great.

I was struck by how easy going this conversation was, how happily chatty these girls were with me, how relaxed they were talking with an adult. Outside of camp, I find these encounters more rare. On many occasions, I’ve met kids who are instantly uncomfortable talking with adults, who don’t ask questions or offer their perspective into things. Even when prompted with “what do you think?” they can barely squeak out “I don’t know.” I always find that so strange compared to the girls I know at Rockbrook.

At camp, friendly conversation is the currency of our day. It’s a powerful force always humming in the background if it’s not the focus of our attention. It’s the most natural thing in the world for camp girls… a genuine interest in those around them, and a desire to connect with them, and when at camp, to play with them. Camp girls know that everything is better when it’s done with others. With the right attitude, you can have fun with anyone. So, it’s almost an instinct to seek out new friends. This desire and ability to connect with other people is sort of a camp girl super power, and it’s one that I think will serve them very well later in life.

We held a special circus-themed carnival this evening on our landsports field. Scattered about the field there were activities and games for the girls: two large inflatables (One was a waterslide.), giant ring toss, pingpong ball tossing into a jars, water gun shooting pingpong balls, bean bag tossing (plenty of tossing!), face painting, hula hooping, and juggling. Two counselors drew caricatures of the campers. Throughout the event we ate snow cones, and played familiar pop songs, making the event a fun outdoor dance party as the girls zoomed from one activity to the other, pausing briefly to pose for photos. It was a lighthearted and silly evening for everyone. There’s an album of photos in the online gallery where you can see much more.

Let’s take a break, a “muffin break” and talk about that time each morning between the first and second activity periods when everyone in camp scurries back to the dining hall to sample the day’s freshly baked muffin. You might call it a “snack break” or a “mid-morning snack,” but around here everyone knows it as “muffin break.”

Sarah Carter invented the idea of muffin break more than a decade ago when she thought the girls needed a little something to nibble between breakfast (8:30am) and lunch (1:00pm). With all the action happening at camp, the girls were hungry by 11am! Sarah also knew that having something freshly baked was always a welcome treat. A baker herself, she thought, “why not muffins?”

Our head chef Rick Hastings took the idea and whipped it up to a different level, introducing novel flavors and hiring a dedicated baker as part of his kitchen staff. The baker starts early in the morning crafting the day’s muffins so they can be fresh out of the oven before 11am. This is quite a job too! On a regular day we bake 300 muffins to make sure everybody in camp, campers and staff alike, can have one. In addition, the baker makes a gluten-free version each day, adding to the overall number.

In typical Rockbrook fashion, there’s a fun element of surprise to muffin break, as well. The baker works hard to rotate the flavor of the muffins so we never know what “today’s muffin” will be. Walking up to the dining hall at the right time, in fact, you’re bound to hear that question, “What’s the muffin flavor?” The baker will sometimes invent flavors never before served. Over the years, I remember “key lime pie,” “tootsie roll,” and “s’mores.” Also though, there are standard flavors that by popular demand make regular appearances.

So without further ado, here are:

The Top 10 Muffin Flavors at Rockbrook:

1. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip
2. “Funfetti” (colorful sprinkles in a vanilla base)
3. Lemon Poppyseed
4. Blueberry
5. White Chocolate Cranberry
6. Oreo Cookie
7. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
8. Brown Sugar Banana
9. Mint Chocolate Chip
10. Cookie M&M

The exact order of these is highly debatable, with strong preferences breaking out when you ask campers about their favorites. Honestly they’re all good! The girls love being surprised with the day’s flavor and enjoying what the muffins taste like. So delicious!

A parent made an interesting comment to me today. She said that she could tell her daughter was relaxing and settling into camp. Looking at the photo gallery, she could “see it on her face.” After these first couple of weeks at camp, her daughter’s smile was more natural, her body language more comfortable, and her closeness to the other girls more obvious.

That was great to hear! I’ve noticed it too. As we’ve moved along into the session, and spent more and more time together— living in the cabin, playing in activities, and singing at meals —the girls have gotten to know each other better and begun to absorb the camp spirit that guides our relationships here. They’re beginning to intuit what I described yesterday… that the Rockbrook community is uniquely kind and supportive, upbeat and inclusive. It’s a place where being your true self, perfectly imperfect, is celebrated. Your girls are beginning to feel like they belong at Rockbrook, staying happily busy and deepening their friendships. It’s so nice to see this important growth.

We were worried this common experience at camp would be tougher or slower this summer following the social isolation most kids experienced during the pandemic. Social skills are like a muscle that needs both training to be fully formed, and regular exercise to maintain its strength and ability. And like a muscle, social skills can atrophy if neglected. By squashing in-person peer interactions and forcing relationships online, the coronavirus pandemic robbed our kids of crucial social development, potentially weakening their ability to relate positively with one another. Being separated from other kids this last year, our children received very little social-emotional learning.

Fortunately, the power of camp life to bring us together has been proven stronger. The spirit of the Rockbrook community has inspired us all again, helped us understand ourselves and each other. It’s working. We’re rebuilding social muscle and providing it regular exercise. And the results are beautiful!

It was the full session Senior’s turn to visit Sliding Rock tonight. We loaded up six buses after dinner and made the trip to the Rock. Slide after slide, the girls had blast zipping down the rock and splashing into the pool below. The scream-inducing cold water makes things extra exciting even as it makes it hard for the girls to slide more than 3 or 4 times. After that, lips are blue, and there’s so much shivering we have to call an end to the runs. Eating cold ice cream from Dolly’s immediately after sliding may seem odd, but not if you’ve tasted it. One girl said she was excited because it’d been two years since she’d had a Dolly’s cone. Her wait was over!

We also held the closing campfire for our first July mini session campers. Like our traditional session Spirit Fire, the girls took turns talking about their experience of camp this session, singing a few traditional songs, and to finish the evening, lighting a small white candle. It’s always a nice way to finish up a camp session— friends right by your side, thoughtful words about camp, time to recall good times together, and a desire to keep the good feelings going into next year. It means saying goodbye in the morning, but it’s also a recognition that what we’ve shared will certainly last a very long time. Something this good just sinks in like that.

If you spend a little time with the campers at Rockbrook, it doesn’t take long to realize they are abundantly happy. Even oddly so. You see girls doing things that seem pretty mundane. You even see girls enduring things that are ostensibly uncomfortable. And yet, at the same time they are truly happy, sometimes jittery with excitement and other times simply smiling with content, but clearly being especially joyful.

I saw it the other day when hiking with the Hi-Ups, the 16-year-old campers. We were strolling along enjoying all the diversity of plants in this part of North Carolina, and the girls were chatting and laughing about nothing in particular. Every so often, one would start singing a song, in this case a song from Moana the Disney movie, and soon most of girls were joining in to sing along. This inspired another Disney song, and then another, quickly becoming a medley. These teenage girls were gleefully hiking, sweating up the hills, ducking through briars, hopping over rocks to cross a stream, sliding down slippery slopes. They didn’t question or complain, but instead happily sang and talked about how much fun they were having. These were not surly teens glued to their phones; they were enthusiastic young people enjoying a unique experience with their good friends.

Maybe you got a sense of the wholesale happiness of camp life by watching yesterday’s video. You saw your camp girls happily working on craft projects, playing tetherball, zipping down the waterslide, climbing the alpine tower, shooting rifles and paddling canoes. At the same time, still happily (!), they were overcoming challenges, swishing away bugs, wiping away sweat, mustering their courage to take that first step down the waterslide and up the climbing tower. Sure, there have been disagreements and frustrations along the way, but at camp these speed bumps are easily overcome.

Camp girls don’t need the “comforts of home” or some other luxury to be happy. They don’t need a private room or a personalized menu for their meals. They don’t need electronic entertainment, or really good wi-fi. At camp, there are no flickering screens to pull their attention away from the real world and all that it offers. They don’t need everything to be “perfect” or to go exactly right. They don’t need to win some kind of competition proving their superior looks, smarts, wealth, or family pedigree. At camp, we’re all different and that’s a good thing, right from the start. Camp girls don’t even need specific activities to be happy while they’re here, either. We could drop almost anything we do (well, maybe not muffin break!), or change our activity offerings, and the girls here would still have what they need to be happy throughout their day.

So what do they need to be this happy at camp? They need a few essential things like food and shelter, and the occasional bit of health care, and I’d say they need to be active and outdoors, but most importantly, they need each other. They need kindness from the people around them. They need to know deep down that they are included, respected, and loved for who they really are, “safe in their own skin,” “quirks and all.” They need to feel genuine support from their peers. You see, camp relationships are special like this. They are not colored by social posturing, which is all too common in other contexts. Interpersonal tensions at camp are ordinarily quickly resolved with heartfelt communication and appeals to being a “Rockbrook girl.” In this kind of community, built of relationships supported by a positive camp culture, girls naturally feel good about themselves, really good about themselves. They become stronger and more confident. And yes, deeply happy.

All of us at Rockbrook are so fortunate to be a part of this community, to be connected to the people here, and to be surrounded by all this happiness. It’s truly wonderful.

Walking around camp today, here are a few things I noticed. Girls were giving friends piggyback rides. Two girls lay down at the top of the hill, and like a log, rolled down, hair flying and screaming the whole way. Three 2nd-graders were building a small dam in the creek “to catch fish,” they told me. 16-year old Hi-Ups were hauling a bag of trash so big it took two to carry it. I saw girls cheering others as they successfully climbed to the top of the Alpine Tower. There were girls wearing simple costumes, gleefully being silly. Funny faces on the tennis courts and wide-eyed grins zooming down the water slide. Girls lounging completely relaxed on yoga mats, and others intensely concentrating while pulling an arrow across a bow. Friends being completely at ease with each other while doing a goofy dance.

It might sound strange, but this is the good stuff of camp. These simple examples of camp life, and many others, show a deep truth about your girls. They prove that in reality, your girls are bold, strong, curious and joyful. Your camp girls easily connect with each other, and understand each other. They’re being so incredibly happy and grounded.

The simple stuff at camp reveals a special humanity of being a kid, something inherent and amazing, but also, I would bet, something that’s more muted in their ordinary non-camp lives. We hear it all the time: girls saying “at camp I can be my true self. I can be me.” Of course, this implies that when not at camp, they’re not their “true self.” Hmmm… Coming to summer camp somehow provides a certain relief for kids, and that relief helps them be amazing.

If I had to explain it, I’d say it’s the culture of Rockbrook that has this power to enliven the deep humanity of being a child. The positive camp environment, percolating with enthusiasm and support, is perfectly suited to coax out these “trampled instincts” of children, as Emerson might have put it. That’s really what’s going on at camp. Yes there are activities— we’re making pottery, paddling boats, shooting targets, and so forth —but we’re also creating an intentional community where girls can develop their better instincts, free from the pressures of home and school. We’re outside a lot. We’re not competing. We’re not filtering reality through what appears on the internet. We’re immersed in a community where we feel we belong, feel valued and loved. Camp has that unique combination of encouragement and opportunity, contagious kindness and freedom to explore.

We hope that these amazing instincts hold, and your girls can exercise their “authentic self” after they leave Rockbrook. It’s certainly more difficult without the community support and context camp provides, but camp girls know first hand that they have these amazing powers and that they can be confident of their deep truth. Everyday at camp, they experience that truth, even in the littlest things.

All the Middlers (5th and 6th graders) came to dinner dressed in their swimsuits and water shoes, and with their towels draped over their chair, ate faster than usual. This is because they knew that tonight they were heading to Sliding Rock. By 7pm, 6 buses of very excited girls were making their way along the curvy road through the Pisgah National Forest to that famous part of Looking Glass Creek where it flows over 60 feet of gently sloping rock into a pool at the bottom. Generations of Rockbrook girls have made this trip and had this experience.

It’s a scream-inducing thrill! Sitting down into the rushing 55-degree water, scooting to the edge of the slope, and suddenly accelerating toward the dunking splash at the end— it’s uniquely fun. Our evening trip adds to the excitement because it’s a little shady and dark when we slide. We love going “after hours” because we can bring our own lifeguards and usually we have the place to ourselves. We completed the outing by stopping at everyone’s favorite ice cream place— some say “favorite on earth!” — Dolly’s Dairy Bar. Each of the girls selected a cup or cone of their favorite flavor, and enjoyed the chilly treat, chatting (which turned into singing soon enough) outside under the glow of Dolly’s colorful neon lighting. Chilly and still a little damp when we arrived back at camp, the girls headed straight to their cabins to get ready for bed.

Only rarely does it rain in the morning at camp. It’s often wet feeling in the morning because the humidity combines with lower temperatures to cover things in dew and immerse us all in fog, and of course we often have thunderstorms roll through in the afternoon, but by mid-morning the sun ordinarily clears things out. Today though, we had light rain falling off and on throughout the morning until about 4pm. If you are ever curious about the weather at camp, you can check the Rockbrook Camp weather station. It’s mounted on our office, and it continuously monitors and reports current weather conditions to the Weather Underground network. Checking the stats, it looks like we received 1.13 inches of rain for the day.

Many of our activities carry on normally when it’s raining: all the crafts for example. Most of these happen outdoors on a covered porch, like painting and drawing, jewelry making, and needlecraft, while other have their own dedicated open-air spaces, like pottery and hodge podge tie-dyeing. There are more raincoats (sometimes called “dewcoats” at RBC… “my dewcoat is up in my cabin” as the song exclaims) cast about, and there’s a pleasant patter in the air, but all this craftiness hardly slows down when there’s a “heavy dew.”

The climbers headed to the gym to hop on the climbing wall. Gagaball became dodgeball in the gym, and the tennis players worked on their strokes in the dining hall playing pingpong. The horse girls could still ride thanks to the covered arena, but we will reschedule zipline rides for a few cabins, and those who couldn’t shoot archery today will get a chance another day in the session.

Six buses of campers (about 80 middlers and seniors) spent the day whitewater rafting today on the Nantahala river. We drove over to find similar weather— clouds and some drizzle, but also moments of sunshine. Rafting, as you can guess, is inherently a wet and splashy experience, so a little rain doesn’t change much. The girls had a complete blast bumping down the river, yes occasionally falling into the water (an “out of boat experience”), and exercising their talent for screaming through the rapids. Between rapids they sang, took turns “riding the bull” (sitting on the front of the boat like a hood ornament), and happily posed and waved for photos. So much fun!

We’re not sure what tipped them off, but Our State magazine, the monthly print magazine that celebrates the culture and history of North Carolina, just published a short article about Rockbrook. The article, entitled “Back in the Day: When the Circus Came to Camp,” talks about our founder Nancy Clarke Carrier, and her family relationship to P.T. Barnum, the well-known circus showman. Nancy’s mother was Barnum’s granddaughter. Being from a circus family, Nancy’s home was decorated with circus artifacts, including a famous small chair, one made especially for Charles Stratton, better known as Tom Thumb. Girls attending Rockbrook in those early years were excited to see “Tom Thumb’s chair,” and even more so to sit in it. As we celebrate Rockbrook’s 100-year birthday, it’s fun to recall this unique circus connection to the history of the camp, and throughout our sessions play with circus ideas during special events.

The community of camp is deepening with each passing day. We’re seeing the girls relax more and begin to feel more comfortable at camp, despite all the differences in their experience compared to home— no parents, no air-conditioning, and no electronic entertainment, for example. Rain or shine, we’re sharing so much, spending all of our time together, and strengthening our connections to each other and to Rockbrook along the way.

Today was one of those beautiful days at camp. I don’t mean just the weather, though it was nicely sunny and warm, a true dose of summer. The beauty came from the people here and all the diversity of their interests, activity, and conversations. There’s something inherently beautiful about a group of children being curious, soaking up new experiences, and finding regular flashes of joy from simply being together. As we all scattered ourselves around camp today, the feeling of camp was revived. It’s a relaxed, joyful busyness. It’s learning things, but for the fun of it. It’s sharing experience with friends, laughing together and growing closer bit by bit. It’s delightful surprises, natural wonders, and the authenticity of being silly. A quick look in any direction, at just about any time of the day, is to be struck by amazing points of this camp beauty. I wish you could see it firsthand!

Every activity was fully engaged today. The photo gallery again reflects that, all the adventure, creativity, sports, riding, and freedom to enjoy the lake. Together with their cabin groups, the girls rotated through 4 different activities, and three blocks of free time between our three meals and two snack breaks. By the way, I’d say our mid-morning “muffin break” is a highlight for many of us at camp. Today’s freshly baked surprise flavor was banana-coconut. Lunch brought us homemade tomato soup and “cheesy bread,” another camp favorite. Burgers and hand-cut fries, with lemon bars for dessert made our picnic on the hill extra delicious.

I should say a little something about mask wearing at camp this session because it might be confusing about our policy when you see photos with girls sometimes wearing masks and other times not. Whenever the girls are with just members of their own sleeping cabin (their “cohort”), they can remove their masks. They may choose to wear them, but whenever the cabins are not mixing— like during the scheduled activities, meals, and when inside their cabin —wearing a mask is not required. When within six feet of someone from another cabin, however, we are asking everyone to mask up. These encounters tend to be when larger groups are gathered for events like LIne evening programs, or during blocks of free time when the girls can visit friends from other cabins. Today I saw two girls chatting in the red rocking chairs on the dining hall porch, two girls from different cabins, and they were wearing their masks. This policy is fairly intuitive, and most of the campers seem to have no trouble remembering when to apply it.

Let’s also mention something about mail at camp. Send it! Lots of it! …though no packages please…The USMail can be a little slow around here, but nothing beats a real letter in your mailbox. I know it’s hard to find the time, and emails are a lot easier (you can send those too), but your girls will really appreciate something more meaningful from you. The girls check their mailboxes right before rest hour, so what you send can inspire a letter in return. Parents love mail from camp too!

The girls are starting to settle in at camp. As you can see we’re all staying happily busy, and well-fed. Already, we’re making the most out of each day, finding that life in this camp community feels really good. There will bound to be a few bumps along the way, challenges that we will work on together, but there’s good to be found there too. We’re all here to help each other, encourage each other, and appreciate each other as we dig into all the fun. Stay tuned!