To Camp or Not To Camp, That is the Question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or go to camp overnight, perchance, and by saying you enjoy it, please your parents.
This is the time of year when many families — instead of thinking about Shakespeare — start thinking about what they might be doing later on when the weather is hot, and whether or not they might have a summer vacation somewhere other than West Windsor or Plainsboro. Besides a vacation, there is also the possibility that the children might be sent to summer camp. They might even want to go.
As we have seen recently in this paper, there is a very large variety of summer activities available to families in the WW-P area. Included are camps of every description, nearly 200 in all within reach of here. There are arts camps (47), day camps (65), residential camps (12), sports camps (42), and academic camps (24).
If you can’t find a camp with a program that might interest you, you are indeed hard to please. Of course, you might also prefer to stay at home inside with the air conditioning going full blast and the TV tuned to the Mets game. (Yes, it’s OK to be a Yankees or a Phillies fan, too. But not the Kansas City Royals.)
But just thinking about what kind of camp to attend is a challenge. Unless you have a special reason to go to one type of camp instead of all the rest, how do you decide? And is it the child who attends or the parents who make the decision? There are so many factors in the decision. Cost, convenience, time to get there, how far away it is, are your friends going there, do you need special equipment, do you stay overnight, does the place have a good reputation? These are just some of the questions that might be asked.
Naturally, just thinking about summer camps reminds me of my own experiences on that subject. As a kid in Brooklyn, I was fortunate to have a summer routine that involved going away for at least part of the summer, mainly to the Jersey shore at Bay Head. My parents and I stayed at a hotel while my older siblings made other plans on their own. But when I began to show a bit of boredom with that routine, my parents got the message and, at the age of 11, I was sent to camp for the entire months of July and August.
The camp was on Lake Cayuga in the “Finger Lakes” region of New York state. It was called Camp Sheldrake, and was about 20 miles north of Ithaca, the location of Cornell University. The nearest villages were Sheldrake and Ovid. Overnight accommodations were in rooms with beds in a building that looked like a “rooming house.” But you did have to make your own bed, and the camp supplied the sheets and blankets.
I really enjoyed my summer there, partly because several of the counselors were teachers at the school I then attended in Brooklyn, Adelphi Academy. Two of the counselors were the shop teacher and a gym teacher, who were both very well liked by the kids, who included both boys and girls — mostly boys. There was a full program of activities, including sports, nature study, camping out, rowboating, canoeing, archery, you name it.
I took my first formal swimming lessons there, learned about collecting fossils, and went barefoot for nearly the whole summer. That really toughens your feet — and also teaches you how to avoid sharp objects when you’re walking around, especially when there were so many sharp rocks. Geologically, the Finger Lakes area is full of “sedimentary” rock formations, which contain fossilized worms, mollusks, and similar prehistoric creatures. Everyone had a good collection of these by the end of the summer. I still have a worm fossil I keep near the fireplace.
The highlight of the summer at Camp Sheldrake was the kayak project. About 10 of the boys decided to follow the shop teacher’s suggestion and make their own kayaks. They were made of an interesting assortment of materials, including wooden plaster lath strips and barrel staves, and were covered with unbleached muslin fabric. In many ways they were of construction similar to airplanes. As it was with airplanes, the fabric was coated with dope to make it waterproof. The paddles were made of broom handles and barrel staves.
After the kayaks were completed we all paddled them across Lake Cayuga and back, about four miles. Two counselors were always nearby in a sailboat. It was a tough workout, but very rewarding.
Another highlight of the summer at Camp Sheldrake was our visit to the Cornell University collection of lepidoptera, that is butterflies. It was amazing to see. One of the professors there told us all about the butterflies and moths in their world-famous collection. For 11-year-olds, it was an amazing experience. They showed us how to mount the specimens, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who tried it out when he got home.
Early the following year it was time for me to join the Boy Scouts. In those days you had to be 12 years old before you “graduated” from being a Cub Scout, and I couldn’t wait. Both my older brothers had been active Boy Scouts and I was anxious to put on the uniform. The only problem was that the local troop (# 77) was a bit short of serious adult leadership. Nevertheless, I joined some of my friends from the neighborhood and signed up. That began my four years as a scout, including four summer sessions at Camp Brooklyn near Narrowsburg, New York. But I’ll get to that another time.
Right now, it’s time to get back to what kind of camp will be right for local kids this summer — that is 2016. With so many choices available it will be interesting to hear which ones prove to be the most popular. And for one who really enjoyed the overnight kind where you were close to nature, I’m still not sure if what are advertised as camps — say “academic” camps — would have appealed to me when I was of camp-going age. In those days, my idea for summer activity did not include “academics.”
I suppose if I needed extra help on school subjects during the summer, my parents would have arranged for me to see a teacher, but I wouldn’t have been happy with such an arrangement. Yes, I do realize that today there are kids who are so interested in school work that they are eager to go to school all summer. Is that what “academic camps” are for?
What I’d like to see is somebody paddling their camp-built kayak on Grovers Mill Pond. You shouldn’t have to go all the way to Lake Cayuga for that.
