By the time you read this blog post, our Okee campers will have returned home after a week-long trip out west. What an amazing cap to their illustrious Camp Takajo careers. Our oldest campers have returned “home” on a high note and will spend their final week in camp participating in Olympics, checking off some of their favorite activities for the last time. They will savor each fleeting moment until our buses depart next Friday on the 14th of August. Our Junior Greys have returned from their two-day white water rafting trip and experienced the thrill and exhilaration of taking ten-man boats through some challenging whitewater rapids down the Kennebec River. This was a first for our twelve-year-old campers, many of whom cannot wait to go whitewater rafting again in the near future.
I had a very interesting, yet not uncommon, conversation with a little boy this afternoon. He was almost embarrassed when he came into my office and told me that he was homesick. Before I could utter a word, this camper continued to explain that he was absolutely having the time of this life and could not understand from where these emotions were coming. This camper was perplexed because he was struggling to understand how he could be feeling homesick with just one week to go in the season.
I shared with him the following thoughts. Because the end of camp is just a little over a week away, one cannot help but think about the finality that the end of the season brings and the emotions that come from reconnecting with loved ones. The reality of camp coming to an end was subliminally making the boy think about life at home. At the same time, this camper recognizes that he has made many strong friendships, achieved many greats successes, and gained a wonderful sense of independence while at camp.
The thought of the camp season coming to an end, combined with the emotion of thinking more frequently about the transition to home, has caught this camper off guard. We discussed that while camp is winding down, the best is still yet to come, and there are many exciting moments around the corner. It was wonderful to watch this boy work through his emotions and recognize that one emotion is not mutually exclusive to the other, and one is still allowed to love camp and miss home simultaneously.
