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June 10, 2016May 8, 2020 • News • rbc

Camp Wizardry

“Welcome to the Wizarding World of Rockbrook!” That proclamation launched our special event this afternoon for the whole camp. Instead of our regular afternoon activities, Rockbrook became immersed in all things Harry Potter. It began at lunch when Chase and Hunter, already dressed in ceremonial robes, announced the proceedings and presented everyone with a personal letter, signed by Prof. McGonagall, inviting them to attend the “Rockbrook School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” under the direction of “Headmaster, Sarah Carter, D.Wiz., X.J.(sorc.), S. Of Mag.Q.” Written in calligraphy, the letters looked amazing. Next the Sorting Hat appeared to sort all the campers into one of the four Hogwarts “Houses,” Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin. These groups would then attend “classes” (special activities) in the afternoon.

During rest hour in their cabins, the girls worked on their best wizarding costumes— sporting colorful hats, robes, round glasses, scarves, sashes, boarding school ties, and make up. The counselors dressed up as well. We had Professor McGonigall, Hermione, Moaning Myrtle, Professors Snape and Umbridge, and of course Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter.

Suddenly, around 3pm, the whole camp was filled with music from the Harry Potter movies, and everyone set off to their different activity stations. One class/station was potion making. This had the girls mixing all sorts of powders and liquids in small glass jars. Some combinations, like baking soda and vinegar, foamed while others turned different colors, thickened, or bubbled like soap. It was somewhat messy, as a potions class should be, but most of the girls ended up with colorful concoctions worth keeping.

Another class everyone attended was wand making. Here the girls used hot glue to build up twisting patterns and alternating layers on wooden dowels and sticks. Adding some brown paint then made the wands look like they were carved with intricate handles and unique shapes. It didn’t take long for the girls to be carrying the wands and casting spells throughout the camp.

The “Common Room” was another stop. There, the counselors were serving “Butter Beer” (cream soda) and “Broomstick” snacks (pretzels). Each group wrote a song or chant. Girls were face painting (a lightning bolt shaped scar, perhaps) and applying temporary tattoos. Meanwhile, another group played Quidditch down on the sports field. Akin to soccer, this game had girls racing around trying to throw a ball into the opposing team’s goal (hoops suspended on the soccer goal posts). A “golden snitch” ran through the games now and them. “Bludgers” threw water balloons at players and “Keepers” did their best to protect the goals during the play.

At one point toward the end of the afternoon, two counselors enacted a duel between Harry Potter and Voldemort. It included the two characters flying by on a zip line, wands drawn. (Don’t worry, Harry defeated Voldemort in the end). Finally for dinenr, the staff rearranged the dining hall into long tables, added decorations like floating (suspended by fishing line) lights, to mimic the “Great Hall” in Hogwarts. The feast included roasted chicken, mashed red potatoes and gravy with grilled vegetables, and brownies for dessert. It truly was a delicious feast.

Like so many of the special events at camp, this afternoon got us all moving, acting a little silly in costumes, and simply enjoying each others company in a creative way… Some of the good things at camp!

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June 6, 2016March 5, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Equally Full

Our first full day of camp began this morning with every activity area ready to launch into action. A full breakfast of orange juice, fresh fruit, oatmeal, granola and yogurt got us started, and the morning assemblies (held in each age groups stone lodge) of up-beat camp songs set the tone for an equally full day.

The other day, after being asked, I counted up the number of buildings at Rockbrook. Including all of the camper cabins (25), activity buildings, staff housing and support buildings, there are 53 different structures at camp. That’s a lot of roofs! And today every one of them was being used for the jam-packed life that we enjoy at camp.

Eight different places were home to creative craft projects. Weaving colorful yarns on the looms in Curosty with Nancy, pinching and rolling clay in one of the pottery studios, tying friendship bracelets, dripping dye on t-shirts, making layers of paper collages, brushing on watercolor paints, embroidering small swatches of fabric— the girls began many, many art projects.

Sports too! The girls shot rifles and bows with .22 caliber bullets and arrows hitting their targets. They balanced on the beam after stretching in the gymnastics area of the gym. All three tennis courts saw various tennis drills and short games. The gaga ball pit also was stirred up by game after game, with girls jumping and swatting as the ball bounced in their direction. Of course the lake, which (next to the dining hall!) is probably the most popular place in camp, was humming with fun as the girls flew down the water slide, performed tricks off the diving board, and just played around on different floating toys. As the weather cleared up throughout the day, the lake seemed to become even more popular.

The first riding lessons also took place today, with the girls who wanted to ride meeting new horses during one of the 4 activity periods. There were riders in every ring just about all day long. The outdoor adventure staff offered climbing on the Alpine tower, trips through the zip line course, a hike to Rockbrook Falls, and opportunities to learn the basics of whitewater kayaking down at the lake. Ellie and Jamie, our dynamic kayaking instruction duo, enticed dozens of girls to try out the cool new whitewater kayaks added to the Rockbrook fleet this summer.

Rick’s famous “cheesy bread” and homemade vegetable tomato soup, Becky’s fresh “Confetti” muffins, and chocolate chip cookies and milk before bed, were all top-10 foods popular from last summer that we enjoyed today as well.

With all of our activity areas cranking, familiar camp foods, a chance to spin the wheel in the dining hall (more about that later!), hula hooping on the hill during twilight, and evening program featuring silly, hilarious skits performed by each cabin group in their line’s lodges, it felt good to have a full day at camp. Everyone seemed happy, energized and settled in, which proves it doesn’t take long for girls to feel comfortable and at home here. It would make you smile to see it.

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July 29, 2015May 12, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Power with a Heart

Watching the campers ride has been an especially fun treat recently. Dozens of girls have signed up for riding, some for their very first experience working with a horse, and others with more advanced skills. We have nine staff members devoted to teaching horseback riding at camp this summer, and with 30 horses in the RBC herd, there’s always a lot going on at the barn, from tacking up for a mounted lesson, to the farrier trimming the hooves on one of our Connemara ponies, to feeding and mucking out stalls. For the campers, there’s always something to learn too, both about the complexities of caring for the horses, and also about how to improve their riding skills. Today a beginner-level lesson in the upper ring had the girls doing a great job walking their mounts, steering them independently, while down in the lower (larger) ring, the advanced riders were working on jumping what looked like about 2 feet over rails. Both groups seemed happy and proud of their accomplishments.

It’s always been a question why some girls are so keenly drawn to horses, as so many girls love riding here at Rockbrook. The Kitchen Sisters have just released an episode of their podcast “Fugitive Waves” that explores this phenomenon. It’s entitled “Horses, Unicorns and Dolphins.” In the 20-minute episode, we hear the voices of young girls, authors, research scientists, and lifelong riders describing why they ride, and how they feel in their relationships with these powerful animals. My favorite line from the program is when one rider describes horses as “power with a heart.” In a sense this summarizes it. Horseback riding is so meaningful, so magical, for girls because it includes a special relationship with that heart, an emotional collaboration with that power, and fundamentally, a unique form of friendship between two beings. For those open to this sort of relationship, there’s really nothing quite like horseback riding.

All of the other Rockbrook activities kept the campers busy throughout the morning activity periods. At tennis the girls worked on their volleys, while at archery and riflery, they steadied their aim. The girls climbed the Alpine Tower, and swam in the lake, if they weren’t stretching into yoga poses in the hillside lodge. Some made tie-dye t-shirts, and others sewed pillows. Some knitted hats, as other girls tied new bracelet patterns out of colorful embroidery floss. There was volleyball in the gym and cartwheels in the gymnastics area, as the WHOA instructors demonstrated how to build a fire. It’s astonishing how many different things the campers were doing at the same time all over camp!

Also this morning, a group of Junior campers took a “swim” hike to Moore Cove in the Pisgah Forest. Dressed in their swimsuits with towels and water bottles stashed in day packs, they followed the gentle uphill trail into the cove. It’s a short walk that ends at an 80-foot tall waterfall. It’s been pretty dry lately, so the falling water was more like rain as it dripped over the rock high above. This made a perfect place to cool off in the warm sunshine, and the girls made great use use of the opportunity letting the water spray all over them. They played in the pool below and had a great time building cairns from stones they found… a real forest experience, real play, and definitely real fun.

All of the Senior campers gathered later this afternoon for a picnic dinner in the Pisgah Forest, and a stop at Sliding Rock. Our picnic this time included a huge pile of watermelon, baked spaghetti the kitchen prepared for us in advance, salad, and sliced baguettes. I’d say it was far more of a complete meal than a “picnic.” One girl bragged to me that she ate 14 pieces of the bread! After eating, we enjoyed digesting our dinner a bit by running around playing a game of “I’m a Rockbrook Girl.” Akin to musical chairs, this game gets the the girls running from one place to another in a circle with each round identifying a new “Rockbrook Girl” for the center of the circle. There’s a lot of laughing and screaming, like all great outdoor games. It was a short trip in the buses back to “the Rock,” and soon the girls were zipping down the natural water slide splashing into the deep pool at the bottom. It’s hard to describe how much the girls love sliding rock. As you slip, spin and roll through the “freezing” cold water, it’s only natural to scream your head off, and as you watch your friends, to laugh hysterically. It’s all great fun.

“Rockbrook Chocolate Illusion” came next when we stopped at Dolly’s Dairy bar. If not that flavor, then some other sweet treat topped off the outing when everyone ordered their favorite in a cup or cone. Eating the ice cream, even after all the chilly sliding, really heated everyone up and in no time we were singing songs, posing for more photos and simply enjoying the evening together. It was the perfect way to finish up an excellent trip out.

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July 27, 2015May 8, 2020 • Summer Camp • rbc

Getting into the Groove!

The first full day of camp is always a mixed bag of emotions for our campers. For campers young and old, new or returning, there’s a lot to process throughout this day. New activities to try, new people to meet, new friends to make… It can seem just as overwhelming as it is exciting. This is the day that marks the start of the few weeks these girls have waited 12 months to experience again, and that knowledge carries a lot of anticipation and anxiousness as the girls leave breakfast to enter a day of fun, creative activities.

Our staff are very attuned to the first-day jitters. We encourage everyone to wear their name tags to make the introduction to new peers as easy as possible. We also make sure to cater to all experience levels in each activity, helping a novice pinch-pot maker feel as comfortable as an expert wheel thrower. This is integral to our philosophy behind activities at Rockbrook.

We’re also so excited to start this day because the girls have each customized their own activity schedule. This independence isn’t easy for every girl. Sometimes it’s more comfortable to do what someone has told you to do, but taking the braver step to choose their own activities is a huge sign of growth and maturity. Rockbrook encourages our campers to lean into the discomfort of trying new things, and to create a “new normal” for themselves where they achieve things they may have never thought possible.

One particular group of campers experienced a Rockbrook milestone they have probably been looking forward to since their very first day of camp ever, driving up the gravel hill years ago. The two cabins of CAs—the second-oldest group of campers—proudly announced at lunch that Banquet is coming and that they are pumped!

The CAs ventured after breakfast with Jeff into the DuPont forest on a hike that mirrored their brainstorming process. On the drive there, the girls threw out as many ideas of potential Banquet themes they could think of, many of which I suspect they’ve been dreaming up all year long. Upon arrival in the trail parking lot, we read aloud every idea to give the girls a chance to begin to sift through themes they really liked. Throughout the hike, Jeff stopped the girls three times. At each stop on the trail they discussed pros and cons of certain themes, each time eliminating a few as they went. The group engaged in good discussion, honoring each individual’s thoughts and ideas. The energy in the air was palpable and the collaboration between the girls was inspiring.

Finally, as they reached the peak of the mountain, the 2015 Third Session CAs emerged from the forest with a Banquet theme that all girls were excited about. They’ll spend the next few weeks hard at work in their secret, off-limits “Cabin 9” at the end of the lower line working with paint and glitter to transform the Dining Hall into a whole new world. Get ready, folks, because these CAs are going to put on a show!

Dinner tonight was the best representation of camp really being in full-swing. We thought yesterday was grand, having so many new arrivals and feeling the camp filled with fresh excitement. However, at tonight’s pizza dinner, the Dining Hall was roaring with happy conversations and enthusiastic (and loud!) singing. We cheered, we requested so many songs, and we sang our hearts out. As fun as yesterday was, we can now say that camp has officially started. Our Third Session 2015 campers are finally here, immersed fully in camp life. Let the games begin!

— Chrissy

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July 13, 2015May 29, 2020 • Campers • Grace Wallace

Building Leaders

At Rockbrook, our primary focus is always to give childen the time of their lives in a fun, crazy, safe, and exciting environment. Our objective is to give girls the chance to let loose and get a little crazy, and create memories that will last them well into adulthood.

We do have another objective, though—one that is woven into much of our programming, often in subtle ways, but at times more explicitly. We know that the girls playing in our camp today will not be children forever. There will come a time when these girls will be populating boardrooms, operating rooms, courtrooms, art studios, sports arenas, Houses of Congress, and maybe even the White House. Much of what we do here is geared toward helping them to become the strong, positive leaders that they will need to be in the years to come.

Though, officially, our leadership program does not begin until the summer after ninth grade, we encourage all of our campers to be independent thinkers from the moment they step onto camp on their very first day. One of the most important ways that we foster this independence is by allowing our campers to choose their own activities every three days. No counselors, no directors, and no parents can tell them which activities to choose—only the campers, be they seven or fifteen, can make that decision. We urge them to choose activities based not on what their friends are choosing, but rather on what they are interested in, what they are excited about, and what activities might challenge them. Through this process, campers can learn the immense satisfaction that comes from crafting an experience that is wholly and completely their own.

What’s more, our campers put together and perform skits nearly every night with their cabins. Returning campers look forward to these skits every summer—they are fun, goofy, and often hilarious ways to top off the day. Planning the skits, though, is not without its challenges. Skit-planning requires girls to think creatively, to determine how every girl in the cabin can contribute to the performance, to pool their resources (usually costumes) and use them in a way that benefits everyone, and to make sure that everyone is on board and happy with the process.

On top of all of that, the girls aren’t planning the skits under the direction of a counselor. The counselors wait in the lodge, and leave the planning, from beginning to end, to the girls. Throughout the session, the campers get plenty of practice in learning to solve disagreements in mature ways that benefit the cabin as a whole, without the interference of an adult. To help this process along, particularly for the younger girls, campers might be assigned days to be the “skit director.” On this night, they are the leader of the skit-planning, and it is up to them to make the tough decisions and make sure that every girl’s voice is being heard.

Yes, it can sometimes be messy—as learning new skills frequently is—but our campers often leave here at the end of the session with a better understanding of how to be a great leader of a team, and, sometimes more importantly, how to be a productive member of a team.

When campers reach 9^th and 10^th grade, they begin to take on more responsibilities around camp. They shoulder the responsibility of planning an elaborate Banquet as CA’s, then take on the myriad duties of a Hi-Up, many of which are vital to the smooth running of camp. Some girls are always nervous to take on this leadership role at camp. What they might not realize, is that they have been preparing to be leaders, at camp and elsewhere, since the moment their parents dropped them off on their very first day.

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June 30, 2015May 2, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Loud and Lively

The “Hi-Ups” are our 16-year-old, 10th graders at camp. They live together in a special two-story cabin “high above” (hence their name) the camp in the woods behind the dining hall. This cabin, in addition to having a bright front porch with a clear view of the final zip line in our Zip Course, is rumored to have secret amenities these oldest campers enjoy. For example, according to some junior campers, the Hi-Ups have a flat screen TV and a Jacuzzi in their cabin… Wink, wink 😉 The Hi-Ups are essentially in charge of the dining hall. They arrive before each meal to set all the tables. They serve the large bowls and platters of food, fill drink pitchers, distributing what each table (cabin of girls) needs for every meal. Then, when everyone is done eating and the announcements have wrapped up, the real work begins— cleaning the dining hall. That means racking up the dishes for the CIT dishwashers, wiping down tables, sweeping the floor, and emptying all the trash cans. You can imagine, with almost 280 people eating, this is quite a chore. It helps to have many Hi-Ups, like the group of 15 this session, but in any case there is work to be done. And this group is doing that work superbly. With a little Taylor Swift playing in the background, they are cheerfully tackling these chores 3 times a day. You’d be proud if you saw them.

Another Hi-Up responsibility is distributing the muffins during our morning “muffin break.” The kitchen crew bakes up a surprise flavor of muffin each morning in time to give everyone a warm, soft, usually quite sweet, treat between the 1st and 2nd activity periods (around 10:45). The Hi-Ups grab the trays of muffins, and hand them out to the other campers trough a screened window slid open on the end of the dining hall porch. Today we enjoyed pumpkin muffins, and the day before that classic chocolate chip. When you write your girls at camp (sent an email lately?), ask them what their favorite muffin flavor is so far. I bet the word “chocolate” will be in their answer!

The second day of activities moved everyone about the camp today being creative, active and adventurous along the way. In pottery, a few girls were trying their hand on the potter’s wheel while others were pressing lace into slabs of clay to make decorative tiles. The jewelry making activity was introducing beads and multi-strand friendship bracelets, while in Curosty, tabletop and floor looms clicked away. A group of juniors sat in the sun by the creek weaving baskets just as other girls worked on watercolors with the counselors teaching painting in Hobby Nook. We heard the pop of .22 caliber rifles from below at the riflery range and the “thunk” of arrows finding their targets at the archery activity area. Girls were learning back flips in Gymnastics, and cross-court volleys in tennis, playing ga-ga ball and later a huge game of kickball on the landsports field. Climbers were “on belay” climbing the Alpine Tower and Castle Rock high above camp, while 2 groups of girls made their way through the RBC Zip Line course (which has 3 zips through the woods and 3 different bridges connecting start and end points). The kayakers and canoers were busy learning strokes on the lake, as other girls practiced their cannonballs off the diving board.

Meanwhile, 64 campers took rafting trips today down the Nantahala River in Swain County. We offer these trips to all the Middler and Senior campers (Junior campers are too small according to our Forest Service permit) and generally about 95% of them sign up. The trip is that fun! The first group of 5 rafts spent the night camping at our nearby RBC outpost, waking up and arriving at the river to meet our veteran guides at the river’s put-in. The weather was a little misty starting out, so we suited up all the girls in blue spray jackets for extra warmth. After smashing through the rapids “Patton’s Run,” “Pyramid Rock,” and “Delbar’s Rock,” the sun poked out and it felt great. The Nantahala is a nice beginner’s whitewater river providing a balance between easy, calm sections and rapids that build as you go. In this way, the whole trip alternates between singing camp songs while floating along and screaming your head off through the bumps and spray of the larger rapids. The sun stayed out for the afternoon trip, and we were all back at camp in time for dinner.

For a special dinner too, because tonight was Birthday Night! And even better, it was Super Hero Birthday Night! So out came the costumes… Batman, superman, spiderman (their female versions of course). We saw Captain America, Wonder Woman, Dumbledore from Harry Potter, and many, many spontaneous, highly imaginative, super girls. All over the dining hall, as everyone sat according to their birth month, there were exclamations of “Pow!” “Bam!” and “Whamo!” Mixing the cabins and age groups like this was a fun way to both celebrate everyone’s birthday and enjoy 12 different homemade birthday cakes that the Hi-Ups decorated earlier today. We must have sung “Happy Birthday” or shouted it out 30 or more times! Still, it was a silly, loud and lively, meal made even more fun by all the great girls being together and enjoying it.

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June 29, 2015May 29, 2020 • Campers • Grace Wallace

Becoming Someone New

On this first day of activities—the first full day of camp—I am reminded that camp is more than just a chance to retreat from the rigors of the “real world,” to have some mindless fun and excitement, and to make new friends and reconnect with old ones. Camp is a place in which children can become someone new every single day.

Most of the 207 girls assembled here at Rockbrook this session wear some pretty standard labels for most of the year: student, daughter, sister, class president, team captain, honor roll student, and the like. They will belong to categories like these for a while, before growing up, and gaining some more exciting ones like lawyer, doctor, engineer.

This, of course, is all in the normal course of events.

What camp does, is give girls a chance to don a whole host of other identities that most people never get to try. In just one day, I have seen the school-girls who were dropped off here yesterday morph into markswomen, mountain climbers, equestrians, basket-weavers, yogis, archers, and more.

I heard them swapping stories at lunch and during free swims. Giving each other tips on which side of the Alpine Tower makes for the best climb, as though they have been climbing for their whole lives and not just one morning. Boasting cheerfully about getting their wet-exits in kayaking on the very first day. Showing their cabin-mates the first steps of the dance that they will be premiering in the dance show at the end of the session.

A Junior spent about five minutes this afternoon, explaining to me exactly how long the reeds needed to soak in the stream before they would be pliable enough to make a basket. She had never made a basket before. She was repeating to me what she had heard the instructor say just minutes before. But, in her mind, she was an expert, a basket-weaving professional, when an hour before she had been nothing of the kind.

Every day, every hour, almost, these campers get to try something new, become something different, and expand a little more. By the end of the session, they might decide that they never again want to be an archer, or a climber, or a basket-weaver—but the hope is that, through all of this experimenting, they will leave here with a bit more of the confidence that it takes to become the varied and interesting women that they will one day grow to be.

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June 12, 2015May 10, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Camp To-Do List

Like most adults these days, I bet you have a pretty extensive To-Do list. You might even have several, or maybe the opposite, something reminiscent that you keep in your head to guide what you chose to get done at any one moment. Whether it’s kept on scraps of paper or trusted to software, we adults, apparently by virtue of our responsibilities, need to remember to get things done. We feel the need to make progress, to accomplish, and achieve. “Checking things off our list” seems to be how we live our lives (at least most of the time).

Now, after only a few days of camp this session, it struck me today how foreign that sentiment is for the girls here at Rockbrook. Sure, we “get things done” at camp too, but it’s somehow different. None of the campers seem concerned with “productivity” or very interested in “marking it done.” Instead, they happily float from activity period to free time, from meals to special events, all while singing, chatting and laughing with each other. It’s marvelous to see just how carefree everyone is.

Blond girl shooting rifle at summer camp

Trying to put my finger on it, I think the girls have discovered the joy of doing things for their own sake. They have learned how to do things simply for the fun of it. Rockbrook provides the encouragement and in some ways the permission to do just that— to try new things, to be silly, to experiment, and to explore, all in the name of having fun. With almost 30 different activities to choose from, it’s easy to do too: shoot a .22 caliber rifle, jump off the mini trampoline, tie a macramé bracelet from parachute cord, launch into the lake from the water slide, bop a teatherball, leap into a ballet position… And so many more. It can be almost anything.

Maybe we can say that Rockbrook girls have a different sort of to-do list. They actually do many things at camp, whatever these might be (and again, it doesn’t seem to matter which), but these are not tasks to be completed, or steps that lead to some external goal. Odd as it sounds, a camp to-do list really has only one item on it, and it’s the same for all of us, no matter how we spend our day. We do it everyday at camp, and that’s simply to have fun.

Tonight’s Twilight was a new event that opened up all the camp stone lodges for three different slumber parties. Dressed in their pajamas, the girls chose between a dance party, spa party, or a board game party for the evening. We had music, served hot chocolate along with our regular milk and cookies, and enjoyed dancing and playing. The girls also brought their crazy creek chairs, sleeping bags, pillows and stuffed animals to make comfortable spots to sleep. Most everyone stayed up a little later than usual playing with flashlights and whispering to their friends nearby, but the evening was a great success.

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June 9, 2015May 4, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

All This Action

What an absolutely perfect camp day! Completely sunny weather, a beautiful forest setting— the massive rocks, old-growth trees, flowering mountain laurels, cool creeks and waterfalls, ferns, and so many wonderful birds, and so on! —cheerful, encouraging counselors, and the energy of all these great campers, combined to set the day. Then, with dozens of different activities all happening simultaneously, the camp was alive everywhere with happy smiling girls.

Most of our 28 horses met their newest fans while they walked, trotted and cantered around the horseback riding rings. The pottery wheels spun, the looms clicked, while rifles and arrows shot. Sequences of knots became friendship bracelets, and yoga mats lay flat for stretching and relaxing poses. Dots of paint, strips of tape, vibrant dyes and patterns of string decorated paper and cloth. Belay ropes led climbers up the Alpine Tower, and kayak skirts stretched tightly over our colorful whitewater boats. With bright blue skies above, the diving board, waterside, and lake toys kept girls happily splashing and delightfully cool. So much action!

Be sure to get a sense of all this action by spending some time browsing through the photo galleries posted for today. Have you seen them? You access the galleries by logging into your parent account. If you haven’t logged in yet, I think you’ll love the new way the system displays our photos. Each day there are several albums to view, enjoy and share by email or on Facebook. If you see particular photos of your daughter, or others that you like, go ahead and add those to your “Favorites” so you can see them all together at the end of the session. Also, I would suggest checking back often because we are uploading photos multiple times every day!

Over at the Nantahala River today, there was even more outdoor adventure action because almost 60 campers took a trip down in rafts. Led by our team of experienced rafting guides (Clyde, who has more than 30 years of experience, along with Andria and Leland Davis, Nicole, Jamie and Thea), two groups of campers enjoyed bouncing and splashing through the rapids, like Patton’s Run, Delbar’s Rock, the Quarry Rapid, and the exciting Nantahala Falls (also known as “Lesser Wesser”) at the end. Rafting with Rockbrook girls is a little like a floating party, often pretty loud with singing and powerful screams, sometimes involving dancing and acrobatics (like falling into the river!), but always a complete blast because you’re laughing with your friends at every bump of the river.

Dinner tonight brought out the costumes —the first of many opportunities to dress up this session— with the campers and counselors dressing as superheroes. Sure we had Batman, Superman and Captain America to name a few, but we also saw Captain Underpants, Caped Vowels, and several versions of Wonder Woman. The dining hall was filled with strong, powerful, extraordinary woman, all super in different ways. More than that, we also made dinner tonight a celebration of everyone’s birthday by rearranging the tables so we could sit grouped according to our birth month. This mixed cabins to make tables with both younger and older new friends to meet, and, perhaps most importantly, with whom to share a homemade, highly decorated, birthday cake. With songs and shout-outs to different celebrities’ birth months (for example, “Happy Birthday Taylor Swift!”), we kept the whole meal lively, and definitely a little silly. It really was a blast.

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June 8, 2015May 13, 2020 • News • Grace Wallace

Embracing the Weird

A parent asked me recently what it is about Rockbrook that makes it so special–what it is that has their daughter coming home year after year happier, more confident, and more comfortable with herself and her quirks.

I rambled a bit in response, and gave some rote answer about the strength of our community, and our encouraging of independence, and the surprising bits of spontaneity in our schedule that keep the campers on their toes.

The parent nodded along as though satisfied with my answer, but as I thought about the conversation more and more over the next few days, I became more and more dissatisfied with it. It’s not that all those things I mentioned aren’t true–they are, and they are wonderful facets of camp life. But they are not the heart of what makes Rockbrook special. I’ve been thinking for days now, trying to distill all of the magic and wonder of camp down into one phrase that sums it all up. One phrase that explains why everything about camp means so much to so many people.

I don’t know if such a phrase even exists, but I think I’ve come up with a contender: here at Rockbrook, we embrace the weird.

It isn’t so much that we make people weirder exactly; it’s that we provide a place where kids can let their inner-weirdness shine. They spend so much time at school, struggling to be thought of as normal, and learning from their peers that their differences and quirks aren’t something to be celebrated, but rather something to be suppressed. Often it seems that, despite the efforts of all the people who see and love their beautiful eccentricities, children (and especially teenagers) teach themselves to imitate “normalcy.” The logic seems to be that if they look and act like everyone else, their uniformity might earn them acceptance.

The beauty of camp, I think, is that we not only appreciate each other’s differences, we downright celebrate them. The girls that earn the biggest cheers in the Dining Hall aren’t the ones with their hair done up in the latest style, and their makeup done just right: they’re the girls wearing giant banana costumes for no particular reason, and singing a rousing rendition of “Banana Phone” into the microphone during announcements. The girls who begin the fashion trends at camp aren’t the ones sporting RayBans or the coolest swimsuits–they’re the ones that discover that tie-dyed knee socks and duct-tape headbands are without a doubt the most fabulous things since sliced bread.

Most importantly, the ringleaders in the cabin are not the girls who think they have to be catty to impress people–it’s the class clowns, the includers, and the girls who can make even the most boring day fun and interesting who steal the show.

If a girl doesn’t want to be weird, though–if she doesn’t feel comfortable being the only person in the room wearing a chocolate-chip cookie costume–that’s just fine. No one will think she’s boring or, well, weird for not being weird. She can be the person whom she feels most comfortable being, while still learning to love the weirdness of others. Learning to appreciate the eccentricities of others is just as important as learning to express your own, and that’s a skill that is honed here every day.

I don’t know if this phrase is the winner. Maybe it isn’t our love of weirdness that makes Rockbrook what it is–I’m sure the truth of the matter is something much more indefinable. But I know that it’s the quality that has meant the most to me in my time here. It was here that I first learned that it was okay to be a tomboy, okay to have a laugh that is louder than everybody else’s, and okay to spend most of my free time daydreaming about getting my letter to Hogwarts.

No, camp taught me that these qualities were more than just “okay.” They were the parts of myself that I should be proudest of.

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