The Power of Camp

by Ariella Rogge on September 14

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It is hard to believe it has been almost a month since we said goodbye to our Big Spring and High Trails Second Session and Sanborn Junior 4th Term campers. With everyone back in school, our thoughts have shifted from mountain climbs to soccer matches, from trotting on horseback to studying for tests, from listening to a breeze flutter aspen leaves from your hammock to focusing in on inspiring teachers who continue to help you wonder, learn and grow.

And, yet, the growth and learning that happens at camp is unique and rare. It is not simply the “doing” of things at camp that make us grow, it is the “being” at camp which continues to inform and inspire us even when we aren’t in Florissant, CO.

Since the end of camp, we have received wonderful, productive, informative and humbling feedback about the 2021 Summer. Some of those quotes can be found in our new “What Parents Say” mailing piece which we share with prospective camp families throughout the year. Other thoughts and insights will be shared with the COEC Board of Trustees during our annual fall board meeting in mid-October. And there are the powerful stories, reflections and thank you’s that are shared by campers (or their parents) and our staff members directly to the Sanborn team.

On our blog you will find two such reflections, one from our Big Spring photographer, Grace Turner, titled, “Closing Campfire Reflections 2021”and another from Ruby Yar, a fifth year camper at High Trails, titled, “Symbolism of Myself”. We appreciated their observations, candor, humor and reflections on the power of the Sanborn Summer experience.

We hope to see your camper at camp for our 2022 Sanborn Summer. It promises to be a transformational and powerful experience for everyone.

Please join us)–we cannot wait to welcome everyone back home again.

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Ariella Rogge
About Ariella Rogge

Ariella started her career at Sanborn when she was twelve. After five years of camper and five years of Sanborn staff experience, she continued her work with kids in the high school classroom. Ariella and her family returned to Sanborn in 2001 to take on the Program Director role which she held til 2012. She and Elizabeth Marable became co-directors of High Trails in 2013 and then Ariella became the High Trails Director in 2020. In the fall of 2022 she became the Director of Sanborn Western Camps, overseeing the director teams of both Big Spring and High Trails. She lists mountain golf, Gymkhana, climbing mountains and making Pad Thai in the backcountry as some of her favorite activities at camp. Ariella received a B.A. in English from Colorado College and is a certified secondary English educator,an ACCT Level 2 Ropes Course Technician, an ARC lifeguard and NREMT and WEMT. She lives in Florissant in the summer and in Green Mountain Falls during the school year so she can stay involved with the busy lives of her husband, Matt, and two teenage sons, Lairden and Karsten.