I am back from another fantastic and refreshing week at summer camp. So grateful for the chance to spend time in this corner of Connecticut with such outstanding people.

The camp is called Silver Lake, and I’ve written about it before (here and here). I grew up going to this camp from 5th grade through high school, then I was a counselor for several years during college, then I took a seven year break while living in Los Angeles, and have come back the past couple of summers to co-lead a week-long program about video making with high schoolers. We make music videos, a camp documentary, soap operas about social issues, and more. It’s easily my favorite week of the whole year. Just look at these faces!

This year we had 19 kids, mostly between the ages of 13-15, from all over Connecticut. Silver Lake is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and many of the campers attend UCC churches around CT. So in most cases they don’t know each other before hand, and we have the pleasure of building a loving community together over the course of a week. It’s beautiful to see everyone open up to each other, show their authentic selves, and be so wholly embraced by the group.

Let’s go through our average day at camp.

After breakfast, we hold a brief opening circle (hosted each morning by a different counselor) and then watch a 5-minute Video of the Day, to showcase different ways of storytelling that might inform the group videos we make every afternoon. The videos tend to be about dense topics like race and gender, meant to spur discussion while also featuring video techniques like direct address, voiceover narration, people playing various characters, creative use of homespun props, and other production elements.

Then it’s waterfront time! An hour of swimming in the lake, canoeing, or sitting at picnic tables playing guitar and coloring.

Counselor Dan gets in on the Mudge Mountain action:

And counselor Luis shows off his superhero powers:

Then it’s interest group time — most days this is an hour of arts & crafts, nature, or ceramics. One day we attend a sustainability program called Earth Avengers that’s all about how food is processed and how we can better treat our planet.

Silver Lake is really proactive about sustainability, including growing vegetables in an impressive garden and composting food after every meal (campers play an active role in this). Everyone is encouraged to only take as much as you plan to eat to avoid excessive waste, and orts (leftover food) is weighed after each meal and announced at the next meal. It’s a group effort to get our food waste as close to zero as possible.

Other programs include high ropes and low ropes, which are always a hit. Low ropes tends to be about community building games that require working together as a team to solve problems:

And high ropes is more an individual effort, testing your personal limits while attempting various rope courses:

Each night after dinner we attend a camp-wide worship, lasting about 20-30 minutes. Each of the groups in attendance that week takes a turn hosting. On our night, we screen the music videos we shot that afternoon for the whole camp.

One of the worship services involved playing the game where you get into a group and link hands with people on the other side, then have to unwind yourselves out of the group knot.

Fun times after worship:

Tuesday night is the Staff Show! The full-time summer staff presents a series of skits and musical numbers that culminate in a big dance party.

Major shout-out to the Resource Staff for performing a Hamilton-inspired song.

On Friday night we have our group campfire, including s’mores and songs followed by communion with our chaplain.

One evening we go on a guided Night Hike. We meet at the basketball courts around 8:30p after twilight and then walk single file, holding hands, on a hike through the dark woods. It’s a good way to practice communication (“there’s a rock on the right!”, “watch out for that root!”) and experience the outdoors in a new way. Fireflies flitter around nearby. Staff members demonstrate various natural phenomenons, like striking quartz rocks together to generate sparks.

By the time we get back to the basketball courts it is 9:30p and the sky is totally clear — no moon, no clouds, no light pollution. The Milky Way is clearly visible. Our group lays down on the courts and spends 15 minutes or so looking up at the night sky. It is easily the most magical moment of the whole week; we observe several shooting stars, a first for some of the campers. Julie, my co-leader, has the idea to hold closing circle right there on the court instead of going back to our cabin. That buys us another 15 magical minutes as we go around the circle sharing the highlight of our day, which for most people is this very moment laying out under the stars.

Later that night I go back out with my camera and fisheye lens to capture the scene:

Back to our group’s specific programming: we spend every afternoon making videos. Most days we divide everyone into three small groups, and each one makes a video.

We start off easy — on Monday we give them a parable (example: The Good Samaritan) and a specific character or prop (example: a Starbucks apron) and they reinterpret that parable into their own original story, while using the specific character or prop.

On Tuesday we make music videos. Since we will debut them in front of the whole camp later that evening at worship, there isn’t time for a lot of editing, so each group must plan and choreograph their video to be shot in one long take. This always proves a challenge. Plus we encourage them to think about interpreting the theme of each song in a non-literal way, and to not rely too heavily on dance, so that storytelling is the focus of their music videos.

On Wednesday we try something new: a behind-the-scenes documentary at camp where our kids write questions and then we run all over camp interviewing personnel from various departments.

On Thursday we take the day off to attend high and low ropes. Afterwards, we introduce Friday’s video to get a head start.

On Friday we make a soap opera. Each of the three groups picks a social issue to focus on: illegal immigration, prescription drug abuse, and news bias. Once we tape all of their stories (3-5 scenes each), I cut those scenes together so it looks like one big soap opera with multiple story arcs. If you know me outside of this blog, it will not come as a surprise that this is my favorite of our videos, as I’ve spent the last 10+ years working in soap operas. It is enormous fun to take those storytelling techniques and apply them to these videos with high school kids.

Finally, we also make a surprise counselor video entirely shot and planned by our supremely wonderful five counselors. And then when I get home at the end of the week, I edit a highlight reel of all the other footage I captured during the week. All in all, that is a lot of videos!

For the sake of privacy I won’t share the videos featuring our kids (message me if you are a real-life friend and want to see them — the soap opera came out especially great), but here is the behind-the-scenes documentary interviewing camp staff members:

Here are two photos the camp photographer took of us making videos:

Just as our group’s theme is video making, there are other groups that week with different themes; I’ll share a few of them here. One is a biking conference, which starts near Mystic, CT and travels roughly 125 miles to reach camp:

Another group is The Amazing gRace (pronounced G-Race) which focuses on team relay games like the hit TV show. Here they are doing their own version of the Color Run:

Other camp activities include gardening:

And time with this week’s artist-in-residence, a tai chi artist who also leads workshops on drumming and mediation:

At the end of the week after our kids go back home to their parents, our team of counselors meets in the Waterfall Chapel for some reflective time. This is my favorite spot in the whole camp; there is a babbling brook (which is essentially dried up right now due to heat) next to a wilderness chapel. Sometimes there are deer in the woods nearby. It’s so peaceful.

Here is the stream, mostly dried up at the moment:

Our truly incredible team of counselors: Dan, Lulu, Luis, Aila, and Jamie!

Me and my co-leader, Julie!

Afterwards we all go out to lunch at a diner in nearby Millerton, New York — the camp is right on the CT/NY border. Millerton is such a cute town.

Thanks for another incredible week at camp! I love these people!

My continued involvement at Silver Lake is due to one thing: a desire to pass it on. To give today’s kids a similar experience to the one I had every summer growing up. To give them a safe place to come together in community, form life-long friendships, and enjoy the sacred space of God’s Backyard (as we lovingly refer to Silver Lake). Leading this video program is a volunteer position, but I always walk away from our week together feeling like I got more out of the experience than I gave. What a gift it is to spend time with a bunch of high schoolers working on a shared artistic experience like making videos. My hope in the future is renewed.

Thanks for the 2016 memories, Silver Lake! See you next year!