My girls came back today after a week at sleepaway camp in the mountains. The camp is run by an exuberant camp director whose father was a camp director and whose cousins and friends help put on the week’s activities. The counselors are young, hip (some have goatees, others wear pink hair and striped leggings for pants), and wise beyond their years. The instructors teach African dance, world beat drumming, a form of martial arts I’ve never heard of done with sticks, a writing method called Wild Words, sketchbook art, yoga, and “medicine trail” hikes to learn about the healing powers of plants.
This is Dee’s third year attending, Em’s second. After spending an afternoon watching my girls and their camp-mates read their own poetry and play “Here Comes the Sun” on guitar, after hearing the rhythm of their drumming and seeing their dances and yoga poses, I am once again blown away by what an inspirational experience this camp is. Every child there, it seemed, was glowing.
This is so unlike my own childhood camp experience. The one and only sleepaway camp I attended was a Girl Scout-sponsored event in the mountains. I went with my best friend, Lori. Being that her sister Nita was a camp counselor, we felt heady, like we had an “in” with the staff. My main creative memory was of Nita teaching us the words and dance moves to a ditty called “Chiquita Banana.” It went:
I’m a Chi-quita ba-na-na and I’m here to say
ba-na-nas are grown in a special way.
Ba-na-nas are grown in the south e-qua-tor
so don’t put them in your, umph, umph (here you thrust your pelvis)
re-frig-er-a-tor!
My most vivid other memory is of the camp head, a woman with set-and-dry hair who dressed in an adult version of the Girl Scout green jumper, admonishing me and Lori for cutting up during mess hall duties. She told us we were not welcome at camp again, nor for that matter to Girl Scouts, period. (We might have done a bit more than slop around food; I think we got caught smoking cigarettes with Lori’s sister, although I’m a bit fuzzy on that part.)
How things have changed! The camp director today explained that the theme for Dee and Em’s camp this summer was “Look to this day.” He said the phrase came from an old Sufi poem. The spirit of the poem, he said, had been woven into each facet of camp teachings. Tonight I looked it up so I might better understand what he meant. I found this version on oldpoetry.com:
Look to this day
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!
I asked Dee and Em if there was anything from camp they would like to post on red Ravine. Dee picked out something she wrote in Wild Words. Both also wanted to share a couple pieces of art, which I’ll do this week under separate posts. For now I’ll sign off with Dee’s poem:
Now
by Dee
Look to this day
Live in this moment
Now is all yours to own
Then is but a memory
When is still to come
Control what you have now
Now is all that matters
Look to this day
I am now wiping coffee off my laptop keys after spitting while reading that “Chiquita banana” bit.
But I’m happy to report my screen in cleaner that ever before…
How old is this child prodigy? Most of the children I know play x-box. The world might be safe in the hands of the young after all….
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I like to hear that young ones like your daughters have a far more valuable camping experience than was available to us. I attended Lutheran camps in Hungary and most of what I remember is praying several times during the days and getting poisoned by mushrooms we picked in the forest.
The Chiquita Banana song would never ever have been allowed, and the thrusting of the hips bit would have had us expelled en mass from the dubious pleasures of camp. It was positively Victorian! Your daughter’s poem gets to the heart of the matter without undue embellishment – nice. it looks like you have a poet/writer on your hands! 🙂 G
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LOL. I think I remember that Chiquita Banana song, but I DON’T remember the pelvic thrust part. LOL.
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The pelvic thrust might have been our special contribution to the song. Lori’s 18-year-old daughter graduated from high school this year, so I got to see Lori and Nita this summer at the graduation party. I told Nita that I’ll always be grateful for her teaching us that song and dance, at which point we all jumped up and performed it again, with major hip thrust (hands behind the head, too). It was hilarious!
G, it sounds like you could have used a version of the medicine trail teacher at that camp in Hungary. She would have kept you away from the poisonous mushrooms. Yikes, can’t some of those kill you? Or at least cause some major hallucinations.
Dee (almost 12 years old) loves to write. She likes Game Boy, too, and all manner of computer games (Club Penguin, etc.) but her main passion is reading.
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Dee,
I read your poem twice, it was so good that once wasn’t enough. The second time I read it, I read it slowly, sort of like when you’re a new reader and have to figure out every word as you go along. It was one of those poems that made me think. I’ll look forward to seeing your artwork from camp, too.
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Oh good, the cat is out of the bag. Camp wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I thought I was the only one, and have enjoyed the stories shared. I’m looking forward to more.
I had to go to camp every year with kids from the neighboring town. It was a denominational camp, that’s why we were thrown together. I think of camp as being a week of struggling to keep up with a pack of kids I didn’t know, running on the outskirts of a group. My favorite part of the day was laying on my top bunk when the lights had gone out. It was the only time during the week I wasn’t a 5th wheel.
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Yeah, that’s my recollection of childhood, period, Sinclair. Feeling left out. The fifth wheel. Have I asked you this before, but have you read Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye? It’s a great account of the cliques and meanness of growing up.
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Stick fighting? ybonesy, you’re in for a world of trouble!
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It’s a family tradition, Sam. Dee used to see me fighting off with bamboo a mean old rooster we used to have. I’d whack him until the bamboo exploded into smithereens, and then I’d run ; – ).
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My experience was in Girl Scout camp, too. Juliette Gordon Low’s got nothing on me! Did you know she was born in Georgia? (Here’s a LINK on the Girl Scout site.)
I only remember going once or twice, hanging out with my friends by the fire, and sleeping in one of those platform tents. But nothing as spiritual as what you describe for your girls.
Dee’s poetry reminds me of haiku. Simple and straight. I can’t wait to see the art they did at camp. Quite a creative family you have. You and Jim must be doing something real right. 8)
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[…] Linkness: Red Ravine Today’s Random Act of Linkness goes to: Red Ravine. ybonsey has a great post up describing an awesome camp experience her daughters just had: I am once again blown away by what […]
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I would have loved a camp like this as a kid. What a great experience for them.
I have featured your blog and this post with a Random Act of Linkness over at my blog.
Have a great day!
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What a great feature. Thanks!
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ybonesy:
Thank you for the Sufi poem. The profound one by your daughter captures the life-affirming lesson she learned at camp. What a gift you gave her to send her there! I don’t recall learning anything profound at summer camp. Just a lot of social hierarchy stuff and fluff.
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[…] Random Act of Linkness goes to: Red Ravine. ybonsey has a great post up describing an awesome camp experience her daughters just had: I am once again blown away by what […]
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What great contrasting versions of the camp experience! And I love how our concepts of non-European cultures have matured, from pseudo-Ecuadorean (with a dash of Ricky Ricardo Cuban showtime) to African & Yoga & Sufi.
Wonderful poems, too!
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I hadn’t thought about that, but you’re right. Before we were simply making fun from the outside. Nowadays there’s a genuine attempt to embrace other cultures and weave them into our lives.
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[…] the art instructor used sketchbooks. She said sketching was in keeping with the theme for the camp, Look To This Day. I think what she meant was that sketching was quick. You capture what’s in front of you […]
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[…] that particular practice when I did a post on my daughters’ recent return from summer camp. I found it in one of my old notebooks and decided to reproduce it here. What struck me […]
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