Why Summer Camp Matters

Read: In praise of summer camp

For Steve the aha! coronavirus moment came this spring, when he heard through the grapevine that if the state health department allowed overnight camps to open at all in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, there could be no … singing.

“It wouldn’t be camp without singing,” he told me with a sigh the other day.

Tom Rosenberg, the president and chief executive of the American Camp Association, which represents more than 3,100 camps around the country, told me that it would be “irresponsible to speculate” about just how many camps might be able to open this summer, “because right now there are so many camps that are trying to possibly operate in some form or fashion.”

Summer camp is a refuge in an overscheduled, over-connected world, a place where kids not only can but must go off the grid, taking supported risks, making choices, experiencing agency, living independently from their parents for the first time, and navigating peer relationships in a setting often far from home. They can capsize a canoe and learn how to right it; take a three-day backpacking trip; loft a sail; hear the sound of a loon, the crackle of a campfire, the wail of “Taps” at lights out; and, if they’re lucky, see the astral fireworks show of the northern lights.

Mishawaka is a small, family-owned camp on the birch-ringed shores of Pokegama Lake, not far from the headwaters of the Mississippi River, at the gateway to the Chippewa National Forest, three hours north of the Twin Cities by bus. It offers sessions from two to eight weeks, with separate programs for boys and girls ages 8 to 16, and shared meals and joint activities on Sundays. The curriculum includes swimming, sailing, canoeing, horseback riding, fishing, rock climbing, tennis, archery, riflery, crafts, nature study, drama—and there is a wood-burning sauna for restorative warmth at the end of the day. Until just a few years ago, the only bathhouse for the boys’ camp was the cold lake itself. Among the alumni are the actors Bruce Dern and McLean Stevenson and the CBS News journalist John Dickerson. In the 1940s, one of the counselors was a young Nebraskan named Ted Sorensen, the future presidential speechwriter, who would credit his experience there with honing his narrative skills.

“When a violent storm blew down the camp’s flagpole, lifeguard tower, several trees, and the one and only electric power line,” Sorensen would recall in his 2008 memoir, Counselor, he was left with the job of “telling a story to 130 boys huddled in a darkened mess hall to keep them safe, quiet and calm. I no longer remember what story I told, but I was touched to learn from a recent letter that at least one of those campers still remembers that dramatic night roughly sixty years ago.” Dern’s experience was less romantic. “From nine on, I was forced to camp every summer,” he told Interview magazine years ago. “Not a volunteer. I played with the wrong kids so they made me go to camp to straighten me out.” (Steve told me that venerable parental motive is now mostly a tired stereotype.)