Lumberjack Takeover

Today I was kidnapped as part of a coup…

I walked up to the Lodge this morning for breakfast on what seemed like it was going to be a normal day, and as I wished everyone my customary “Gooood morning everybody,” things started to get strange. Our head counselor Brad started yelling about how he wasn’t going to take it anymore. I quietly asked him to take his normal place, and he refused, insisting that he do grace and he snatched the microphone from me. We got through breakfast only for something similar to start at announcements.

I was trying to walk everyone through the details of the morning, and Brad starts on a rant in front of everyone how he’s been trying for weeks to get the whole camp to go to the Lumberjack World Championships and I wouldn’t allow it. I politely asked him to stop. He didn’t. I tried to have a separate conversation with him, but he wouldn’t have it. He blows his whistle, and next thing I know there’s a swarm of counselors swarming, and carrying me off bound and gagged! First they threw me in the lake, then lifted me into a fishing boat, and took me away.

I only wish I could have seen the campers’ faces! Brad announced that he was taking over and he was taking the whole camp to the Lumberjack World Championships whether I liked it or not. From what I’ve been told, many of our younger campers didn’t know what to think, especially when the boat came back without me.

Next time they saw me was at the entrance gates this afternoon to the world famous Scheer’s Lumberjack Bowl. Our little town of Hayward plays host every year to the Lumberjack World Championships, and we were lucky enough to be able to all be in attendance for the 62nd annual competition this evening. The boys cheered for ax and sawing events, log rolling, boom running, and speed climbing. We ate dinner, some good Wisconsin fried foods, and came home with some cool souvenirs and autographs. They learned the traditional Lumberjack cheer of Yo-Ho, and the Lumberjack rule that the contestants taking the longest to finish get the loudest applause. They sang songs with the Pinery Boys, a Northwoods Barbershop Quartet singing authentic logging-era music in 4 part harmony. It was a fun day, a special night, and I was glad to hear that some of the boys were even worried about me while I was “gone.”

Today’s Grace:
“You don't know your strength until you unlock your strength in the mind.”
- Jason Wynyward, 10-time All-Around Lumberjack World Champion

Cruiser Day

From singing and cheering to water-balloon archery, slime-making to mini pizzas and walking tacos, the second cruiser day of the session gave campers endless reasons to smile, laugh, and have fun. As part of the Senior Village embarked on their camping trips, the rest of the Seniors and the Juniors got to do their favorite activities as a cabin. After sleeping in and waking up to fresh donuts, cabins got to go climbing, disc-golfing, paddleboarding, and playing tons of fun games. In addition to the weekly cruiser day events of tubing and Musky Fun, today’s special cruiser day activities included water-balloon archery, the Slip N’ Slide, and preparing homemade mini pizzas. For dinner, the cookout was a camp favorite: walking tacos. The campers get to cook taco meat over the fire and build a taco inside a bag of chips. Even though this cruiser day continued the tradition of rain on cruiser day with just a bit of drizzle (although it never rains at North Star), the campers still persevered in paddling canoes to Musky Fun, playing sports with their cabinmates, and building fires from damp wood.

Today was the Intermediate Village cruiser day, and their awesome staff created a super fun new all-day game. The Intermediates could be heard all around camp having tons of fun on American Armed Forces Day for their village cruiser day. The Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Navy, and Space Force faced off in a variety of special activities from softball to team skits, and of course no village cruiser day would be complete without Coop’s Pizza for dinner. All day, cheering, singing, and laughter rang around camp from wherever the Ridge was playing. While the Marine Corps took home the first place trophy, this day will go down in history as a legendary Intermediate Village cruiser day.

We closed off the day with our weekly staff meeting where we reflected on an incredible week and talked about continuing to make camp as safe and fun as possible. Looking ahead, the staff cannot wait for the coming week as some of our special events are set to begin. After diving into the beginning of the session, the campers and staff are continuing to make more and deeper friendships, try new activities and improve at others, and grow socially and emotionally while having tons of fun. Tomorrow begins our next set of activities and a week of surprises…

2nd Session First Week Video Recap

Thanks to our videographer Finlay for a great video recap!

Summer Rain

Tonight at dinner, just as everyone had loaded their plates with chicken, sweet potato wedges and veggies, a quick rain came out of nowhere as we sat at the picnic tables. Nobody flinched. The sun was still mostly shining, and though it never rains at North Star, this was a bit more than a drizzle. And yet the campers and counselors laughed, covered the food, and waited as the 60-second cloud passed overhead. It is hard to imagine a scene like this taking place anywhere else. Smiling, laughing with friends, and enjoying a summer rain was just a great reminder of some of the simple pleasures of childhood at camp.

After dinner we had our regular Sunday evening programming of Unorganized Free and Cabin Campfires. Unorganized Free is another opportunity to capture that camp magic with some unstructured free play. And Cabin Campfires are an opportunity for each group to set aside some time to process their experiences and their growth, while setting goals and making plans for the week ahead. To read more about our Sunday programming, please check out this earlier edition of The Siren.

Last night at camp was our first Green-White Series of Second Session. Campers are placed on Green-White teams during their first summer and those teams remain for the remainder of their North Star careers. Green-White is a fun way to organize many of events in an ongoing competition throughout the summer, which includes the Green-White Marathon, games of All-Camp Capture the Flag, the Camper-Counselor Hunt, the Dodgeball Extravaganza and many more great activities will be a part of our ongoing Green-White competition through the summer. Green-White at North Star is an outstanding lens into our philosophy on competition at camp, which emphasizes the importance of being kind even while playing hard. We remind the boys that they are playing with their friends - that they are their friends before the game, during the game, and everyone should behave in such a way that they continue to be friends after the game. Our boys are all too familiar with the “haha, we won, you stink” dialogue that often echoes during school recess or local sports leagues, and we don’t want our campers to have to sleep in cabins where that is the pervasive language. So we ask that the boys try their best and support each other regardless of the outcome in order to create an environment where everyone can enjoy playing.

Today’s Grace:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
- Albert Einstein

Gratitude Build Resilience

It never ceases to amaze me how long the line is at the keylog ceremony. The keylog ceremony happens each week at our Friday Night Service. This week’s theme was “Being Yourself,” and featured music by Cat Stevens, Jim Croce and Taylor Swift. Oli Katz gave a great sermonette about his own journey with music, his discomfort playing in front of others, and the self-confidence that has come from pursuing his passion. And when it was time for the keylog ceremony, even though it was the first of the session, nearly every camper and staff elected to stand up in front of the whole camp to throw a stick into the fire to express their gratitude. The speeches come in all shapes and sizes as campers thank their cabinmates, counselors, parents, siblings, and all sorts of people for being good friends, good listeners, or just having done something nice for them. I think the sheer quantity of participants speaks volumes about how comfortable our campers feel with the North Star community.

And gratitude builds resilience. By taking time to acknowledge the good things in life, we are training our brains to see the positive. Then, when things are hard, we have already created the pathways to acknowledge the good in our lives. (If you’re looking for a great read while the kids are away, check out Dr. Deborah Gilboa’s new book From Stressed to Resilient. She worked with our staff last year and it has some great tips and exercises in the book). We are so lucky to be able to share in this practice each Friday Night while enjoying the beautiful sunset of the Council Ring.

Today was the third and final day of the first set of projects. Tomorrow the boys will switch to three different instructional activities that they had signed up for on the first night. We also had our first Green-White event of 2nd session, with an afternoon game of North Star Ball - a variation of Capture the Flag where instead of one flag per side, you have to get several balls to your team’s side to win a round. The teams worked hard on their strategies and it paid off with a very fun game!

Today’s Grace:
"Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Sermonette on Community

Earlier this week, I alluded to Cole Hanover's sermonette from last Friday Night about community, and I wanted to share it here in written form:

Community is the reason I come back to camp each year. Before camp, I wasn’t looking for a community; I would get upset whenever I was assigned to a group project, and I thought it was cool to be an “outsider.” In every community, certain traits are rewarded. I've seen some centered around wealth, some centered around athleticism. But at Noth Star, we see things a liiiitle differently. Here at North Star, we reward growth of character. Here’s a story about a time I learned what it meant to be a member of a community that rewards character:

In the depths of a dumpster somewhere in the Chicago area lies a terribly tattered, gruesomely grimy, 30-something-year-old pair of hiking shoes. Unlike the mundane objects in their surroundings, these busted boots carry a story, one that has both figuratively and literally dragged me through the muddy process of manhood. Allow me to elaborate.

In my first year at camp, in J-2, I had a blast. I had my best friend from home, Ben Rothschild, and met awesome new guys like Ethan Doane, Elliot Bramson, and Jack Ringold. But no cabin is perfect. Ben and I argued over the smallest things, Ringold was occasionally violent, Elliot had a competitive side, Ethan had a temper tantrum when I stole his magic trick book, and I was far too often naked in front of my cabinmates (they weren’t happy about it). The next year, for reasons unbeknownst to me, Ben and I were switched out of that cabin and put in J-6, while the rest of them were in J-5. I still liked my cabinmates though, so I was still happy. But for the next few years, I didn’t realize my cabinmates and counselors might not have enjoyed my presence as much as I thought, especially when I would sit out of activities, refuse to do cabin work, or deliver a snarky comment to my peers. Looking back, especially for my first few years, I was sometimes rude, whiny, disobedient, unengaged, and a smart-alack. Even though “sometimes” is not much, it is still vastly more than I prefer. Eventually, I became aware of this fact, but at first, I had a clouded perception of my own behavior. That’s the biggest thing I learned at camp. Character is not how you’re perceived, but how you act when nobody’s looking. Around the time I came to this conclusion, a few weeks before my 6th year, I made a resolution to not make too big of a fuss.

I had just finished middle school, and life was good. I’d also just about finished packing myself for the first time, which is a lot less fun than it may seem. So you can imagine that once I thought I’d checked off all items on the list, I was fairly relieved. But all that relief was drained out of me when my mom told me we forgot hiking boots. While she offered to buy a new pair, my super-genius father rushed up to his closet and unknowingly brought downstairs the demonic moccasins that would plague my next few weeks. In a rush to go to bed, I hastily tried them on, concluded that they fit, and thought nothing of it, drifting back to inaction.

On the first day of camp at the flag pole, I heard the names of all my usual cabinmates, but to my surprise, didn’t hear mine. Miraculously, Ben, myself, and Austin Flamm were all switched into S-2, back with Ethan, Elliot, and Ringold, the guys who I never stopped seeing as the kids they were 5 years earlier. I held into this warped reputation of them, taking no regard for how they had grown. I distinctly remember pulling aside Austin and Ben, saying, “guys, this will be a difficult cabin to be a part of, so we just have to stick together and defend each other against these guys.” I played into the trap so many people fall into every day, I let my cabinmates' insignificant mistakes define my perception of their character. This mistake is how communities fall apart.

On the second day of camp, right after we unpacked, we embarked on our five-day hiking trip, a longer and more demanding trip than I’d ever taken before. I knew I’d be fine though because I’d have my new hiking shoes. As I said, I’d been notorious for being an annoyance on these trips, but I was determined to stick to my “no fuss” resolution, especially because I wanted to impress my new cabin. I am proud to say that on the first day, we exceeded all expectations, and plowed through the five miles. In fact, I stayed in the front of our single-file line the whole time, setting the pace for my peers, and exceeding my comfort zone speed. While it was quite a challenge, I knew I was doing the right thing, and not falling behind. The sights were beautiful, and I considered it a good day, even though a park ranger kicked us out of our camping area, and we were forced to eat a dinner of cold carrots and onions. The theme of ups and downs was definitely a constant during this trip.

Along came day two. We were required to trek twice the length of the first day, so I had my doubts, but I started off strong in the front. About midway through the day, I got tired, and I ended up in the middle of the pack. Eventually, it felt like I was stepping on flimsy rubber with each step, and that’s when I saw that part of the soles of my shoes had began to peel off. What a funny occurrence, thought everybody. After the whole group paused for a few minutes, the shoes were good as new, fixed up with medical tape from the first aid kit. However, as the next few days went by, the shoes would begin to lose all reliability. They would burst at random, emitting the popping and squeaking noises of a malfunctioning machine, and every time, the whole group needed to stop so they could be taped up. They would gain additional thick layers of mud each day, making it even more difficult for the tape to stick. At one point, we found duct tape, but that worked even worse. We tried to wash the mud off in a river, but that just made the shoes grimier. As this process continued, I gradually worked my way further and further towards the back until the group stopped waiting for me, and it was just the trip leader and me, walking alone, both frustratingly dreading the next tape breach.

By the end of the fourth day, the only thing holding my shoes together at all was tape and prayers. My predicament was only worsened by my sensitive feet, the reason I normally have special supports in my shoes. Without this support, my immense pain spiked. This endless cycle climaxed on the fifth day when we were drenched in rain and my shoes completely gave way, resulting in me having to wear tripper Syd’s extra pair, which were five sizes too big. To make matters worse, one of the counselors decided it would be best if we arrived at the landing as a group, and put me back at the front of the line, making me set the pace for a few miles, resulting in some groaning and frustration from my cabinmates, but nowhere near as much as I was used to on previous trips. They weren’t upset because I wasn’t doing my fair share of work, but because I was struggling, and because of their empathy, they felt my struggle with me. Empathy is the currency of a community.

I was dumbfounded. Being put with these guys after so many years wasn’t a curse; it was a blessing because now I had a new chance to change their perception of my character. If my cabinmates could be so open-minded, forgiving, and flexible, why couldn’t I?

My counselor was named G and was from the UK, so obviously he was wise, or at least sounded so. He was the only counselor who led me on both my Porkies and the Superior Hiking Trail, and he seemed pleasantly surprised the whole way through. Occasionally, in between painful silences in the back, we would have fun little conversations, almost letting our problems slip away. At the end of the trip, I asked him why he was so happy. He responded, “I’m happy because you are. While suffering throughout this entire trip, you haven’t complained once, even though you had every right to do so, which is the exact opposite of last year. It’s been an honor to have witnessed your growth of character.”

Once I was struck by this sincere comment, I drowned in a sea of emotions: surprise, appreciation, skepticism, pride, and confusion. I had been meaning to grow as a person for a while, but I never expected it to happen without me even noticing. I may not have addressed it at the time, but during those five days of pain, I learned willpower. Willpower is the foundation community is built on.

When every crutch I was leaning on was snatched from under me, I truly had zero excuses not to put my best foot forward and power through the situation. And when I had to do it, why make a fuss about it? Why not embrace the obstacles? It was at that point I realized that I was going to keep the scrappy shoes in the cabin for the rest of the summer as a reminder that once I lost my soles, ironically once my foundation crumbles, that’s when I could actually build myself up, that’s when I could shift my perspective and will myself to a place where I’m actually proud of my character without having to worry about my reputation. And I can’t stress enough just how proud I am to be in a community that lets each other make mistakes, that builds each other up instead of bringing each other down, and that emphasizes growth of character above all else.

Thank you Cole for sharing your story!

It was a beautiful day at camp, with our 2nd day of activities off and running. Our evening finished with an Open Mic night that featured musical talent, circus skills and plenty of humor, while we simultaneously had some great games running on the fields.

Today's Grace:
"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge."
- Plato

A Typical Day

Today was the first typical day of second session, where the boys get to choose much of their schedule for themselves. On a normal day, we have five periods between breakfast and dinner. The first three periods are our instructional periods, which the boys sign up for on a weekly basis. They choose six electives for the week and take each of them for three consecutive days, for one hour and fifteen minutes each day.

The fifth period most days is our Organized Free period, which is an opportunity for the boys to choose an activity that they want to do just for that day. They can also use that time to rest, read, shower, or just hang with friends. The 4th period is the one period that the boys don’t have individual choice, as that typically rotates between Challenge Games, Village Activities, and Green-White competitions. This all puts together a schedule for each child that has a great deal of structure, but also a great deal of choice within that structure.

The idea here is that every boy can explore his own interests. Different kids will gravitate towards different activities, with a wide array of activities providing myriad opportunities for our boys to find success. And the hope is that this will also give the boys the freedom to have their favorite activities evolve through the years as they evolve as people. By summer’s end, you’ll hear stories of so many activities that your son has tried throughout the course of the summer, with each providing a chance to learn a new skill and a chance to learn more about themselves.

Tonight’s evening program was Karaoke Night, where our staff introduced themselves by singing and performing. While a subset of the group demonstrated some real musical talent, the majority of the staff showed off that they bring energy that makes each day at camp fun and makes us all smile.

Our first trips of the summer leave tomorrow, with S-1 and S-5 headed out on their respective adventures!

Today’s Grace:
“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members..”
- Coretta Scott King