By Rev. Chris Travers
SOME OF THE BEST Camp moments don’t happen in the middle of all the action, they happen on the edge when you’re simply watching.
Gerry and I found ourselves on the old bench in front of the chapel early yesterday afternoon after an E on the B (emergency on the beach) practice run. A bench that is rather old, leaning a little to one side and worn down by years of kids, adults and grandparents sitting and sharing stories. From there, you can see the whole main compound, the patchy grass, outdoor chapel, the gaga ball pit, the beach volleyball area and the space used for games of all kinds. We didn’t plan to sit long but as usual we did. Then partway through second session kids from all different cabins began playing different games.
Clusters of kids came from nowhere and everywhere into spontaneous play in the field where soccer nets had been dragged out, in the volleyball area and of course at the gaga ball pit. No one seemed to be keeping score and among all of it kids were rotating in and out, making up rules as they went along and it very much looked like various games of Calvinball from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.
What struck me, sitting beside Gerry, wasn’t just the play, it was the mix. Juniors, intermediates, seniors and LIT’s playing and helping one another. Helping each other up, explaining whatever rules they were coming up with, not because they had to, but because someone once did that for them right there on the same grass. Connection doesn’t ask for a birth year; it asks for presence.
Time felt elastic on the bench and soon five minutes became forty-five minutes. There were movements and indicators that time was passing but it also felt like someone hit a pause button so we could be held still by a bunch of kids who had nowhere else to be but exactly where they were. Gerry leaned over at one point and said something like, “This is the real program.”
She was right. The scheduled activities are wonderful; the program staff work hard to make them enjoyable but the space after and between them? That’s where the invisible threads are spun that keep us all coming back.
We weren’t leading anything. We weren’t managing. We weren’t hurrying. We were just two grown-ups on a bench, being allowed to witness the kind of belonging you can’t manufacture. No screens, no rush, only time and connection. It was just camp doing what camp does best, in the open air, with a chapel keeping quiet watch over it all.
Chris Travers is the Camp Huron chaplain.