Oh man, I am so excited to share this post.

I spent last week volunteering as a counselor at my childhood summer camp in Sharon, Connecticut — a place on a lake in the woods that is just as magical to me as an adult as it was when I first visited in 1994. But the physical surroundings are only part of the reason this place is so special; it’s the quality of the people that keeps me coming back now.

I spent a week here in 2011 and 2012 co-leading a week-long program about making videos with high schoolers. Then I took a few years off to travel around the world, but I knew deep down that I couldn’t stay away from Silver Lake for very long. My schedule has been delightfully open this summer and when I contacted my previous co-deans (hi Gordon and Julie!) at the last minute, they welcomed me back with open arms.

Silver Lake is a church camp, run by the United Church of Christ Connecticut Conference. Sometimes I leave this out when telling people about camp so as not to scare them off. Yes, we pray before meals and sing church-related songs after meals and at worship. We talk about how we see God in our lives. But the subtext is really about how to be a good human being — how can we be more kind? How can we show more generosity towards our neighbors? Forgive others? Be grateful for all the gifts in our lives? Those messages are at the heart of Silver Lake. Aside from Christmas and Easter services, I haven’t been involved in church since I graduated from high school 14 years ago, but I wholeheartedly support the ministry at Silver Lake. We work with kids to build a safe community and explore ways to be better humans.

This is our cabin for the week:

A look inside at our main room:

Our group of 30 kids spit evenly into five cabins of six campers each — three girl cabins and two boy cabins. Since our program is called “Silver Lake’s Funniest Videos,” we decided to name the cabins after movie franchises… those chosen include Star Wars, Avengers, Muppets, Minions, and Pitch Perfect (that was mine, which won’t surprise anyone who knows how much I love musicals). All of the counselors made signs with their kids’ names on them, which I’ve blurred out to protect the innocent.

Here’s the inside of my cabin, perfectly spotless before the kids arrive. Remarkably, it stayed pretty clean even when inhabited by six teenagers.

Here’s the Muppets cabin upstairs. I love their poster:

Let’s meet our cast of characters, shall we? Here are Gordon and Julie, our fearless leaders, wearing funny eye wear that arrived mid-week from a former counselor (shout out to Will!):

And here are five out of six counselors, in a photo snapped minutes before the first camper arrived. We’re missing Lulu who had to drop her own daughter off at another program here, but you will meet her later!

And here’s a glimpse of our campers for the week. They all rocked. So much personality packed into these individuals.

These photos are primarily chronological, as we had various activities each day. Let’s start at the waterfront, which was scheduled daily at 10am.

The waterfront is located at the bottom of a big hill, which as a kid I thought was the hardest thing to climb (and trust me, all of our campers complained about it… “Why can’t there be an escalator?!”). But guess what? It takes five minutes to reach the top. That barely counts as exercise! We also spotted deer crossing the road a few times, as the area is surrounded by dense forrest.

The camp photographer (who was in our conference back in 2011!) snapped our group photo on Monday morning. Perfect opportunity to grab a shot with my fish-eye lens…

Here’s a better one, without me in the foreground:

We spent the largest chunk of our day shooting videos. The kids were split into three groups of ten, with two counselors assigned to each group to assist them with the storytelling process. On Monday the kids were given a Bible passage and random prop, then told to create their own story interpreting that passage in a unique way using the prop.

The kids took full advantage of our costume supply, which was as endlessly deep as Mary Poppins’ bag.

On Tuesday evening our group led camp worship. We showed our music videos, sang a Beatles song, and shared a prayer written by our kids.

Side note: my group did a music video to a song called Different Drum by Blanca that is worth a listen. It reminds me of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”

Evening snack time! Over the course of the week we were spoiled with ice cream sundaes, cookies, rice crispy treats, and trail mix that contained both marshmallows AND chocolate. Big kudos to the Silver Lake kitchen staff.

Many of the full-time camp staff rides bikes around the property. They’re kept organized by hanging from hooks outside the social hall:

The Staff Show happened on Tuesday night — it’s always very funny. They sing songs and put on skits for about 45 minutes.

After the Staff Show ends, the social hall turns into a giant dance party. SO MUCH FUN.

Memorable songs from the night include the aforementioned “Shake It Off” and “Brown-Eyed Girl” as performed entirely by the Silver Lake band.

I got some quick video footage…

We spent all of Wednesday afternoon splitting our time between Low Ropes and High Ropes.

This activity below is called ‘Whale Watch’ on Low Ropes… there’s a long plank on a fulcrum, and the idea is for the kids to distribute themselves evenly until it’s perfectly balanced (the trick is to sit down). Next they tried to keep it balanced while members of the group got off, one by one — quite challenging, but the kids held balance successfully a few times.

Our second activity at Low Ropes was to get everyone in the group across this obstacle course without touching the ground. They could only stand on the pieces of wood, and the first few people had to arrange planks to help everyone else cross. There’s a rope swing to help get across, too.

Next up is High Ropes.

Once the kids are properly harnessed and helmeted (I just made up that word), there are a few aerial courses they can attempt to scale while belayed by a staff member.

This one is called the Vertical Playground, and it’s the most challenging:

I forget the name of this one, but it’s my favorite — you climb up that ladder at the bottom of the tree, scaling the trunk’s metal footholds. Once at the top, you navigate a series of tires and logs to cross over from one tree to the next. Then the staff belays you back to the ground.

Guess what? This was my first time ever doing High Ropes!

And here’s some video:

Here is Aila, one of my fellow counselors, rocking High Ropes with the coolest pants ever:

Each day the kids had interest groups for an hour. Options included music, ceramics, arts & crafts, and nature. Typically I took my break during this time (to shower and access wifi for 20 minutes) so I only have photos from one day — this was the music group:

Silver Lake has a basketball court, volleyball court, softball field, and ping-pong tables. The kids had about 45 minutes after dinner to play field games.

This is the social hall, where we enjoyed three meals a day. The camp has a new chef this year and I loved the food. There’s an overflowing salad bar, too, which has yogurt and fresh fruit at breakfast. A+ for the food.

Example of our grace before meals:

The camp is very big on composting. Aila demonstrates her effort to prevent waste by eating the unwanted crust of a campers’ PB&J sandwich, rather than make her own with new bread.

There are buckets around the social hall during clean-up time at every meal, watched over by a staff member who helps the kids to sort their waste into four buckets — BLUE: leftover water from the pitchers on every table, which is used to water Silver Lake’s garden; GREEN: compostable food waste; GREEN: compostable non-food waste like banana peels and egg shells; and RED: non-compostable food waste, like pieces of meat or dairy the campers couldn’t finish eating (any untouched leftover food still on the platter goes back to the kitchen to be reused). Then just before the next meal, a staff member delivers the Ort Report, which is the number of pounds of non-compostable food waste (aka the contents of the red bucket). We had over 200 campers last week and the largest amount was 14 lbs, and the lowest was 7.5 lbs. Not too shabby! After delivering the Ort Report at each meal, the staff reminds everyone to take less food because they can always go back for seconds. This system really resonated with our kids — there were many meals where we had ZERO waste at our tables. That certainly wasn’t the case a decade ago before Silver Lake instituted this composting program. Isn’t it remarkable what awareness can achieve?

Non-sequitur confession: our counseling staff quickly became addicted to coloring books. The photo below could have been taken any night of the week, because we totally lost focus when the coloring books came out. Our kids would be assembled in the main room participating in activities while we’d stand at the kitchen counter trying to find the perfect shade of blue for our drawing.

I walked into the kitchen on Tuesday to ask, “What are you guys coloring?” and then promptly forgot everything I was supposed to do and became totally engrossed by this. We joked that there could have been a fire and we would not have noticed. It’s a fabulous stress-relieving activity.

On Wednesday evening we went on a Night Hike! I wish I had photos to share with you. Our whole group lined up one by one to hold hands and then walk on a path through the woods in moonlight. We saw hundreds of lightening bugs; it was like something out of a movie. I look forward to this activity every year.

Thursday evening featured a camp-wide cookout down by the lake:

This is my happy place…

There’s a program on Thursday night called Mudge Madness whereby all of the kids participate in a basketball game against the staff.

Play-by-play commentary brought to you by staff members in suits with microphones:

On Thursday evening we played the Cabin Mate Game. It’s like the Newlywed Game, only we test how well the campers know their fellow cabin mates. It’s ridiculously fun and perhaps the highlight of the entire week for some kids.

We have camp-wide worship each night for about 20 minutes. A few times it was held in the outdoor amphitheater, a really beautiful setting under the trees. There’s two other gorgeous outdoor spaces — Hubble Chapel and Waterfall Chapel — that I forgot to take a photo of… I’ll have to remember to do that next year.

One of the younger groups at camp was called Minute to Win It, and they did challenges like trying to get an Oreo from your forehead into your mouth without using your hands in less than a minute. We all had fun with that one during their worship.

Friday evening was our campfire!

We sang lots and lots of camp songs. Super fun night.

Then we roasted marshmallows and made s’mores… perhaps the most quintessential camp activity ever. We also had a lovely communion presented by Gordon, who is a minister.

And that’s a wrap! Here is our stellar team of dean and counselors — that’s Luis, Ben, Gordon, Jamie, and Aila on the top row, and then Lulu, Julie, and myself on the bottom row.

I can’t resist sharing a photo of the girls in my cabin — love you guys!!

Major thanks to our fearless leaders Gordon and Julie, as well as camp director Tim and the entire staff. I’m so grateful to return to this sacred space and find it just as special as the last time. And getting to spend time with 30 high schoolers is especially neat — it’s a glimpse into the future, and I’m excited for what’s to come. I felt irrelevant when I asked the kids during mealtime what their favorite TV shows are and I hadn’t heard of most of them… and they hadn’t heard of my favorites. Ditto when two of my girls were reading the same book during quiet time, a memoir by a popular Youtube user that I’d never heard of (just typing that sentence makes me feel old). It was a gift to connect with these kids for a week.

Until next year, Silver Lake!