It’s that time again: fresh-faced and eager Wet Your Feet Weekers are arriving for the week, ready to try new things and push themselves into a new era of their childhood. I’ve been getting ready for them for a few days. I moved from my cabin, full of talkative and experienced tweenagers, into a brand new clean Cabin A. I put sheets on the beds and made sure each camper had a blanket. Camp Tall Timbers is moving over and making room for new friends, and the excitement is palpable.
I love Wet Your Feet Week, and I love that right now it coincides with our CIT2s, our oldest campers, getting their feet wet into the world of being a counselor. For the next few days, CIT2s will be shadowing counselors, observing how they teach their classes and interact with campers, and the ins and outs of their daily schedule. For CIT2s, this session is a last hurrah of sorts. It’s their last year as campers, their last chance to take a new class, to make new and wonderful camp memories, but it’s also their chance to prove to the camp that they are responsible, kind, spontaneous and all the other things that make a good camp counselor. Maybe it’s just me, but Wet Your Feet Week and CIT2 shadowing have a lot in common. It’s all about entering a new phase of your relationship to camp. For the youngsters, it’s about becoming part of a camp family; for the CITs, it’s about taking ownership of that family.
I’m so ready. After this I’m going to go teach writing, and then I’m going to move the last of my stuff into my new cabin, and then I’m going to meet my new campers. I know their names, and I know which bunk they’ll be in, but I’m so excited to get to know them for real.
Other Tall Timbers Happenings
– Ping Pong Tournament sign-ups are closing
– Mel Jenkins got a bullseye in archery
– The Yellow Team won Saturday’s Oregon Trail Day activity