Why I Started Camping

I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the 1970s. It was a time when children were still raised with a measure of self-reliance. I know some people of older generations are laughing at that idea because they grew up far more independently than I ever was. I’m not talking about a Lord of the Flies kind of independence. I’m not even talking about a Walden kind of independence (after all, Thoreau’s mother still did his laundry). I can only compare my upbringing to the culture in which my children are being raised, where, thanks to cell phones, parents can be in constant contact; where it is assumed the children’s lives should be programmed, lest they spend too much time unsupervised; where it is deemed dangerous and unusual to desire to be alone

The important thing is that we felt independent, even though we may not have been truly self-reliant. From first grade to sixth grade I walked to school with my brother Tom or by myself. From fourth grade on I came home a couple of hours before my parents arrived from work. There was a key on a hook underneath our porch stairs. Ideally, I was back in time to catch an episode of Star Blazers and see if the crew of the Naruto could save Mother Earth in just one year.

Both my parents worked. My mother was an accountant in several local manufacturing plants which was normally a nine-to-five kind of job. My father was a biology professor at Kalamazoo College (his work became far more interesting when I learned that he was watching the sex lives of very small wasps). The college was on the trimester system, so periodically he would teach during the summer.

Like most parents, they were looking for things for us to do on summer vacation. We took some family trips to different parts of the country; we would visit my grandparents in Wisconsin; we would take long weekends in Chicago, but there was still a lot of time to kill at home.  After a while, even reruns of Lost in Space or The Monkees couldn’t cut it.  There was nothing left for my brother and me to do but annoy each other, along with the occasional wrestling match, which led to the call to “Separate!” which led to solitary confinement in our rooms which led to more boredom and finding ways to annoy each other from a distance.

So both as a form of child care as well as a means of distraction, we went to camp. First, it was day camp: YMCA Camp A-homa. I was little when I started at A-homa, so my memories are vague. Our parents dropped us off in the morning at the Kalamazoo YMCA. If the weather was bad, we did indoor program activities; craft projects that involved sticks, paint, yarn, and glue that could have been replicated by putting those ingredients in a bag and treating them Shake n’ Bake style. We also performed those second-grade skits that, in the best tradition of American theater, made a lot more sense to the people who wrote them. I remember them as a competition between imaginations, something like, “Let’s pretend I’m Han Solo and your Darth Vader.”

                             “And pretend that I chop your head off.”

                             “And pretend you miss me and I shoot you.”

                             “And pretend I shoot you first.”

                             “And pretend I’m not even on this planet.”

                             “And pretend the Death Star blows up the planet where you are.”

If the weather was good, we went to the woods of the Kleinstuck Preserve behind the Y and played Capture the Flag or dammed the stream that fed the nameless marsh. It was a toned-down version of what Camp Aharah would be in a couple of years but without the separation from home. Mom always picked me up at the end of the day to sleep in my own bed without the annoyances of mosquitos or other children.

Camp A-homa also sticks out as the first place where I was told it was okay to pee outside. I had probably performed this action before out of necessity, but it was a hurried affair with a certain amount of shame attached to it. “You couldn’t hold it long enough to go to a real bathroom, so if you must go...”

When we were in the woods, it was a fair walk back to the bathrooms at the Y, and we were too young to make the walk alone. So when I approached a counselor, he asked me about the nature of my need, that is, number one or number two. It occurs to me that this is just the sort of personal question that we stop asking as we get older unless a doctor asks. In kindergarten, it is perfectly natural to give a report of what you did and how it went, probably because your parents are still proud that you managed to figure out the whole bathroom thing. You are still a genius for recognizing that you have to go and for doing it in the right place. By second grade, the topic becomes inappropriate. By third grade, it’s a conversation stopper, a sign that this is a person you probably don’t want to hang around with much longer. On a side note, as someone in a career that deals with elderly people, there is an age when bathroom functions become an acceptable topic once more.

When I told him it was a number one situation, he told me to go stand behind a tree as if it were no big deal, perhaps even the way it should be done. But this was a new idea, that peeing outdoors might be a legally sanctioned operation. Really? I can just drop my pants and go? It undermined the control skills my parents had taught me as I squirmed and held it to the next rest area on car trips. 

Here we could just go. It was definitely more of a boy thing, which we were too young to understand. We just knew that, among the boys, this activity was something that our parents would not approve of, as though every stream was marking new territory that did not include the rules of home.

It was a glimpse of the freedom that camping life provided. As I made the transition to Camp Aharah and overnight camping, I experienced even greater liberation. Camping was never anarchy, but the rules were looser. We were invited to make decisions for ourselves. If I wanted more food at dinner, I could take it without needing permission. If I wanted to wear over-the-calf tube socks (the ones with the single band of color at the top) with my shorts, it was my choice. If I needed to pee in the woods, I could excuse myself and go. 

We also experienced more of the consequences of those choices. I had some campers who saw a camp session as an opportunity to take a break from personal hygiene for a week. For some, it was the embarrassment they found in being naked in the group shower room. For others, it was a conscious choice to avoid cleanliness and wear the same shirt every day. Most of them quickly discovered that it is no fun being labeled as “The Stinky Kid,” but that was part of the learning curve.

The other great influence on my career in camping programs was the counselors. Anyone who has been to summer camp knows that a good counselor can make or break the experience. I think back to the names of people who dealt with me for a week or two each summer: Piker John, Jim, Hami, Jake, Moose, and Tripper, as well as the supporting cast of staff and counselors most of whom I remember only by nickname. These were people who really seemed to enjoy what they were doing. As kids, we had no idea that most of them were in their late teens or early twenties. We figured that camp counseling was their career, something that they had achieved through hard work and study; that most of them had a goal of staying in camping, going from counselor to assistant director to camp director. It was only as I grew older that I realized that these folks weren’t that much older than me and that camp was a temporary summer job between college years. For most of these counselors, camp work was a final burst of freedom before settling into jobs in the real world.

Perhaps that is why I am writing this now in middle age. I think back to Camp Aharah as a time in my life, perhaps the last time, when I could be responsibly irresponsible.  I was not Carl the student or Carl the pastor or Carl the husband and father. I was Indy; a swamp walker; a navigator; an occasional hero with a Duluth pack and a canoe. I was one of a band of friends and heroes summering on the shores of Lake Pebwama, shepherding our camper minions. The summer camp life was epitomized by a resident of northern Michigan, who, seeing us hiking down a forest road, slowed down, unrolled his window only to say, “You’re having a helluva good time,” and drove away. 

I hope you enjoy these memories and that they stir memories of your own. If you are currently a camp counselor, for God’s sake enjoy it. If you have never been camping, stop reading and go outside. If you are an Aharah alum, either staff or camper, or both, thank you for being part of my memories or being part of what led to them. Remember that time of irresponsible responsibility that was Camp Aharah.