Camp Woodland Blog

Sometimes, a place becomes part of your story.

For many of our campers, camp is a place they return to year after year. The lake looks familiar. The paths through the woods feel like home. The traditions become part of who they are. And sometimes, years later, they realize that a particular place, moment, or view helped them see themselves, and the world around them, a little differently.

Recently, Katherine B. shared the college application personal essay she wrote about her experience at camp. It is a story about a challenging season of life, a physical place that became a metaphor, and the perspective she gained along the way.

We asked if we could share it with our camp community because it captures something we hope happens here every summer: that young people have the time and space to grow, to struggle, to discover their own strength, and occasionally, to stop and take in the view.

Here is Katharine’s story.

Each summer I travel over 1000 miles to spend six weeks at a small summer camp in northern Wisconsin. The camp is surrounded on three sides by a thick forest, and a cliff juts out on the fourth side, sloping down to a small lake. A staircase winds its way up the cliff, allowing passage between the waterfront and the rest of the camp. The incline is steep and the steps are slanted and tall, requiring some younger campers to stop and catch their breath after leaving swimming lessons. Halfway up the steps is a small and unremarkable wooden platform we call the sailing deck. The deck has always caught my attention, largely for its unmatched view of the beautiful lake.

High school, like the slant of the stairs, caught me by unpleasant surprise. I was thrown into incredibly challenging classes and increasingly suffocated under piles of homework. I was working longer and harder than all of my classmates. I spent the majority of freshman and sophomore years in a state of sleep deprivation and crushing anxiety, endlessly searching for a sailing deck on which I could catch my breath. In May of my sophomore year, I was diagnosed with four ocular disorders, which explained why my pace of reading was so slow. My parents celebrated putting a name to the problem while I faced a long and uncertain path to fixing it. I walked into my first day of junior year exhausted and hopeless, desperate for an escape from the year of hell that stood on the horizon.

As my vision therapy progressed, my peripheral vision gradually opened. At the same time, unfortunately, factors that had always been on the periphery of my life suddenly obstructed my focus and forced me to grow up faster than I wanted. In the eye of the storm, I continued to move, hesitantly at first, through the crisis that encircled me. I took on more responsibility in my family and worked harder than I ever had in my life for school. I found comfort in the steady beat that my forward movement created. I calmed myself by focusing on the small things that I could change, slowly becoming the adult that I had always dreamed of being.

In more ways than I could have predicted, the year was hell, but I had changed. I began to see the hours of work and never-ending to-do lists as a path, not to a perfect resumé, but to a better self. Though there were days that almost broke me, I continued to climb, step by slanted step, towards the future, even if my vision of it had changed. I was not pushing to reach the top; I was pushing to reach a ledge, even if only for a second, a metaphorical sailing deck.

Following my junior year of high school, I returned to camp, walked up the flight of stairs to reach the sailing deck, and gazed out across the lake. On that ledge, I found myself amazed at how much farther and how much clearer I could see. I saw the lake, I saw the world, I saw how far I had come, and in my periphery I saw the steps. I understood then that everything I had gone through had cleared my vision of the world around me. I grabbed my bag and started up the stairs again, maybe not to reach the top, but to reach some other ledge with an even more spectacular view.

We love that the sailing deck became part of her story.

Not because every camper will leave camp with the same experience, or the same metaphor, but because every young person needs places where they can pause, catch their breath, look around, and notice how far they have come.

Sometimes growth happens in big, obvious moments. More often, it happens quietly: in the friendships that deepen, the responsibilities a camper learns to carry, the problem they figure out without an adult stepping in, or the moment they realize they can do something today that felt impossible a year ago.

And then, every once in a while, they look out across the lake and see things a little more clearly.

That is one of the gifts of camp we hope our campers carry with them long after summer is over.