I was driving halfway across the state in the snow one Saturday morning this spring to judge at an Odyssey of the Mind competition. I hadn't even found out about the competition until that Tuesday when someone asked if I wanted to help out. The fact that I didn't have to think for more than 10 seconds before volunteering must mean something. Odyssey of the Mind contributed so much to the development of my essential personality that I feel the need to return some of what it gave to me. If this means that I need to give up a Saturday of my life on 4 days notice, so be it. I'm sure people gave up their Saturdays for me when I was 12 years old.
I wonder if at some point I am done "giving back" to these organizations. This spring I donated enough time (and milage) to Odyssey of the Mind (and its relative, Destination ImagiNation) to fulfill what I felt was my obligation to the program. Oddly enough, I competed on teams for 3 years, and have volunteered my services at competitions for 4 years. I'm not sure if the equation works out, but finally I feel "evened out."
Taken together (though I pretty much never think of them as a set except in this specific case), Hidden Valley Camp and Odyssey of the Mind have had a larger impact on the development of my essential personality than anything else I can think of. Because they came to mean so much to me, they are things that I want to share with children now, whether by encouraging my sister's friends to go to Hidden Valley, or by watching kids I don't know compete in Odyssey of the Mind. I hope that these children will gain the same benefits as I did, even if they won't realize it for many years. At the time I was going to camp and producing little plays that no one understood, I had no idea where I would be in the year 2000. I did not realize at the time that teamwork and performance under pressure and the ability to function with very little sleep would come in handy in the future. I never thought the friends I would make at age 10 or 14 would still be people I keep in contact with now that we are "adults." I learned early how to adapt to new situations and deal with obstacles of all kinds, and how to look at problems as opportunities for creative problem solving.
Just recently, I have been trying to I schedule my PhD qualifying exam around a camp reunion. This shows me in a tangible way just how important camp must have been to my life, if I'm willing to risk ridicule and difficulty to drive to Equinunk "one last time". I prioritize these things more highly than is probably socially acceptable, but I have decided that doesn't matter, because they really are that important to me. I say I am a wimp about life's great adventures, but I moved 1200 miles from home by myself for reasons that are unclear to me or anyone else. I may choose to ask men with trucks to help me move, but I know I could do that by myself. As a child I was surrounded by strong independent women, and when I grow up I want to be like them. Perhaps I am already a strong independent woman. Every now and again something happens that makes me believe that is true.
I was a camp counselor for 6 years, 5 of them at HVC. (It seems like those numbers should be higher, because every summer lasted a hundred years.) That doesn't count the year we were CITs, then second-class staff. I remember being 10 years old and finding out that people got paid to be camp counselors. How great would it be not only to go to camp for free, but to get paid to go to camp?! Somehow the "camp stress" has all faded from memory (and it hasn't been that long since my summer-from-hell as CIT director) and all I remember is how great it was to be paid to go to camp! I wake up some summer mornings in the half-dark and wish I could run down the hill and watch the sun rise while swimming laps in the lake. Of course our lake was cold, but I find that I most love to swim in cool lakes, because that's just the way it's supposed to be.
I worked at Hidden Valley for a while. I think I stopped working there when I felt I had given back all the camp had given to me, or at least all that I could possibly manage to return. I watched the Brownies grow up, and I watched little kids become High Adventurers and CITs. One day I realized that even the Cadettes had been born after I started coming to camp. That last year, my sister came to camp. For some reason, that was the last step. I could leave camp, knowing that my little sister would grow up there in the same way I did, hoping that it would shape her personality, and that some day this would make her feel the need to give back to HVC all it had given to her.
Last summer I visited camp. When I left I cried the whole way down the dirt road into Equinunk. I feared that I would never be able to visit camp again. (Strangely, I did not at any point fear that I would slide into the brook, even though it was dark and my vision was obscured. I have driven that road many times.) How much worse will leaving be this September, when I know I will never be able to visit camp again? How much harder will it be to say goodbye, and to get in the car and drive away. I'm not very good at closure.
I worked at Camp Amahami near Binghamton in 1997. I was pretty sure that would be my last camp summer for a while (I will never declare any year my last summer at camp until I am dead), and for a number of reasons it was time to try a new camp. I didn't think I could go "cold turkey" from Hidden Valley straight into the real world. (As it was the first summer I spent living and working in buildings was pretty rough. I didn't visit camp at all that summer, largely because I feared I would not be able to leave!) The summer of 1996 had been quite good, and I wanted to leave Hidden Valley on a high note. (That same reason had almost kept me in Ithaca for the summer of 1996, since 1995 had been so glorious. But 1996 was the year I "gave" my camp to my sister and Micki's CITs.) Another reason I went to Amahami was that they offered me the job of CIT director, which is a challenge I had always wanted. It gave me a chance to pass on in a concrete and formal manner the things that I had learned to some young women on the verge of being camp counselors themselves. I'm not sure what I think of my decision to switch camps. I learned some things I never would have if I had stayed at HVC, and I avoided having my last HVC summer tainted by the behind-the-scenes madness of that summer of 1997. I felt like I completed the giving of HVC to my sister, by moving to another camp by choice rather than necessity, and leaving her at home at HVC. I went there alone as a Brownie, and she needed to do that too.
I questioned my decision a lot that summer, especially when I got a phone call the night before both camps opened, and Micki told me HVC would not in fact open the next day if they didn't get some staff in a hurry. It was very hard for me not to get in my car and drive 2 hours south... I learned that summer that Hidden Valley could survive without me. I always knew it could, but now I have proof. Today I do not regret the summer I worked at a "new" camp. It prepared me for moving to a new university, at once so similar and so different from the one from which I came.
Now I come back to the beginning. My essential personality has been shaped by these things that were important to me as a child. Every day I use skills that I learned long ago. Once in a while, I consider where I learned how to open a can with a Swiss Army knife, or why I don't care that my boots are dirty, or how to fix pretty much anything with duct tape. I am violently opposed to the use of umbrellas when a waterproof coat will do just fine. I am not afraid to walk alone in the dark, or kill a bug with bare feet (though gypsy moth caterpillars will always creep me out). I keep my windows open much more than most people. I can catch and kill a flying mosquito.
More importantly, I know that few obstacles are insurmountable. I realize that working with (or at least tolerating) other people is more productive than demanding my own way. I do not always settle for the most obvious (but not necessarily most effective) solution. I am capable of doing things for myself, and not afraid to say that.
I wonder how I would be a different person if I hadn't been given the opportunities for growth that I was. I'm glad I grew up the way I did, and I want others to be able to learn the same things by doing them. Most of all, I want my sister to be able to do whatever she wants to, and to grow into a strong independent woman. I hope the chances are not taken away from her.
I finally learned
that there is in me
an invincible summer"
Albert Camus
21 May 2000