Category: Staff Corner

Sam (right)

Dear Mom & Dad,

I’ve had the easy job. From the summer when I was nine, my job has been to come to Northern Wisconsin and grow into myself by learning how to ride, canoe, and shoot bows and arrows at camp. I lived with my best friends who are now my sisters and lost track of time in the warm summer haze.

Now seventeen, I recently figured out that your reality for the past nine summers has been very different from mine. While my days were punctuated with bells ringing and counselors cheering, you were at your job waiting for the mail truck to deliver one of my elusive letters. I avoided homesickness because I was at camp, my second home, while you missed your daughter because there was no one to greet you when you came home from work.  I had the easy part – I was able to live, love and laugh in a place where I belonged unconditionally. I became a stronger swimmer than you, Dad, and rode in first hour just like you, Mom. While you were at home, your two daughters were away at different sleep away camps for almost the entire summer.

For years, when other parents looked at me in disbelief and asked how you could possibly send me away for six weeks, I always smiled and said that you were happy to rid yourself of me for the summer; it was our break from each other. There’s a better reason, a truer reason, and I want to apologize for not giving it at the time. That reason is that you were willing to put aside your own selfish wants of having your child home because you knew that letting me go to camp for six weeks was the absolute best thing that could ever happen to me.

You were willing to let me go and let me figure out myself on my own terms. This allowed me to be independent and become a little more self-sufficient every time I came home.  You didn’t get frustrated with me during the summers when I barely wrote, and you never hinted at being insulted when I mentioned I wasn’t homesick at all during my time away.

You knew I loved you very much, and you let me love you from afar. You let me learn to love others who weren’t related to me in a way I was told only families love each other. You let me love a place with a different family to the same degree if not more than the love I have for my biological family and childhood home. Your selflessness gave me the opportunity I needed to be selfish for a few weeks each summer so that I could learn how to be selfless, too.

For all of this and more, I THANK YOU. Thank you for giving me nine summers in the Northwoods at Camp Woodland. Thank you for being tough when I wasn’t and letting me be tough when all you wanted was to carry me. Thank you for being camp parents, and thank you for letting me stand on my own feet. Thank you for giving me a place where I automatically belong and giving me two homes to love. More than anything, thank you for loving me and letting me love camp.

Sam with Cabin at Ropes Course

I love you and will see you soon,

Sam E

2^nd year JC

2^nd generation Camp Woodland Girl

Natalie just finished her freshman year at University of Wisconsin!  We are so happy to have Natalie back at the waterfront.  Your daughters are going to have a great time learning how to sail with Natalie!  She has been sailing at Camp Woodland since she has been 8 years old.  Read Natalie’s blog about what this summer’s theme means to her….

Natalie (Middle)

No matter what grade you’re in—whether it’s fourth, or your junior year in high school—the school year is stressful. You wake up early and tirelessly absorb new material throughout the day. You make plans with friends and go to the mall on weekends and do your homework late at night to get it in on time. Of course it’s fun and exciting, but by May the process has become a little redundant, and you’re ready for the summer. And when summer comes, when it’s finally time to head back up to the north woods of Wisconsin again, you want to fall back into a pattern that’s relaxing, easy, and, most of all, familiar.

This summer’s theme—Dare to Explore in 1-4—challenges that instinct in the best way. In fact, it started doing that right from the beginning, when choosing the theme became an activity in which the whole camp could participate. This theme was chosen by the campers, for the campers, and it is already on the way to living up to its potential.

Natalie & her cabin – Sunnyside

Dare to Explore is a mantra that is there to remind you to leap outside of your comfort zone. Instead of heading up to camp with the intent to only participate in your favorite activities (and maybe a rec swim), try something different! Don’t stick to the skills you already know are your best; instead, sign up for something you’ve never done before—be it drama, or canoeing, or maybe passing up an evening activity of soccer to hone those beach volleyball techniques. Trying something new is the way you found the activities you love in the first place, after all.

Natalie teaching Sailing!

Camp is a place where you go to feel safe and welcome. It’s a place that is familiar without ever being boring. But do you truly know everything there is to know about it? Have you tried all of the evening activities, participated in every Olympic event? This summer, like every other summer, Camp Woodland is placing the new opportunities into your hands—and this is your renewed chance to take them. Jump in, get involved, and don’t just put a toe outside of your comfort zone—live outside of it. There are few other places in the world where you will get the same amazing chances that you do at camp, so take advantage of the short time you have! Sail every boat, ride every horse, pass every level physically possible. And if it doesn’t all get done this summer? That’s more than okay! You have many more summers ahead of you to try again. But Dare to Explore in the summer of 2014, because the time to start is now.

Welcome back Natalie!

We are so happy that Lindsay K. will be returning to camp this summer! This veteran has been coming to camp since she was 7 years old.  Lindsay just finished her freshman year of college in Colorado, and is excited to be taking on new challenges this summer!

Every year, we put a lot of thought into our summer theme.  We tend to think summer themes are a vehicle to get campers thinking their goals and what they want to get out of the most during their summer at camp. Enjoy Lindsay’s perspective on this  summer’s theme: Dare To Explore in 1-4!

Lindsay (Left) & Jenny (right). Jenny is back too!

 You can dare to explore by trying new things.  Camp offers a multitude of opportunities to dare.  Sure, it could be water skiing, riding, or sailing.  But don’t be fooled.  There are many skills which camp teaches that are even more meaningful. Dare to make a new friend or to try a new activity.  Camp offers a place to grow and learn new things about yourself that aren’t always possible at home or at school. Camp offers the opportunity to spend six weeks with girls from different countries, to learn about their cultures, and to create bonds.    

 Daring to try a new activity can turn out to be the best decision you can make at camp. I was always afraid to go sailing, but after I tried it, I realized how fun it is.  I went from being intimidated by sailing to considering it one of my favorite activities.  Dare to explore reminds us to always give something a chance; put yourself out there and try something new. 

 Camp is a place where you get to be you and always be accepted for it. It’s somewhere you can go for six weeks, play like a kid, and learn adult life lessons.  Oh yes, the North Woods is pretty darn awesome.  The location offers the opportunity to be in nature and see how beautiful the world can be.  Forget iPods, phones, Facebook, and tweets.  Think campfires, Sand Lake, and all the tall pine and birch trees.  Its easy to dare – the setting makes you feel so safe.

 No life vest, helmets or safety goggles required to get the most out of this summer’s theme. Dare to Explore in 1-4 is just a reminder to live the summer to the fullest, take advantage of opportunities, push yourself to try something new, and expand as a person.  

Welcome back Lindsay!!

Right around this time we start to look back on our year, and since we (as part of the TP/W family) spend a considerable part of ours in the Northwoods of Wisconsin,  we go back and go through camp pictures. It is impossible for me to put into words how much Camp Woodland has shaped my life, but, in the spirit of giving and sharing this Holiday season, I can say it is, along with Towering Pines, one of the biggest gifts my family has ever received but never really expected or asked for in a way. I don’t think my parents knew what they were getting themselves into when they sent my brother and I over 10 years ago to an American summer camp, but it was the best decision they would ever make regarding us, their youngest son, and eventually all my younger cousins.

Camp, I have learned, is the gift of true friendship, one that cannot be found anywhere else in the world, and this statement must not be taken lightly.  My family and I have made friends there that will last for a lifetime and that is something you do not want your daughter to go without.

Camp is the gift of strength. Of acquiring it; of knowing your limits, of wanting to expand themselves; striving to be the best you can be. It is not only physical, but emotional. You learn to cooperate and to live and breath diversity. Camp is the gift of love and laughter, of leadership and skill. This was very important for an awkward kid like myself, who had never been on a horse, or on a boat or away from my parents for so long.

Woodland presented itself to me as the opportunity for discovering I could do things I never even knew existed. What more would a kid ask from life? Towering Pines and Camp Woodland are the perfect present even when we are not there. It takes about 1.4 seconds to think about one’s personal favorite place at camp and your problems are basically solved for the day. Camp is the gift of wind in your face when biking down the road, water splashing on the edge of sailboats, the smells of pizza after a long day of very hard work and the excitement right before Coed-Show on a Thursday afternoon. What days are more perfect than those? I can think of none.

10 years later I still can’t wait for June to come around. It may seem like it is still too far down the line, but, as a family, you probably will not have many breaks like this one to talk about your summer plans again, so it is never to early to start discussing it, just a tip.

But most importantly, for a lot of us, I like to believe, camp gifted with one thing: the love for music. It is everywhere. In every corner, in every cabin, in every campfire and hall. In the sunsets and sunrises, when we’re all together and even when we are not. Pictures burn, get lost, we don’t like them, people change. But songs linger, melodies remain and people never forget the songs that made them fall in love with the place we all call home away from home.

Happy Holidays  Camp family (and all of our new families too!)

– Natalia O
Director of Dance at Camp Woodland
10th year at Camp Woodland 

This is a must read and be warned, you may tear up too! Thank you Natalie B for taking us back through your camp memories.  A true testament of summer and lifelong friendship.

On the morning of June 21, 2003, I started off my summer where I believe many new campers do: standing in the doorway of my cabin, pillow clutched in one hand and stuffed animal clutched in the other, absolutely terrified. Excited, yes, but terrified. At eight years old, circumstances hadn’t yet mandated that I have the abilities to make my own friends; my mom would set up play dates for me, and I would follow along blindly with a smile and the promise of delicious snacks at my playmates’ houses. I had the luxury of getting along with others in a way that only a little girl who isn’t yet sharply individualized can.

First Summer at Camp – 2003

But that changed when I arrived at camp. Suddenly, I found myself in a situation where compatibility was defined not by a mutual elementary school classroom, but by our very lifestyles, interests, and behaviors. Camp is unique in that it is capable of bringing out the essence of someone’s personality within six short weeks, and it is upon those intrinsic characteristics that we form our friendships. As such, my fears were not unfounded. It is no small pressure to be assessed in your most natural state of being for the first time in your life. What I didn’t know then was that this is camp’s most valuable quality: it makes every memory more real, every relationship stronger. Not to mention that the environment still allows for malleability—still allows for acceptance and patience and growth. Being as oblivious as I was, though, my fear was very real and very present.

Cabin Unity Campfire – Summer 2007

As it was, if someone had told me then that I was standing within ten feet of the girls whom I would soon count among my lifelong best friends, my look of skepticism would have been painfully evident. But it was undeniably, irrevocably true. Even now, after knowing my four closest friends—all of whom I met on that first day—for eleven years, it’s hard to believe that girls who are so fundamentally different can intertwine so closely, as if they are separate parts of one person. However, the situation I found myself in is not remarkable at camp: the connections happen all the time, every summer; friendships are forged in the seemingly unlikeliest of circumstances and prove to last a lifetime.

Counselors in Training – Summer 2011

The core problem was this: I believed—and I think we all did—that the friendship we fostered for the past eleven years was one based on chance. And in a shallow sense, it was. If the five of us hadn’t chosen to attend the same camp during the same summer, everything might have been different. But we attribute the success of our friendship more to the functions of the universe and fate than we do the very thing that allowed us to bond in the first place: camp.

The truth is that Camp Woodland didn’t bring us together, at least not on an emotional level. Camp opened its arms to each of us as individuals, and then proceeded to give us the tools, within mere days and weeks, to embrace diversity. So that ultimately, the young girls who were unexpectedly set apart by lifestyles, interests, and behaviors quickly learned that individuality makes us invaluable, that tolerance makes us versatile. These were important lessons to understand when it came to being a seamless addition to the fabric of the larger community. In short, we became friends because we learned to live with and love each other. I don’t think there is another place on earth that can produce the same phenomenal outcome.

Fast forward to now, my freshman year of college, which found me in a similar position as that first day of camp: standing in the doorway of a new environment that I was required to mold into a home for myself (sans stuffed animal, but equally as terrified). And maybe if I had never realized what eleven summers at Camp Woodland taught me about diversity, I would have found myself stuck in the belief that, after eighteen years, I had never been able to form my own relationships because circumstance had done it for me. Instead, I put a smile on my face, walked into my dorm room, and started making my own bed (like any true Woodland girl would) with a tranquil conscience. Because I know that camp hasn’t afforded me the privilege of making friendships for me; rather, it has given me the indispensible skill of mastering diversity and nudged me into taking my first step into a new world for which I am ready.

And if I stumble, I know my friends will be there to help me through. I have Camp Woodland to thank for that.

Junior Counselors – Summer 2013

-Natalie B, Freshman at University of Wisconsin