Sending Your Son to Summer Camp

YMCA Camp High Harbour shaped me as a young, Christian adult more than any other experience in my childhood. At High Harbour, I always remembered hearing “Whenever you leave camp, take a piece of camp back home with you.” And I’m convinced: High Harbour supported my confidence, and taught me skills from setting a dinner table to how to develop a personal relationship with God. My experiences at camp made me feel like it was “cool” to live like Jesus. The embarrassment of shouting Christian songs left as soon as I saw all the seventeen and eighteen-year-olds jumping up and down, dancing to the tunes of God. Camp made me feel alive.

When I was eight, my mom told me that she had signed me up for a week at a sleepaway camp because a bunch of the other boys in my grade had gone the year before. I was extremely nervous because I was scared to leave home for the week. Honestly, I tried to find so many ways of getting out of it, even faking being sick on the day we were supposed to go. I went into the whole experience with a completely closed mind. I was just looking forward to the week being over. We pulled up to a sliding black gate that read “Camp High Harbour.” As our car pulled through the gate, my stomach sank, my hands began to sweat, and I shouted with pure angst.

“Mom! I really don’t want to go.”

She calmed my nerves. “If it is really that bad,” she insisted, “we will pick you up after a few days.”

We drove up to a counselor who greeted me with a smile and asked me what my name was and how old I was. He then told me that they were happy to have me. After a minute or so of small talk, he directed us to Cabin 6. The cabins were separated by age group, and I believe Cabin 6 held eight and nine-year-olds. Once we got to the cabin, I eyed down a few of my friends from school who were also in my cabin, and the war zone that was my state of mind began to settle. Our family was greeted by a college student named James, the head counselor for Cabin 6 that week. He was super energetic, and it was obvious that he was excited for camp.

On the first night, I was already having separation anxiety from being away from my parents. I wanted to go home. I vividly remember everyone in the front of the cabin having fun and playing games to get to know each other, and there I was—in the back, all by myself—weeping for my mom. James saw me. He came back and spent the next hour cheering me up and convincing me to give camp a chance. He shared stories about his experiences at camp and how he spent the whole summer at High Harbour. After encounters with multiple counselors about their experiences, I decided to give it a try. And I’m glad I did—the best weeks of my life were spent at Camp High Harbour.

After a few years of my being a camper, some of my friends from school started to filter out for multiple reasons, ranging from lost interest to summer sports commitments. I continued to return because I had a good number of friends who I’d met at camp in previous years. We all tried to return during the same weeks and in the same cabin, so we could all be together. One year, we were all in Cabin 8, all about twelve or thirteen years old. This was the age when I really started to explore my faith and find out what this whole Christian “wave” was all about. Our head counselor that year, Ian Turkington, was one of the biggest role models in my life to date. He taught me what it was like to put others before yourself. There’s a big difference between your parents trying to talk to you about Christianity and a nineteen-year-old camp counselor doing the same. Once you reach your teenage years, your relationship with your parents can sometimes be an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other relationship. But when you send your son off to a camp that has a strong Christian foundation, he’s much more likely to soak in the values of Christianity from a college student who seems “cool.” I became much closer to God this year. Never before had singing Christian songs been fun, but screaming “Roaring like a Lion” really was.

Eventually, I reached a transition year: when you turn 16, you’re no longer called a camper but a LIT, or “Leader in Training.” I’ll start off by saying this was the best three weeks of my life and I would never do it again. We were required to wake up every morning at 5:30 a.m., sometimes earlier, if we had to prepare breakfast. This was mentally and physically the hardest three weeks of my life. We cleaned every table after every meal and scrubbed down every toilet in the whole camp. The point of this year was to show how much work counselors put into your camper experience. I believe there were about 25 of us involved in the program at the same time. I became close to these 25 kids, and we still have a group chat up and running today. It was a hard three weeks, but the best outweighs the worst because through this LIT program I met so many lifelong friends.

The experiences that you encounter in summer camp make it fun. But what makes it irreplaceable is the people and role models you meet there. Last year, I went to prom with an outside date—from camp. I’m rooming at Auburn with my best friend in the whole world—who I met at camp. I meet up every month or so with a group from LIT because we genuinely care about each other; we are a family, a bond that cannot and will not be broken. I’m not saying that you have to send your son to YMCA Camp High Harbour. But I am all for taking that leap of faith of sending your son to a strong, Christian-based summer camp. You won’t regret it.