Camp on a Frozen Lake

Ask me for a list of camp activities and off the top of my head I'd throw out stuff like soccer, or arts & crafts, or high ropes, or waterskiing, or (soon) the new pickleball court we're putting in, or sitting on front porches, or playing ping pong.

Probably you or your kids would have a similar list. That's just basically describing camp.

But at Winter Weekend a couple of weeks ago, there was a reminder of another kind of camp activity that doesn't always show up in a brochure or when kids are telling the story of a weekend.

We'd plowed a big circle onto the frozen lake. Geoff literally drives a tractor onto frozen ice to plow it, which is awesome. Kids could walk it whenever they wanted during outdoor time.

And they did. A lot.

We would see these little groups walking slowly around that circle. Two or three kids together, all bundled up. Not rushing. Just walking and talking.

From a distance, they looked like little colorful blobs with hats on against all that white snow. Blue jacket, red jacket, puffy everything. Just going around and around.

Nobody told them to do it. There was no sign that said "Reflection Walk" or "Friendship Trail." Nobody organized a mindfulness moment. It was just a plowed circle and kids who wanted to walk.

And yet for a lot of the weekend, that circle on the lake was the most popular thing going.

Why?

Because the best parts of camp aren't the planned ones. They're the in-between ones.

It's the walk back from the campfire. It's the 20 minutes of hanging out after an activity ends. It's the time on the porch, on the bunks, in between things.

Those are the moments where kids talk for real.

It's "Do you have a best friend at home?"

And "What's your school like?"

And "Are you nervous about this summer?"

We see a lot of that at camp. It's why we protect unstructured time in our schedules. We don't fill every single second. Free time isn't wasted time. It's where the real stuff happens.

And Winter Weekend reminded us that this is true even when there's snow on the ground and it's 15 degrees outside.

What happens is in the in-betweens

Friendships happen at either at 10% pace or 110% pace.

The 10% is walking and talking. Getting to know each other. Sitting on a front porch. Playing ping pong. Chilling with friends.

The 110% is Color War breakout. Whitewater rafting. Climbing Mount Washington. The insane memories. And at Winter Weekend, same thing. Sledding, tackle football in the snow, fireworks on the frozen lake.

What I love about camp is the back and forth between those two speeds. And looking back at Winter Weekend, it's like a smushed microcosm of all of that.

We don't know what the kids were talking about specifically when they were out there. When we joined them we just made jokes and talked about nothing important. But we could see it mattered.

The way they stayed out there even when it got colder. The way they kept circling. And the way their heads leaned in close.

A track on a frozen lake that doesn't lead anywhere isn't a "real activity." You can't measure it. You can't put it on a brochure. But it might be the most important thing we do.

We got this,

Jack