With the new year, what do you resolve to do? Remember camp and consider these!
1. Be silly!
2. Lend a helping hand.
3. Set aside some time for relaxation.
4. Pass along some positive encouragement.
5. Keep it real.
With the new year, what do you resolve to do? Remember camp and consider these!
From homemade pizza, to felafel and feta salad, to Mexican tamales, the Rockbrook kitchen staff serves up top-notch culinary creations. While earlier days at Rockbrook didn’t offer the same international variety of foods, it could boast of a bountiful, sustainable, and local food source. A 1926 RBC brochure states that the vast majority of the food used at camp was produced at the Rockbrook Farm, located across the road from camp on Greenville Highway. The farm, which was personally managed by Henry Carrier, provided all of the fixings for a balanced, healthy meal: eggs, chicken, lamb, mutton, milk, cream, butter, and vegetables. Rockbrook even cured it’s own ham and bacon for the summer.
Rockbrook currently does not have any large-scale farming, however it does have a rich garden. Located on the lower sports field, the RBC garden was started in 2009 and has been growing steadily ever since. Campers enjoy maintaining a variety of plants, and are especially excited to pick ripened vegetables, such as squash, zucchini, edamame, bell peppers, tomatoes, and beans. Once picked and washed, these vegetables are featured in the dining hall’s salad bar. Below, you’ll find a few of our favorite shots from a garden workshop this summer, where campers delighted in making tussie mussies and building a scarecrow!
There are many ways to describe the difference between camp life and the “real world” that happens elsewhere and throughout the school year. At Rockbrook, we might point to our living mostly outdoors and close to nature. We might celebrate our opportunities to experience adventure (hike, paddle, climb!), or to have time for unstructured play. We could describe how camp is a break from electronic technology, and from the social pressures of school revolving around our appearance, possessions, and status. We might highlight the true independence kids experience being away from parents and teachers.
These are all very clear differences, each helping to explain the benefits of a sleepaway camp experience for children. But there is another one, and it is community, the very real sense of being included, respected, trusted and loved by a group of people. Camp is, at its core, a special community built on central values like kindness, cooperation, compassion, care and generosity. It is brimming with enthusiasm and encouragement, wrapped tightly by a collective spirit. At camp, and certainly at Rockbrook, everyone is welcomed and included.
How different this feels from ordinary life! Camp is not about individual consumption, getting a grade, standing out as the best, or advancing at the expense of others. It’s not so ego-centric, nor blind to the people around us. At camp, where there is always support from friends, you’re never left to just fend for yourself.
And how wonderful it feels! Partly, I think joining a camp community, and other communities too, provides us such a powerful sense of contentment because it is so different from ordinary American life. Human beings, and especially kids, crave this kind of connection. We need to know wholeheartedly that we belong to something bigger than “just me,” that our “true self” is accepted and valued by those around us, and unfortunately it is all too rare these days. Perhaps we modern Americans are dis-content because we are dis-connected from an authentic community. Perhaps we are suffering from what could be called “Community Deficit Disorder.”
Thank goodness for camp and its ability to be a powerful and effective antidote for this disorder. It may not be the main reason we attend a sleepaway camp, but the joy of joining a camp community is certainly one of the most important reasons why we love it.
Mark Twain poked at the nation a bit. He elbowed us and said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” He encouraged us to get up and live!
As camp counselors we perfectly personify this assertion. Every summer we trade in air-conditioned rooms for mountain-chilled air, polished, made-up looks for muddy, natural complexions, and car wheels for cartwheels. We explore the splendor of the natural world. We dream of creating a world of beauty for our campers. We discover the sheer joy a child can bring to life.
Come June slow, sleepy mornings brought on by a sounding alarm clock transform into a rising bell, fresh fruit and songs sung between bites at breakfast. Hands normally busy texting and typing are suddenly paddling, french-braiding, and slipping snail mail into the post. We explore and desire the simple life. We dream in fairy parties and jungle breakfasts. We discover what summer means to us.
As the days grow longer and the weather warmer, we no longer flip a switch to fade the lights, but watch on as the sun’s gentle pinks and oranges settle under the horizon as we welcome twilight’s lightening bugs with open arms. Time typically spent choosing the day’s outfit and honing a particular outward appearance is devoted to studying the inside of a person; the real beauty and essence of them. We explore the depth of a real friendship. We dream and strive to be the best role model we can be for our campers. We discover that we are capable of things we never imagined possible.
Twenty years from now look back on a life well lived.
This week we sent out the second installment of our Rockbrook staff newsletter. Beyond including tricks of the trade (how to tell a proper joke- har har) and recipes for holiday treats (chocolaty brownies!), we coaxed our counselors to dive into the joys of the holiday season and take on a challenge that will keep their days merry and bright.
See if you can take on our December challenge.
Can you complete seven of the following tasks by the end of the month?
Did you know that in the 1920’s the power for most of Rockbrook was created by a water wheel? In 1923, a water wheel was installed just below the lake and dam to run the electricity for the camp. The water wheel came from the Federal Distillery right across the road from camp. The Distillery building is one of three in Transylvania county, and currently the only one still standing. The distillery is believed to have operated from the mid-nineteenth century until Prohibition when the wheel was removed and relocated across Hwy 276. The water wheel was such an important feature of camp there was even a song written about it! Check out the sheet music that we found in honor of Rockbrook’s Water Wheel.
One of the best rock climbing areas in the Southeast is Looking Glass Rock. Rising almost 1000 feet from the forest floor, Looking Glass is a dome-shaped mass of granite near Brevard in the Pisgah National Forest. It can easily be seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway nearby. For rock climbers it offers a fantastic variety of sport, friction, face, crack and even aid climbing routes suitable for the beginning, intermediate and advanced climber. Circling the domed rock are well-known climbing areas: the Nose, South Side, Sun Wall and North Wall. On the southeastern side of the rock, there is a popular tourist trail for hiking to the summit.
Here’s a photo of a Rockbrook camper on the Nose (5.8). Rockbrook is located only about 15 miles from Looking Glass. After topping out our own climbs on Castle Rock, our camp rock climbing program brings girls to Looking Glass, as well as other climbing areas in this region of North Carolina. There’s a lot of rock to climb around here, and the girls love it!
We’ve all experienced holiday fever. Our bodies feel warm and tingly, our cheeks turn rosy, our heart beats faster, and a slight shiver warms our spine. A holiday fever can be brought on by anything- snowflakes, hot chocolate, presents, tinsel, strung popcorn, twinkling lights, reindeer sweaters, holiday jingles, Yule log, greeting cards, carolers, chestnuts, or open fires (just to name a few.) In extreme cases, we catch this fever all month long.
Unfortunately, in our lives, January 1st becomes the cool washcloth which breaks our holiday fever. Upon entering the new year, our body temperature subsides and our cheeks pale. Joyfully cooking a holiday meal for family and friends makes way for our mad dashes to the grocery store where upon we return home, exhausted, and with barely enough energy to cook our recent purchases. Snow is no longer the canvas which creates snowball fights and frosty angels, but an irksome condition that prohibits travel and turns into a brown, dirty slush which seeps into our boots and nips at our toes. Chestnuts take far too long to roast and open fires seem much too dangerous an endeavor. Come January, once charming and enchanting holiday tasks become everyday annoyances.
Luckily, there’s a medical breakthrough to combat all this. The doctor can write us a prescription to regain our fever (think of this as a reverse Rx.) Spend your summer at camp. If followed to doctor’s orders, the opportunity to work at camp is one of indescribable value. One dose and ordinary things reclaim their magic and our cheeks flush rosy once again. Peanut butter on apples, paddles on water, rain on roofs, mud on sneakers- all spectacular when you have “camp fever.” Camp gives us the best gift we could ask for-holiday cheer all summer long.
The 2011 Carrier Pigeon, our annual summer yearbook, is at the printer right now in preparation for sending out over the holiday. It is filled with so many wonderful stories and memories of the past summer. There are so many highlights, we thought we would share a few with you! The fun, friends and feeling of Rockbrook never changes, whether it is 1921 or 2011!
Splashing and laughing
in the rocky creek,
with our tangled hair
and our soaking wet feet;
In the dining hall
we all loudly sing,
then at rest hour flop down
and don’t say a thing.
Cabinmates are like sisters,
and friends ever better,
everyone’s hoping
to receive a letter.
Walking along
a quiet forest trail
or running a brush
through a horse’s soft tail.
In hilarious evening skits
every girl has a part,
In this beautiful wooded mountain,
you can tell why we’re called the heart.
—Miriam E.