Dear Camp Pembroke,
There is a rhythm to Camp Pembroke. You can hear it before the Haksheevu echoes across camp in the morning. You can feel it in the footsteps heading along the gravel road to the waterfront. It lives in the laughter drifting across the porches after rest hour, in the songs that somehow sound even sweeter on a Friday evening, and in the quiet conversations that happen long after the scheduled activity has ended.
It’s a rhythm that’s impossible to explain unless you’ve lived it but we think that’s because the real magic of Pembroke doesn’t happen during the moments everyone is watching, it happens in between. We spend so much time celebrating the milestones. Opening Day, Visiting Day, the Color War break, MTV Night, Banquet.
Those moments deserve to be celebrated but they aren’t where campers become who they’re meant to be…that happens somewhere else. Somewhere between the cabins and the waterfront, a homesick camper decides to tell someone she’s finally feeling okay. A counselor notices someone walking alone and slows her pace. Two girls who barely knew each other a week ago are suddenly arm in arm, talking as though they’ve been friends forever.
It happens sitting around a microphone recording a camp podcast, where a camper who once whispered into conversations suddenly finds her voice. It happens on the HC porch while braiding hair before dinner, while sweeping a bunk floor after inspection and while singing one more song because no one is quite ready for the evening to end.
These aren’t the moments that
make the schedule, they’re the moments that make the summer. Transformation
isn’t a destination but rather, a collection of tiny, ordinary moments that
slowly become extraordinary. There is something beautifully hopeful about the
space between first and second session. The hugs goodbye, the deep breath, and
the excitement for welcoming our next group of campers. For a brief moment,
camp exists in between, not quite ending but not quite beginning, just
becoming.
Camp Pembroke has always been a place
where becoming matters more than arriving. The same is true as campers move
from Lower Camp to Middle Camp, or changing electives, or moving from one
activity area to the next. It’s discovering that confidence doesn’t appear
overnight, but that it grows one challenge, one friendship, one summer at a
time. And we know the in-between can feel uncertain, but at Pembroke, we’ve
learned that uncertainty is often where the best things begin.
Years from now, our campers may
not remember every score or every schedule, but they’ll remember the counselor
who matched their pace on the walk back from the lake or the friend who saved
them a seat in the Pine Grove. They’ll remember the HC porch conversation that
changed everything and the laughter while carrying paddles back to the boatshed
after enjoying a period on the Aquaglide.
At Pembroke, we often say camp
changes you, but not because of one spectacular moment, or even one spectacular
summer. Camp is very much a journey of growth and that happens in the spaces in
between, in the walk instead of the destination, in the pause instead of the
performance, and in the ordinary moments that become extraordinary simply
because they’re shared. And that’s where the real magic has always lived. How lucky are we to get to experience that magic every day, every week and every summer?
Shabbat shalom!
Love,
Becca & Amy
