Weekly Update: July 7, 2024

As we sat at Vespers tonight, High Trails looking out over the valley below A-Bluff and Big Spring taking in an astounding sunset from the top of Little Blue, both directors talked about Opening Day. It was either four weeks or almost two weeks ago, and in those incredibly full days, an amazing transformation has happened: your camper has grown.

For some of these kids, it is actually literal…there are some Big Spring boys who are ABSOLUTELY taller than they were a month ago. But for most everyone, this growth isn’t anything you can see and it may not be anything they can articulate. But they will take it with them.

We think about the campers who struggled with homesickness the first few days of camp; the campers who worried about their ability to climb a mountain, ride a horse, make a friend, eat new foods, or sleep in a tent. These are the same campers who have stood on top of multiple mountains, who went on a four day horse pack trip, who performed in the talent show in front of the whole camp, who offered to help cook the pita pizzas on the overnight and who decided to be brave and not even sleep IN the tent and joined their friends in a cool, twilight field, snuggling down in their sleeping bags and trying hard to stay awake to see the next shooting star.

Those are moments of awe, wonder, courage, community, kindness, self-efficacy and adventure. Those are the moments of camp.

This last week, all of the month-long Big Spring campers went out on their final, culminating Long Trips. From a Knight-themed 3 day horse trip to a new Hope Pass 5 day backpacking and mountain climbing epic, the Big Spring campers and staff experienced exceptional success and (mostly) fantastic weather while they built community, confidence and competence in the outdoors. They also came back very excited, dirty and triumphant–the non-stop stories and continued engagement with the staff spoke volumes to the fun, adventure and positive, male-centered community that is built on these longer trips.

At High Trails, campers used this final week to maximize their experience: with friends in the cabin and on Cabinside All Days, on horses on the trail and in Gymkhana, helping teach on the Ropes Course, creating a memorable (and beautiful) Under the Sea JC Dinner experience, and on mountains like La Plata and Pikes Peak. The Junior Counselors (JCs) led an on-point Vespers tonight, with quotes that captured the power of friendship, time together and lives well-spent and well-lived. “It’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years” (credited to Abe Lincoln tonight…true provenance not fully established) was a favorite of ours.

The Sanborn Junior campers had a jam-packed week with horseback, artsy, Tipi Camp and other unique overnight trips and days at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, the South Platte river–including a 4th of July trip for High Trails campers where they included all of the children in families nearby in their spa-day fun; and special events at the all-camp Gymkhana Horseback Rider Showcase.

A highlight of the entire week for everyone was the Red, White & Blue themed dance followed by the slideshow and a camp (and Colorado) appropriate fireworks show (not too long, not too big). When campers saw themselves in the slideshow doing things they couldn’t have imagined doing in May, their cheers rang out far louder than the cheers for the pyrotechnics (but that was pretty darn fun, too!).

And, just like that, it is almost over.

Tomorrow we will pack, clean, sing, deliver lost and found, laugh, eat, cry, hug, find more lost and found, laugh more, sing more, have campfires, discover more lost and found, hug more and appreciate everyone and all of it (even the missing socks). Airplane letters will be written, handshakes will be made and memorized, hats will be reunited with their owners (and left again at Closing Campfire), and karaoke will be sung all night long in the Big Spring lodge. It is magical and ephemeral.

But they will take it with them.

We hope they will feel it when they are nervous about trying something new–but they do it anyway. We hope they will use it when they see someone who is being excluded–and they include them. We hope they will use it when a problem arises–and they seek a solution and work through it instead of giving up. We hope they will use it when their friends are deep in their phones–and they look around and say, “Wow, look at that sunset.”

Thank you for sharing your camper with us this summer. Our lives have been enriched because of them. Here at camp, it is never a“goodbye”–it’s “see you soon.” Or, better yet, a resounding “see you next summer!”

Sincerely, Ariella, Krista & Oliver Directors, Sanborn Western Camps