It’s Warm Outside!
If you are anywhere in the midwestern United States, you are having or have had some unseasonably warm days this week. Days where you can sit on your front porch, or patio, or deck. (Well, as long as the snow has melted off the chairs…) Days where you take the dog for an extra long walk. Days where you can open your windows for a bit and get some fresh air into your house where the heater has been circulating the same air for over a month. Days where you can go on a hike or to the park with the kids.
It’s funny that these past few days, where you feel like it is nearly time to break out your shorts and swimsuit, would be some of the cooler days during the summer. But even though we’re far enough north at camp to have summer weather that is nice enough for swimming but cool enough for relative comfort, we still have some unseasonably warmdays at camp. Luckily, there are lots of ways that we can stay cool even when we don’t have air conditioning and won’t just jump in the car to head to the movie theater or the shopping mall.
One of the easiest ways to cool off is to have an all-camp swim. If everyone is feeling hot and sticky, a quick dip in the lake not only cools everyone off, but also makes the smell of a camp full of campers and staff way more bearable. We’re lucky at camp that over half of our staff are lifeguards, so we don’t have to worry that much about scheduling when we want an impromptu cool off. The kids can splash around, build sandcastles in the shallow end of the swimming area and jump and dive in the deeper end. Even for those that don’t want to get in water, there is almost always a cool breeze off of the lake, and lots of shade to sit in with friends.
Though we spend most of our day out around camp doing activities, there is always some time during the day that our campers and counselors spend time in the cabins. Right after lunch, during what is almost always the hottest part of the day, our campers have about an hour of cabin time where they can rest and get ready for the afternoon activities, (Re-applying sunscreen is required!) get their mail and write letters home, read a book and relax a bit, or play games with their cabinmates and counselors. While normally this time is spent in the cabin, on hotter days, they may hang out on the porch together or the counselors may pick a breezy, shady spot at camp to lay out some blankets for the cabin to lay down and cool off. All of the cabins have porches facing the lake, so there is usually a nice breeze. At night, counselors can use only the screen doors on each side of the cabin so that breeze winds through the cabin and cools everything off for a restful sleep.
When it is super hot, our activity leaders will adjust their activities so that they can help the campers stay cool. In the boating area, the instructors might have the campers canoe to one of the islands on the lake, beach the canoes and go for a quick swim. If they have campers with more advanced skills, they will practice skills that have the campers in the water for some of the time - how to handle a swamped canoe or how to do a canoe over canoe rescue to flip a swamped canoe in deeper water. At Arts & Crafts, the campers might head down to the waterfront to paint scenes of the lake and hang their legs into the water from one of the docks or cool off with a quick dip afterward. At the nature center, our nature educators will plan water quality activities or heading into the pond or the lakeon a frog hunt. The activity leaders of our archery program will have the campers bring extra water, cool them off with spray bottles, and make sure to rotate the campers from the sunny range area to the shade to keep everyone comfortable. For activities involving all of camp, we don’t want to miss out on any of the fun games that we play together. So during a heatwave, we will plan for high energy all camp activities like capture the flag to happen after dinner in the evening when it has cooled down a bit, which lets us have all the fun with half of the sweating. Plus, it’s a great way to get all of the extra energy out before bed!
There are some things that we do when it is hot that just defy categorization, honestly. Camp counselors and other camp staff members are creative problem solvers and will go out of their way to come up with new ideas to keep everyone cool and comfortable. During some camp activities, we’ve chosen a group of campers to be the “Cool Crew” - they refill water bottles for other groups, spritz them with water too cool them down, bring fresh fruit from the cooler to groups, and might even get to toss around some sponges soaked in cold water. When it was unseasonably hot during the first few days of camp, we even had our opening campfire in the lake - we had all of the campers and staff come in swimsuits, sit in the very shallow areas, and had a great time singing camp songs while splashing around. You might wonder about the “fire” part of “opening campfire”. We have a painted wooden campfire that we use if there is a rainstorm on the day of a scheduled campfire, but for this day, we floated it in the swimming area.
So enjoy the warm days that you have in winter, even if there is still snow melting against the house and icicles dripping off the roof. Head outside and enjoy the weather and do something fun, get some fresh air. These unexpectedly and unusual warm days in the winter make us think of summer, and we can’t wait for another great season at camp. See you in a few months!
