Junior Village Cruiser Day

Check out this great footage from our Junior Village Cruiser Day!

Junior Village Cruiser Day

The Week In Review

It has been a fun-filled week at camp and tonight we're going to catch you up on some of the most recent events:

On Monday, we had our first full rainy day in three years. The rain might have kept us inside, but we didn't skip a beat. We had a rousing game of all camp bingo, one of the campers favorites. The energy of the staff and campers made it a great day. Since then, though we have had just perfect weather!

Tuesday was our second Cruiser Day. Cruiser Days are some of my favorites days at camp. In many ways, it is like our weekend at North Star. Cruiser Day is a cabin day, which typically falls each Tuesday at camp. It is a break from our normal routine where each cabin plans a full day of games and activities that they will do together. Each Cruiser Day starts with breakfast in bed. We follow that up by changing our sheets and sending out our laundry, and a community pickup, where each cabin takes responsibility for cleaning an area of camp.

From there it is up to each cabin what they will do that day. Some Cruiser Day favorites include tubing, visiting one of the resorts across the lake, scavenger hunts, slip and slides and more. Kim McCormack works hard to make sure each Cruiser Day is filled with special events for the campers. This week she set up a scavenger hunts, cookie baking, and a slip and slide.

The slip and slide is one of the seminal moments of the summer for me. It is living proof of how the energy of our staff fuels our summer. With two sheets of plastic, some shampoo and a hose, our staff can create one wild and crazy day of slipping and sliding.

Each village also has a village cruiser day. The first week was the Junior Village Cruiser Day and our youngest guys spent the day at the water park, mini-golfing, after having their own Hunger Games themed activity at camp. This week our Senior Village campers headed to Wild Mountain water park and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Each Cruiser Day, every cabin cooks out their dinner over a fire. For the first cookout we made Tinfoil Surprise, a camp favorite. It's a combination of ground beef, potatoes, carrots, onions and topped with cheese. You wrap it up in Tin Foil, and the outcome is the delicious surprise! Then we finished with my personal favorite dessert, banana boats. This week was hot dogs, and there is nothing as classic as roasting a hot dog over the fire. Dessert was the traditional yet scrumptious S'mores.

The best part of Cruiser Day is getting to see the relationships that have formed within the cabins. These groups really do become close because of the efforts of our staff. Each cabin has their own unique identity and the friendships born out of them are the glue that makes our community such a strong one.

Now we are in the buildup to United Nations Day this Sunday. It is a tradition since camps very first summer, where the whole camp is divided into four nations. This year's teams are Ireland, Spain, South Africa and Morocco. Tonight's Friday Night Service was about the importance of being a Global Citizen. We heard from our international staff members about their home countries, and we read, spoke and sang about the importance of embracing the differences between people from all over the world. We are lucky have campers and staff from over a dozen countries here this summer, and we are working to ensure that everyone leaves having learned from camp the importance of being a global citizen.

A Very Happy 4th of July!

Breakfast on the 4th of July is one of my favorite times during the summer. The enthusiasm is off the charts. Songs like Born in the USA, Party in the USA, Proud to be an American, and the Star Spangled Banner echoed loudly through the Lodge this morning. Then we read the Declaration of Independence as our morning grace before enjoying the waffles that the kitchen staff brings out with sparklers. There is a tremendous amount of anticipation for the day ahead, with a ton of excitement for the morning's Green-White Marathon and the evening picnic with Birch Trail (more below).

I love that breakfast though because it's an opportunity to recognize the ideals on which our country was founded and to acknowledge how we can live up to those ideals at camp each day. Our Friday Night Service this week was on the topic of character. We talked about being yourself and standing up for what you believe in. We had a great sermonette and stories about why these actions are so important, and we had a great keylog ceremony where so many of the boys talked about camp being a place where they really could be themselves.

And when you put last night and today together, it gave us a great opportunity to talk about what is maybe the simplest value that we are continually working to teach at North Star - To do the right thing for the right reasons.


For a little more detail on the day's events:
The morning was our Green-White Marathon. This is a relay race that includes nearly every event in camp. It starts with a running race and includes fun-bugging, swimming, canoeing, climbing, archery, riflery, biking, skipping, tent building, tennis volleying, bed making, basketball shooting, bucket filling, singing, and more, before leading to Boil Water Boil. In this final event, the whole camp gathers around as the two teams compete to build a fire that can boil a tin can full of water over the top first. It was a very close race with the Green team squeezing out Boil Water Boil to take the lead and win the Marathon.

After lunch, we gave the boys some time to pretty themselves up for our Fourth of July picnic with camp Birch Trail. The girls arrived and much to their surprise we had turned our social into the "wedding" of our counselor Keith and his fiancé who is on staff there. There was a ceremony followed by speeches and a wedding dance, with dinner and many other fun activities sprinkled throughout the night.

Reflecting on the Canadian

We talk quite a bit about the Canadian as a hallmark moment in a NSC camper's career. Talk to NSC alumni who took the Quetico trip and they will tell you about the impact that the trip had on them. Years later, we see many of our former campers writing their college essays on the Canadian and the profound impact that it had on them. 

In my years at North Star, I have been fortunate enough to go on five Canadians, once as a camper many moons ago and four additional times as a staff member. It is not an overstatement when I say that those Canadian trips rank amongst the highlights of my camp experiences. As a camper, the Canadian pushed me in ways that I did not realize was possible. To a 15-year old from Deerfield, IL, the trip posed physical and mental challenges that were never on my radar. It also brought me together with a group of four cabin mates and two counselors (yes, we had seven on our Quetico trip) and really helped me understand the true meaning of teamwork and friendship. Over 20 years later I can still remember late nights in the tent, talking about nothing important as we shared in this common experience. I still have a copy of my cabin Canadian journal as well as a framed poster of myself and Micah Rosenbloom paddling on Cirrus Lake with the sun setting behind us.

It was 12 years between Quetico trips for me, but being able to be a counselor on the trip helped me really understand the impact of the trip. As a camper, your blinders are on and you see the tasks at hand, not the bigger picture. The counselor/trip leader perspective allowed me to take a step back and see the growth that each kid was experiencing on the trip. The Canadian isn't easy and each person hits their wall. It is in those moments, when fellow cabinmates are their to pick each other up and be a support that the true lifting happens. Each camper can carry a canoe or a pack (whether they realize it or not), but the real work is in lifting up your cabinmates when the wind isn't at their back. 

I wanted to share a picture that I took on the Canadian in 2004.

This campsite is on Russell Lake at the base of Chatterton Falls (for those who have been on the Canadian, this is the same lake with the infamous billygoat portage). Adjacent to the campsite was a massive rock outcrop overlooking the lake below. During our time at the campsite on Russell Lake we spent quite a bit of time as a group on this rock. We watched the sunset, played cards and just hung out. I look at this picture as the essence of the Canadian. At the end of a long day before another long day ahead there is time for reflection and fellowship. There are no distractions, just a group of guys hanging out, literally in the middle of nowhere. In a world seemingly overloaded with cellphones and video screens, there are still placed that we can go and experiences that our campers can have that brings them back to what is truly important. 

As the Pine Manor campers go to bed tonight, the last night of their trip, they are undoubtedly filled with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I vividly remember the last night of each Canadian that I took, sitting around the campfire, passing out all the excess food (lots of cookies), and relishing the sense of euphoria and accomplishment. Even though there may be a few more miles to paddle and one or two final portages, with the end in sight, that last day was a true victory lap. Seeing each group come back always brings back Canadian memories for myself and the other NSC staff who went to Canada themselves. For our Canadian alums, tomorrow another 24 campers will follow in your footsteps as they return from Atikokan to NSC. 

Friday Night Service Time Lapse

Courtesy of Max Pastan

Go Outside and Play!

This Sunday night we did something different. I have been learning a great deal about the importance of free play in the development of children and the tremendous decline in opportunities for our boys to experience self-directed, free play (see here, here or here). With that in mind, for the first time we had an Unorganized Free Period. The prompt was simple: Go Outside and Play.
The boys looked shocked. This is not something kids are used to hearing these days. In a world where their schedules are getting tighter and the stress levels are getting higher, this child-directed free play was an exciting, out of the box experience. There were two rules - 1) Everybody had to be outside, and 2) The counselors are to supervise for safety, not to play or organize.
The result was fantastic. We had everything from pickup games of basketball, tennis and floor hockey, to improv games, gaga, and medieval imagination games. Some boys were fishing off the dock and catching frogs, while others were playing gaga and newcombe. Campers of all ages were taking the lead and organizing activities. And the kids loved it.

The second part of our evening were Cabin Campfires. For 70 years, North Star has played a valuable role in the development of its campers. Our campers learn about themselves, become more comfortable in their own skin, discover meaningful relationships, along with countless other life lessons. One thing I recently realized is that most of our campers don't realize this until years later. So one of my goals for this summer was to help our boys better process their experience as it happens.
Much like our opening night candlelight ceremonies, these "cabin meetings" are an opportunity for open, honest communication and sharing. So every cabin took to their campsite, built a campfire, and began this fireside chat. The format was as follows:

1) Accomplishments - everyone should take a moment to recognize the things they have accomplished in this past week.
2) Compliments - a chance for cabinmates to praise the positive things they have seen in each other.
3) Personal Growth - a time for each person to consider a way in which they have grown or a lesson that they have learned in the past week
4) Discussion - an opportunity for the group to discuss issues, problems or challenges and work together to find solutions.
5) Reflection - a few dedicated minutes of time to ones self to think about how to better friend, cabinmate and camper in the coming week.
6) Goal Setting - to conclude with a tangible plan for the week ahead with both individual and group goals.
7) S'mores - how else could you end a campfire?

With both the Unorganized Free and the Cabin Campfires, we were upfront with the boys about why were doing what we were doing. Not only did they understand it, they appreciated it. We heard from many of our campers how nice it was to be able to have time like this, where they could just be kids in the woods. They felt empowered by the opportunity to set their own agenda, to be responsible for both their own fun and their own learning.
Going forward, this is going to be our Sunday night routine. We'll continue to adjust and adapt as we learn more, but it was immediately clear how valuable this was to our boys.

The Friendship Fire

Tonight was our first Friday night of the summer, which marks our first Friday Night Service. Every Friday the whole camp gathers at the Council Ring (see below) for a values based campfire program. For 71 years at North Star, the first one has been the Friendship Fire.

When Lou and Renee Rosenblum founded North Star in 1945, they not only wanted to start a camp but also to create a place where boys could develop meaningful relationships with their fellow campers and counselors. In addition to sharing the history of North Star, we talk about how to treat one another at camp and how it is different from the rest of the world.
Part of the Friendship Fire is appreciating the diversity of our camp community. A representative from each city goes up and throws in a “keylog” to represent the bond of friendship between their city and North Star. Before all is said and done, there are over 100 cities represented by our campers and staff, and it is very neat to hear them all spoken.
In addition to the keylogs, we had some stories, songs and readings. Sam Bricker gave a great sermonette about the significance of the North Star family in his own life. Mike Storms played "Let the Rest of the World Go By," which was a favorite of Lou and Renee. There were more readings, stories and songs that made for a beautiful evening.
But the real beauty will be in the friendships that continue to develop over the rest of the 2015 summer.