I can’t believe that summer camp is over. I also can’t believe I haven’t written anything about it. This is partially because camp kept me so busy and partially because I couldn’t figure out what to write about. Camp is such an intense, crazy, larger-than-life experience that I was waiting for a story worthy of it. As I thought more and more about what I could write about, I realized that as epic as camp is, it is the little moments that I have enjoyed the most - the moments when I can just pause for a second, look around and think, “Yes. This is why I’m doing this.”

Just a taste of the camp craziness

Every Friday of camp we have an awards ceremony. Each camper gets a unique award, colored and created by their counselors, and then presented to them in front of the entire camp. These awards are often difficult to come up with. We counselors start making them on Wednesday night, at which point we have been with the kids for only two and a half days. After an entire summer of creating awards for campers, the award titles can start to verge on ridiculous. “You get the Sky Diver award!” “You get the Sir John Wall Jelly award!” But it is not the names of the awards that matter – it is what the counselor says when giving the award to the camper. It is that child’s minute of fame, to hear about how special he or she is. I absolutely love the award ceremony. Sure it can start to feel like we’ve been sitting in Old Hickory for an eternity, but the look on each camper’s face as they receive an award is worth every minute of frantic late night coloring and metaphor inventing.

There is also a talent night every week of camp, where campers can show off their talents – everything from singing to gymnastics to whistling to armpit farts. For many of the campers, this is a big deal. They are terrified of getting up in front of an audience. One week, there was a girl who told me that she was going to sing, but then changed her mind because of stage fright. I told her that I’d get up and sing with her, and she agreed to perform. Now, I am not a good singer by any stretch of the imagination, and when we were called up to the front, I totally understood her anxiety. As we started singing, however, I looked around and saw campers and counselors clapping, waving their hands, and singing along. It’s so encouraging to see how supportive the campers are of one another and how much love the counselors pour into every single child at camp.

Because I was one of only a handful of CAP drivers serving at summer camp, there were a few weeks when I got to travel to Owsley County to pick up and drop off a van of campers. I came to really value this time spent with the kids, particularly on the rides home. One week, a girl’s mom was incredibly late picking her up, so I sat with her for at least a half hour in the 90 degree heat of the Family Dollar parking lot. This was not a camper that was in my group, so I had never talked to her before, but she really opened up to me about her family and her time at camp. I love those one-on-one conversations with the campers, but they can be hard to manage when there are 23 kids and 6 counselors. Another week, a teenage boy talked to me the entire ride back, while the rest of the campers slept in the backseat. It was very cool to get to know him as a person, to see what he thought about and cared about.

This was by no means an easy summer. It was a struggle at first to adjust to the chaos of camp life. I am not typically a very loud person, and I had to learn to live at a louder volume than usual. I had to get used to frantic, rushed meals, trying to balance eating, serving the campers, leading cheers, and announcing members of the clean plate club. I had my patience tried by campers who didn’t want to go on hikes or complained about having to walk down to the field. I had to learn how to tell when a camper was really hurt or when they just wanted attention, and I had to come to terms with the terrible home lives that many of them have. It was all worth it though – the exhaustion, the frustration, the bug bites, and the bruises.

Camp AJ counselors talk a lot about “AJ magic,” and I am definitely a believer. It’s about taking campers from ten counties and various backgrounds, counselors from across the country, adding a little bit of spirit and a whole lot of crazy, and getting an amazing summer in return. It’s about giving these campers a piece of childhood that they might otherwise never experience. One week with a camper can leave them on your heart forever and one month with a counselor can leave you bonded for life. When most people think about summer camp, they think about hiking and swimming and canoeing, but those aren’t the things that make a camp truly amazing. What makes Camp AJ so magical is the relationships – with campers and with counselors.

It’s been strange adjusting to post-camp life. Goodbyes are always hard and they are especially difficult when you’ve spent all your time with the same group of people for an entire summer. I’ve sang “Na na na na goodbye” to more people in this past week than I care to think about, but I believe part of the AJ magic is that it must be crammed into such a short amount of time and then carried back across the country as everyone returns home. My bruises will fade, my chigger bites will stop itching, and my carpet burn will heal (who am I kidding, I’m pretty sure the carrot game has left me with scars), but I will always have the AJ magic and the lessons it taught me about love and acceptance.

Erin C. is a long-term volunteer at Camp AJ, which means she serves the entire summer as a camp counselor. When not at AJ, she is a member of the Jackson Volunteer Community.