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June 13, 2016May 8, 2020 • News • Mimi Dunn

This is Our Camp!

“If I know what I shall find, I do not want to find it. Uncertainty is the salt of life.” –Erwin Chargaff

Anyone who has been to Rockbrook knows that there is some degree of certainty at camp: there is a regular schedule, there will definitely be muffin break every day at 10:45 (thank goodness!), and there is always something structured to do. Yet days like today, with nothing out of the ordinary planned, remind me that we all thrive at Rockbrook because when we wake up, none of us know exactly what the day will bring, and that makes each moment of each day exciting.

No one knows exactly what a day outside of camp will bring, either, but what I have noticed recently is that Rockbrook fuels this sense of curiosity and energy by creating a camper-driven environment. Because Rockbrook is set up like this, campers feel free to take initiative and take their spontaneous ideas and turn them into real fun.

This has been exemplified all day long at camp. No one batted an eye when a whole cabin of girls arrived to breakfast decked out in costumes from head to toe, but many of them got great compliments for their senses of style! At the end of breakfast, the girls made an announcement that, as a reward for clearing their table without being asked, two girls got to dress the other girls in their cabin. The girls all loved it and enjoyed parading around in their costumes all morning!

While walking around today, I dropped by KIT, which stands for “Keeping in Touch.” In this activity, girls make stationary, calendars, and boxes—anything that helps them write letters or keep special camp memories. KIT takes place in Goodwill, an historical building that is cozy with soft lighting and red curtains. The environment is relaxed and laid back, as the counselors who teach KIT have made sure that each girl is doing a project she wants to do. Conversation flows easily as the girls who have already spent a week at camp get to know those who just arrived. Everyone is engaged in their craft and content with their choice, happy they got to decide for themselves what to focus their energy on.

When I passed by WHOA, our activity on Wilderness Hiking and Outdoor Adventure, I heard something I do not usually hear casually around camp: The Star Spangled Banner being sung around a fire pit. Curious, I joined in the song, and tried to blend in. As the song ended, girls got up to speak, and I realized quickly that this was a memorial service for the miniature rafts the girls had tried to create. A particularly memorable moment of the speech was, “It was the Titanic of rafts, and that’s probably why it sank.” No one would have thought that a sunken raft would be an avenue for the subtle hilarity that ensued afterward. With a healthy dose of flexibility and an emphasis on process instead of outcome, every small activity can become something exciting and unexpected.

This notion of camper ownership extends to every part of the day and every place around camp. Eating in the dining hall is always a little unpredictable because no one ever knows what songs will get sung. The Hi-Ups (the oldest Rockbrook campers) get to choose and lead the songs, but any table can request them! My absolute favorite part of meals, though, are announcements. There are many predictable (and important) announcements about adventurous trip offerings, tie-dye pick-ups, and lost and found. What makes Rockbrook different, though, is that campers take initiative and make their own announcements too. We were treated at dinner to two juniors performing a self-written song on their favorite activity: Nature! Set to “The Shark Song,” a familiar camp tune, the girls replaced the verses with “terrariums”, “Rockbrook Falls”, and “cool counselors”. The girls even made the journal in which they wrote the lyrics down! The rest of the camp gushed at how perfect the announcement was, and broke into excited applause. Not only do campers take ownership of camp, the rest of camp enthusiastically celebrates their initiative because everyone appreciates this spontaneity.

Twilight gave us another avenue to explore as a group of girls chose to venture down to the Rockbrook Garden. Every age group was represented, and it was moving to watch the senior girls helping the younger girls get excited as they walked down the hill together. When we arrived at the garden, Chelsea, the friendly and calm Rockbrook gardener, addressed the campers saying, “Girls, welcome to your garden.” The garden is a plot of land by the land sports field. Chelsea works hard to plant a variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. It is incredibly calming and relaxing to be there during this twilight time, when the day’s heat is finally easing up, when the sun is setting, but there is still gold in the sky, when wind chimes are providing us with gentle sounds, and we get to romp around in what feels like a secret garden. There are rows of fruits, vegetables, and herbs that will eventually find their way into the Rockbrook dining hall! Surrounding the vegetables are beautiful flowers—heaps of sunflowers and daisies of every color. It is nothing short of perfection.

Even better, we got to do so much more than look at it. Girls proceeded to pluck strawberries right off the vine and eat them; others tried kale for the very first time. Some created bundles of lavender and verbena to tuck into their pillows at night, while others picked flowers and fashioned bouquets for their new friends. Chelsea also gave the girls some lettuce to plant in the ground, and many also helped water the plants. Regardless of what they did, I saw so much sheer joy in being able to actively engage in a space like the garden. On the way up the hill, I heard a girl comment that she was somewhat hesitant to come to the garden because she thought it would be a structured lesson about plants. She had no idea she would be allowed to pick anything or try anything, and that most requests she had would be answered with “yes,” and a smile.

After the garden, we headed back up the hill for evening program. Most nights, cabins work together to plan a skit. Though counselors are always nearby, we try not to be too involved—it’s a great opportunity for girls to work together and get as creative as we please! As I was watching a skit whose characters were debating the origin of French Fries (France or the United States…in the end, it was actually Belgium!), I was struck by the originality that stems from campers creating so much of the direction of their camp lives. I realized that, at Rockbrook, the phrase I heard at the garden should be applied more broadly. It’s as though every moment of every day is saying, Girls, welcome to your camp.

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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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December 19, 2013December 11, 2022 • History • Grace Wallace

Throwback Thursday: A Day in the Life of a 1926 Camper

The rising bell tolls at 7:15 and you open your eyes, eager to start another day at Rockbrook Camp for Girls. You and your cabin-mates jump out of your low cots and slip into your thick, black, woolen swim suits. You pour out of your cabin and join the other girls of the camp as, blinking sleep from their eyes, they make their way to the lake for the morning dip.

The water is as cold as ever, but by the time you emerge, the allure of going back to bed has left you completely. You are fully awake. You run back up the hill with your cabin-mates, while your counselors (local schoolteachers, camp-mothers, and the like) follow more slowly behind. You only have twenty minutes to put on your uniform and get ready for the day, before you are due in the Dining Hall to help set up for breakfast.

As you put on your billowy gray bloomers, and your white blouse and tie, smells from the Dining Hall begin to reach your cabin. The cooks have been up for hours already, gathering the vegetables from Mr. Carrier’s giant garden at the bottom of the hill, milking the camp cows for fresh milk, and collecting eggs from the camp chickens.

Breakfast passes quickly. Quiet songs are sung at breakfast—every camper and counselor joins in, weaving together a peaceful harmony of voices. You all gather on the hill for Morning Assembly—a sea of girls in white, red, and gray, whispering amongst themselves, and trying not to catch the attention of the counselors. Mrs. Carrier leads the camp in the morning prayer, then reads out the lists of hiking and canoeing trips leaving camp today. You know that your name isn’t on any of the lists, so rather than listening, you spend your time planning out which activities you’ll do today. Horseback riding, perhaps, or maybe weaving and a bit of canoeing.

Assembly gets out a little early, so you and your cabin-mates race back to the cabin, to spruce the place up before 10 o’clock Inspection. You spend five breathless minutes shoving your sopping swimsuits under your beds, and smoothing your sheets, until the cabin looks spotless.

You pass inspection, thank goodness. The rest of your morning is a blur of horseback riding, tennis, and swimming. Lunch is succulent—every vegetable, fruit, and piece of meat is taken from the Rockbrook farm, so it is all as fresh and filling as you could wish.

During Rest Hour, you can’t bring yourself to rest. You are too excited for the afternoon, when you will practice for the dance pageant that you and a few other campers will perform at the end of the session. The counselors have spent the last week sewing the fairy costumes out of old pillowcases, and today is the first day you get to try them on.

You’re the first person to arrive at the rehearsal in the Hillside Lodge, and you immediately begin changing into the costume. It’s a relief, really, to trade the hot, scratchy bloomers for the lighter cotton shift. Most of the girls take ballet at home, but the dance is much less formal and more fun than any of you are used to. Mainly, it is an excuse to leap and run around for a few hours in clothes much more comfortable than the camp uniform. But still, the dance is coming together, and none of you can wait for the day that you get to perform it on the lawn of Mrs. Carrier’s house.

Dinner is boisterous—the heat of the day is ebbing away and the songs are spirited and loud. Some of the younger girls get carried away and begin banging on the tables in the rhythm of the song, but Mrs. Carrier puts a stop to that quickly.

Mrs. Carrier is always a fan of fun, you know, but she does expect her girls to behave themselves. The girls look sheepish, but Mrs. Carrier begins a rousing rendition of “Rockbrook Camp Forever,” which brings the smiles right back to their faces.

The lowering of the flag after dinner is a solemn affair, as it always is. Mrs. Carrier leads the camp in the evening prayer: “Oh God, give us clean hands, clean words, clean thoughts…” When she is finished, she returns to her house for the evening, and the counselors start up a big game of freeze-tag on the hill.

At 8:30, when your eyelids are beginning to feel heavy, and your footsteps beginning to drag, you make your way to the lodge for milk and crackers. By 9:00, you are dressed in your nightgown in your cabin, holding hands in a circle with your cabin-mates, singing “Taps” softly to one another.

As you lay your head on your pillow and listen to the songs of the crickets rise and swell through the forest around you, you can’t help but realize how lucky you are. Not every girl gets to escape the fast-paced modern world, to spend a few weeks of freedom in the mountains. Not every girl gets to let go of propriety and manners, and dance like a wild thing for an entire afternoon. Not every girl gets to have a perfect day, then go to bed knowing that the next day will be even better, and the next even better than that.

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July 27, 2013May 24, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Camp Inclinations

Girl reading book during rest hour at summer camp

For some, perhaps mostly for counselors, a favorite part of our daily schedule is rest hour. This is a time when, after lunch and after checking for letters and emails in our mailboxes, we all go back to bed for an hour. Yes, literally, we ask all the campers to climb into their bunk and do something quiet. This might be to write a letter, draw, read, listen to music through headphones, or actually take a nap. When girls first arrive at camp and are generally more rested, they might think rest hour is an unnecessary break in the action of camp. But we know that the pace around here— all the climbing, riding, swimming, shooting, singing and dancing —requires a great deal of energy, and that getting enough rest really helps. Rest hour is a long Rockbrook tradition that’s easily explained; everyone is happier, and ordinarily healthier, when rested. The wide-open pace of camp life almost requires a siesta, no matter how brief.

Rest Hour, indeed all of camp, is not however an opportunity for “screen time.” As you know, we don’t want our girls watching TV or movies, playing video games, or connecting to the internet while they are at Rockbrook. In addition to the fact that most kids already spend too much time consuming electronic media (one study showed an average of 53 hours per week!), we hope that by turning off these alluring gadgets, taking an extended break from this technology, your girls will make an important realization while they’re here. We want them to recognize, maybe even be energized by the fact, that there’s a lot more to life than what’s presented to them electronically. Life, especially one lived outside, close to nature and within a supportive community, is so much more rich, so much more fun, than what Facebook, Instagram, or any other part of the Internet can communicate. Camp is that kind of life. It provides daily proof that being with great people (friends with feelings) and actually doing things (stimulating and utilizing all our senses) trumps a flickering screen every time. If flipping on the power switch of something electronic is often our modern remedy for boredom, we hope Rockbrook will inspire your girls to be more human than that, and equip them with more “real world” inclinations.

Both canoes and kayaks were maneuvering the lake today as a full roster of girls signed up for our “Paddling” activity. Every age group is interested these days, partly I think because several river canoe trips have gone out and come back with great stories to tell, and learning the basic strokes at the lake is a prerequisite for an out-of-camp paddling trip. With fine instruction and equipment to use, it’s so satisfying for the girls to guide their boats more accurately through the water, and later on the river trips, to steer around obstacles, catch eddies, and ferry across moving water.

Tonight’s evening program brought back an old camp favorite, a “Counselor Hunt.” This is a game that challenges every cabin group to comb the camp together and find hidden counselors. Adding a little imagination to the game, this time the counselors dressed as aliens, each creating a crazy, colorful alien character.

This made the game an “Alien Hunt,” with groups of girls capturing aliens and returning them to our spaceship (the dining hall). The aliens hid all over camp, and after an hour of urgent searching— faster hunting meant finding more aliens —we all found out what mysterious prize each alien would award the cabin that found her. It was a fun group game with everyone winning some kind of prize in the end.

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July 26, 2013November 23, 2022 • News • Jeff Carter

A Complete Blast

One of the most historic buildings at Rockbrook is the log cabin named Curosty. Mrs. Carrier, Rockbrook’s founder, moved it to camp, along with another cabin named “Goodwill,” from the plantation where she was born in South Carolina. Both cabins easily predate her birth in 1889. They are authentic log buildings constructed from 12-inch thick logs set on a low stone foundation and equipped with a stone fireplace and chimney on one end. The Curosty cabin has a wooden porch jutting off the back, and the Goodwill cabin has a stone porch running along its front. Curosty briefly served as an office for the camp, but it soon became the home of one of the original craft activities: weaving. As you can see from these photos, this is still true today. A visitor can peek into Curosty at anytime, and there will be table-top and floor looms clicking away. Nowadays, the girls are doing other kinds of weaving, as this project board shows: Latch Hook, lanyard, and basket weaving for example. Their projects include making belts, purses, bookmarks, potholders, sock dolls, dream catchers, pillows, yarn dolls, and “ojos de dios” (eyes of god)… All from many strands of colorful yarns twisted and tied, carefully intertwined and looped over and under each other. There are some very beautiful things being made.

In a community of all-girls, it can be fun sometimes to get a little messy. Tonight’s evening program gave us exactly that opportunity when we set up a “Color Run” to the gym. This was a crazy event where the campers ran (jogged actually) through a gauntlet-like row of counselors throwing different colors of non-toxic, washable, powdered paint. A few counselors squirted the campers with water guns to start off, so the paint stuck in very cool tie-dye-like patterns on the their shirts, shorts, arms and legs. The girls added colorful face paint to decorate themselves even more outrageously. For those campers not interested in getting this messy, there was also a “dry run” path down to gym.

There, our friend and local DJ Marcus had his light show and sound system set up for a fantastic color dance party. We had glow sticks and more glow paint to make the whole event even more brilliant. For the next 2 hours, we all had a great time dancing and jumping around, posing for silly photos, laughing and singing along to the pumping pop music, Only the occasional pause for a drink of water slowed us down.

And these girls know how to dance! Maybe with no boys around and feeling more at ease generally, we had campers and counselors really working up a sweat. Here again, we have all these girls enjoying the freedom to be themselves, and experiencing first-hand, that doing so is a complete blast!

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July 13, 2013May 24, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Constantly Crafty

Camp girl smiling in yellow kayak with yellow helmet and pfd

Today at the lake several senior girls spent time working on their kayaking roll. They practiced the technique used to roll a kayak back upright after flipping upside down. As I’m sure you can imagine, these narrow whitewater kayaks, while being designed to cut through the water easily, are also prone to tipping. When a kayaker hits a river rapid and surfs over or through a wave, there’s a fine line between balancing just right and leaning so far that, in an instant, you’re upside down. At that point, there are two options: you can abandon ship and swim free of the boat by popping the grab loop on your spray skirt (doing what’s called a “wet exit”), or you can twist and snap your hips, and use your paddle to push against the water to roll back upright. Learning to roll is a tricky set of coordinated moves that requires a fair bit of practice to perfect. And practicing takes dedication and determination because it involves spending lots of time upside down in the lake. Some of these girls want to “get their roll” so badly, they will sign up for extra time practicing during their free periods (just before lunch, for example). Reports from the paddling staff are that a couple of girls have gotten it! Next week we’ll offer another kayaking trip to the Nantahala giving the girls a chance to try their new rolling skills in moving water.

If you’ve been following the photos posted each day in our photo gallery, you probably have a sense of how constantly crafty we are at Rockbrook. There are arts and crafts everywhere, and the girls are creating some really cool stuff. In the Hobby Nook cabin, for example, the campers in “Folklore” are finishing pillow dolls, each unique with different scraps of fabric sewn together, stuffed with polyester fluff, and decorated with buttons and yarn. Both ceramics studios have been phenomenally productive as well. The girls there are making bird houses, throwing mugs on the wheel, and sculpting whistles (yes, that actually work!) shaped like turtles and other animals (I think I saw a dragon too). The Hodge Podge girls have been unveiling spectacular tie-dye t-shirts, each with complex designs— hearts, spirals, stripes, and even smiley faces —and psychedelic color patterns. Over in “KIT” (“Keep in Touch”), the campers have been busy making cards, beautiful folded greeting cards from fancy ornate papers, fun stickers and stamps. And the weavers in Curosty continue to amaze. Their work is simply gorgeous. When you see the armload of crafts your daughter has created, the products of her creativity and imagination, you will definitely be impressed.

Tonight’s evening program was another surprise special event, a square dance with the boys of Camp High Rocks. After dinner, with hair and teeth thoroughly brushed, we loaded all of our seniors into 4 vans and 3 buses for the short trip up the mountain to High Rocks, while simultaneously, they transported their younger boys down to Rockbrook to hold a dance in our gym. Having two dances allows us to handle all these children! Stepping out of the van at High Rocks, one girl may have been feeling a little nervous because she turned to me and said, “I forgot what it feels like to be around boys.” It didn’t take long, though, for everyone to be smiling and having fun. With these nice girls, and the boys equally so, the whole event was lighthearted, even a little goofy as they giggled after “messing up” and grabbing the wrong arm or spinning in the wrong direction.

We took a short break after about an hour for brownies and lemonade… a chance to mingle a bit and recharge for a few more dances. On the drive home, one senior in my van said she had a great time, even enjoying the dance more than the “regular” dances we have with other camps. Bluegrass might not be their favorite genre of music, but these girls appreciated the chance to talk with the boys, and to “have something to do,” as one senior put it. For all the best reasons, it was a wonderful evening.

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July 11, 2013May 24, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Unforeseen Rewards

It’s hard not to mention the weather in these posts. We spend so much of our time outside, it only makes sense that how hot or cold, wet or dry, it is outside would make a difference both in our plans and in what we might wear (raincoat or just a fleece today…?). You have to stay flexible too, because the weather can change minute by minute in this part of North Carolina. It can be hot, humid and sunny at noon, and then cool and breezy just an hour later. For example today we had a picnic lunch planned for our mini session seniors, and with everyone loaded in buses, we set out to our favorite spot in the Pisgah only to meet a huge rainstorm when we arrived. Not to be discouraged, and with the help of a little weather radar, we continued climbing making it eventually to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Pounding Mill Overlook.

At an elevation of 4700 feet, there we had risen above and away from the rainstorm and found ourselves just above the clouds with bright sunshine all around. It was gorgeous! We could easily look south and see Looking Glass Rock, and east to view Mount Pisgah (elev. 5721 ft). What better place to lounge on the grass and eat our picnic? In the end, this was an example of changed plans that were better. Being rained out meant finding unforeseen rewards. Stopping on the drive back for a quick cone of Dolly’s ice cream, while perhaps appearing unplanned, was a perfect polish to our afternoon trip.

Today we were able to complete this session’s whitewater rafting trips on the Nantahala river. Here too, a little flexibility really paid off. Most of the rivers around here are too high right now, and even the dam-controlled Nantahala was unsafe on Tuesday. With a little shuffling of the adventure schedule, we were able to run the trips today instead. We also decided to push the first trip to earlier in the day to boost our odds of avoiding the predicted afternoon thundershowers. I’m happy to report that everything went perfectly, and with no rain! Boats of singing (and at times screaming!) girls wearing white helmets, 72 people in two groups— our Rockbrook rafting days turn heads on the river.

One aspect of taking an adventure trip, like whitewater rafting, kayaking, or rock climbing, for example, is the decision to skip your regular in-camp activities. Girls know that by signing up for these trips, they’ll have to miss archery, horseback riding, pottery and any other their scheduled activities. This can be frustrating for campers attending short sessions, but it soon becomes clear that it’s impossible to do everything at camp, and you always have to choose among options, thereby skipping certain opportunities. It’s a good lesson in decision making. To select also means to neglect. Fortunately, at camp, whatever a girl selects is guaranteed to be a fun-filled, good choice.

Our evening program tonight brought the return of our friend Daphne from “Cold Blooded Encounters” and 16 of her cold-blooded friends to the gym for her animal show. One by one, she presented each animal walking it around the crowd of shocked and at times wide-eyed girls. She described whether each animal— snake or lizard for example —was poisonous, where it lives in the wild, what it eats, and other unique aspects of its behavior.

Some of the reptiles were familiar to the girls, like the Eastern Box Turtle and the Black Rat Snake, creatures that can be found at Rockbrook. Others, though, were more exotic like an Emperor Scorpion, a Tomato Frog, a Tarantula, a Bearded Dragon, and a huge Reticulated Python. At the end of the show, Daphne invited the girls to touch her python, disproving their belief that snakes are “slimy,” and showing that they are instead smooth, cool and muscular. It was an exciting, informative evening.

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June 16, 2013May 25, 2020 • News • Grace Wallace

A Team Effort

This Sunday, the girls of Rockbrook gathered in a peaceful little corner of camp for chapel, a non-religious service that gives our campers and counselors quiet time to reflect on the week, and discuss some of the most important values that we promote here at camp. This week the theme of chapel was “Creativity,” so girls of the Junior and Middler lines stood before their peers to express the importance of creativity in camp life.

There was talk of our crafts classes, of course—of the toothbrush-holders made in pottery, the baskets woven in Curosty, the bracelets beaded in jewelry making. There was mention of the play, of the dedication that it takes to create something special for everyone to enjoy. And several girls brought up the nightly creative endeavor, Evening Program, in which every cabin works together to put on a skit.

It was this last sort of creativity, in which the girls work together to create something new, that came to the forefront later that day in the Miss RBC pageant, after the crisp white uniforms of the morning had been replaced with the colorful—if slightly dirty—play clothes of the afternoon.

Far removed from the beauty pageants you might see on TV, the Miss RBC pageant calls for one member of each cabin to dress up in the craziest, most over-the-top costume they can come up with and answer a silly question, such as “What’s your favorite jelly bean flavor, and why?” While it’s always fun to see the costumes that the pageant contestants and their cabin-mates put together (my particular favorite was the senior with toilet paper wrapped over her clothes, and her ponytail threaded through a plastic cup), the real highlight of the show is the talent portion.

All week, each cabin worked together to plan a skit, dance, song, or puppet show to impress the judges. The ideas that they came up with were truly impressive. From juniors adapting a Rockbrook song into a moving (and hilarious) saga about a mermaid and a shark, to Middlers singing their own arrangement of songs a capella, to seniors choreographing elaborate dance routines, the show had it all, and proved to be immensely entertaining for everyone involved.

More exciting still were the looks of pride and accomplishment worn by the campers of each and every cabin as they trooped off stage after performing for the camp. Especially those campers who had been nervous to step onstage beforehand looked thrilled to have accomplished the feat, and to have done it all with their friends and cabin-mates standing right beside them.

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July 10, 2012May 28, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

A Kind of Collective Euphoria

One of the outdoor adventure trips available to all Rockbrook Middlers and Seniors (girls who have finished the 5th grade and older) is whitewater rafting on the Nantahala River over in Swain County. We don’t make girls sign up for these trips before arriving at camp (or charge extra for them) because we know part of the fun is deciding to go, or not go, with your friends. And when there are two options available -a day-long trip or an overnight camping version -making that decision is important. These girls just want to be together! This can make the logistics of planning rafting trips complicated, but we have plenty of experience making it happen. Like today, when surprisingly 77 girls wanted to raft, we simply ran an extra raft of girls on both trips to accommodate everyone. After meeting our veteran guides at the river’s put-in, and suiting up in the RBC gear (Rockbrook has a special permit to do all this ourselves), the morning trip hit the first rapid called “Patton’s Run” in bright sunshine. The girls had a ball over the next two hours, laughing and screaming with every bump and splash. Some of the rapids on the Nantahala really get your heart pumping, like the one in this photo, the final big rapid called the “Nantahala Falls.” There are calm spots too, making a nice balance of floating (and chances to sing camp songs!) and high adventure whitewater. The afternoon trip also started out warm and sunny, but did have some rain for the last 30 minutes. This didn’t stop the fun however. Their Rockbrook Spirit, a kind of collective euphoria, kicked in and the girls just sang louder and paddled harder.

Back at camp, creativity ruled the day with all kinds of arts and crafts projects taking shape- watercolor painting, t-shirt scrap weaving, extruded form pottery, triple pattern friendship bracelets, beaded headbands, embroidered pillows, and paper craft decorated boxes. For some girls, sports and games like dodgeball, tennis or yoga kept them moving, if they weren’t signed up to ride the zip line course or attend the sharpshooters club taught by Cliff down at the rifle range. Elaine had the gymnastics girls working on balance and posture, and down at riding, Kelly was giving similar instructions to girls cantering around the lower ring.

For dinner Rick brought back his homemade pizza… completely homemade, with pounds of flour, yeast and water going into the dough, gallons of red marinara sauce, and a mountain of shredded mozzarella cheese. There’s something about the chewy soft crust of this pizza that really makes it extraordinary. Some like it with pepperoni, and others with veggies, but even if it’s plain cheese, the girls gobbled up tray after tray tonight. Everyone had some of the spinach salad and strawberries served on the side too, but it was the pizza that made the meal. To top it all off, Katie made fresh blueberry cobbler that had a perfectly crunchy, crumbly topping, though I suspect most of the girls were pretty full when the Hi-Ups brought out the dessert platters. So many delicious things!

Tonight after dinner our friend Bill Grimsley entertained the whole camp in the gym with his world famous magic show. Bill has been a full-time, professional entertainer since 1986 and has toured all over the world to perform. He is a talented comedian, juggler and stage magician, and tonight he didn’t hold back. He made two doves appear in an empty box, only to cover the box again and reveal a live rabbit instead. He sawed a counselor in half (reconnecting her shortly thereafter!), and levitated a camper by removing the chairs supporting a plank she was lying upon. The Juniors sitting on the front row were rapt and wide-eyed. He performed other classic magic tricks too, like cutting and magically restoring a rope, mysteriously connecting large metal rings, and a card trick where a card with a ripped corner appeared in a box across the stage. The Senior girls seemed particularly impressed by a mind reading trick where Bill correctly guessed one girl’s favorite food (French Fries) and another’s favorite vacation spot (New York City). “How’d he do that?” “I don’t know, but it’s pretty cool.”

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June 29, 2012June 4, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Oblivious to the Weather

It seems like the weather is on everyone’s mind these days, everywhere except here at camp. While it’s been hitting triple digits for many cities in the southeast, Rockbrook has defied the forecasters and just today crept into the nineties. In fact, if you ask our Rockbrook girls about camp, they probably won’t mention needing air conditioning or feeling burdened by the humidity. That’s probably in part because it still very predictably cools off at night, reaching into the 60s, and making it comfortable sleeping conditions in the open-air cabins, but it’s also because, from the girls’ perspective, what we’re doing at camp -all of the adventure trips, in-camp activities, and special surprises- fills the day so completely. We haven’t slowed down one bit because of the weather. If anything, the girls are more fully engaged- shooting, riding, climbing, painting, hiking, tying, decorating, floating, and zipping all day long. It’s incredible to consider that all of it is happening simultaneously!

Another reason the girls seem oblivious to the weather is how well we all are eating thanks to Rick’s kitchen magic. Each meal brings out a surprise item, whether it’s the freshly baked chocolate chip scones for breakfast, the secret-recipe guacamole that accompanied our famous “taco lunch” yesterday, or the mountain of homemade smashed red potatoes he prepared with chicken tenders and green beans for dinner. He has also been serving an endless supply of fresh fruit at every meal- awesome strawberries, local sweet blackberries, watermelon, peaches, and of course bananas and apples available 24/7 out on the dining hall porch. Oh, I should mention the wild muffin flavor we had today: oatmeal, date, pistachio. Maybe a little on the healthy side, but I heard from several girls they liked them just fine.

You may have noticed that Rockbrook is an accredited camp, that we have agreed to meet or exceed more than 300 industry standards as defined by the American Camp Association. Among summer camps in America, these define the best health and safety practices for all aspects of a camp’s operation, facilities, programing, and staff qualifications. This accreditation requires an on-site visit to demonstrate and/or document compliance, and today was Rockbrook’s ACA visit (“inspection,” though they don’t like to call it that!). You’ll be pleased to know that our two visitors were very impressed with Rockbrook. After touring the entire facility, examining most of the activities, and reviewing a 5-inch thick folder of documents describing our policies and procedures, we sailed right through everything. This isn’t too surprising since we’ve done this well for years now (We were one of the first camps in the area to become ACA accredited back in the 1980s.), but it’s nice to strut our stuff a little and receive this kind of praise.

Wrapping up the day, local master storyteller Gary Greene visited camp for a campfire program of songs, stories and skits. As the sun set across the valley and the campfire crackled, the Middlers and Juniors joined Gary singing a few songs and acting out characters in a couple of his stories. Gary really knows how to focus a crowd, even when it’s about 100 little girls all under 12 years old! Meanwhile, the Senior girls were holding an “open mic” coffee house in their lodge. This was a chance for girls to sing or play an instrument, recite a poem, perform a dance or tell a brief story with their friends. Every performance, no matter how poised or polished, was wildly received with the whole line whooping and clapping at the end. To me that was another example of how supportive and encouraging the girls at Rockbrook are toward each other, how much they’ve grown closer and become good friends. For the typical teenager, that can be a big deal… To be accepted and included, in an important way, loved by her peers. Camp is a community with that power and that spirit. Seeing it action is always a real treat.

Camp girl balancing on gymnastics high bar

Camp girls soaking their feet in the creek

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