she wins a Challenge Night t-shirt

Marissa Klein won the staff dance contest last night at the first-ever Sacky/Lakota/Pokey-Totem Challenge Night, and thus got to choose a new 2014 C.N. shirt. Here she is, sporting her new shirt the next morning, with Outpost camper Hudson. Sometimes I wonder why the staff who win the shirts always wear it the next day. Maybe they are truly honored. Or, well, maybe it's at that moment the only clean shirt they own!

MAC folk

Mac Boys VC Jacob Nathanson, Mini-MAC VC Nikki Goldschein, and YAI staff director (and long-time Frost Valley citizen) Gail Morris - in the dining hall at dinner last night.

CITs: away they go

I caught the CITs just as they were about to leave on their extended hike. They do seem ready to go, don't they?

two Toys

Alex Toy is the VC of Hemlock, and his sister Francesca is a camper in Windsong. Since they are both in the Hird, they see each other at every meal. Quite a pair!

photos from the last day of session 1

We're into session 2 now but I spent a few minutes just now looking back at some photographs that Sandy Shapiro Bohn took in the dining hall during the check-out process last Friday.

Jerry Huncosky and me

The Pokey-Totem, Susky and Lakota VCs (from left to the right)

I found a guitar and while we waited for the official start of check-out a few of us sang "Old Wawayanda."

A wonderful photo of the Hird VCs and directors. Back row from left: Hird Director, Mac Girls, Hemlock, Hird Assistant Director, Lenape, Tacoma, Mac Boys; front row from left: Pac, Sacky and Windsong.

Jon Cryer and his mom, Lalani

Years and years ago there was a camper here named Jon Cryer. Some years later I walked into my classroom at the University of Pennsylvania and there was this same fellow, Jon Cryer. Not unusual, I suppose, for a Frost Valley kid to end up attending Penn, but it's a big university and the chances that one of my campers would become one of my students were pretty slim. Jon was a terrific student. Later he went to medical school, and much later -- many years later -- I was in the hospital to accompany one of my own kids and there was Jon, now a Resident doctor! Somewhere along the line, earlier, Jon's mother, Lalani, spent three or four summers on the staff of our dialysis program at Frost Valley as an expert in the restricted diets of kidney patients. It must have been during those summers that Jon was a camper. All these connections came back to me recently when I saw Lalani Cryer Viney again here, on the day the Board of the Gottscho Foundation visited. Lalani is on the Gottscho Board. And here, at right, are the two of us.

Windsong

CITs prepare for their long hiking trip

first-day activity: untie the knot of the group

Here's Lakota and Outpost doing a get-to-know-ya/team-building exercise, a classic. Each camper takes a left hand and joins it with another's. Then all the right hands join but with different people. Then they attempt to untie the knot they've made and obviously they have to talk each other through it.

 

Outpost will make a CQ fire, no matter the weather

Biscuit Creek flowin' fast

We've had a ton of rain lately, and last night, the first night of session 2, we got four or five hours of major downpour. This morning, for now at least, the sky has cleared and the sun is shining, but at 7:30 AM I walked over to Biscuit Creek on my way into the office. The roar of the creek summoned me. Biscuit by this point in the summer typically is certainly flowing but in a central channel. Now it's really moving, and wonderfully loud.

Sacker back

David Sacker's daughter Catherine is back again, now in Susky. She's hilarious. I just now played a game of Geronimo with Susky and Forest (110 people! yikes!) and Catherine was super-adept as usual at this crazy game. Well, she should be. She's been playing it since she was able to walk. No kidding. David and his wife Darcy spent some time with us in the dining hall after Catherine was settled into her cabin. Their little guy is completely ready for camp, but he needs to gain a few years of age before his stint at 7 in Pokey-Totem.

trustworthy trustee help

It's now a tradition for members of Frost Valley's Board of Trustees to visit camp on check-in and check-out days. Here's the crew from yesterday.  From left: Bill Baker, Jerry Huncosky (CEO), me, and Bob Messick. Bob's daughter is in Windsong this session. She's so independent, and so unneedy of Bob's guidance at camp, that he drove up to join us while she took the bus!

Brock/Kelcourse - back again

Felicity Brock has been a Frost Valley neighbor all her life. Her family is related to the Connell family, who owned/owns thousands of acres of land just to our west. You drive through the collective lands of members of this family as you drive the seven miles from Claryville to camp. Mrs. Frank Connell was the matriarch in my own early years here. Almost every Connell descendent - in the Brock, Connell, and Mooney families - has been a camper and/or staff member here over the years. I myself came of age at camp with Ladd Connell, grandson of the grand dame "Frank." Anyway, Felicity Brock met Paul Kelcourse and they came together in 1977 to be on the staff here. I believe Felicity worked in Arts & Crafts and Paul was the VC of Outpost. Now, all these years later, their son John is a camper here this session. Here's a photo of Felicity (at left) along with Jess Dymond, our wonderful Director of Development.

Family Camp memories

For several years I was the Program Director for the legendary week-long family camp at the end of the summer. After four sessions of resident camp, this wasn't the easiest assignment, I have to say. I was tired and the Family Campers - families that came every year and really knew the place and loved it and anticipated a full fabulous week - were ready to push me hard. But I quickly fell in love with the regulars, including the Hildebrands, the Schnaufers, the Abrams and the Merinos.

We played an intensely competitive game in the lake called "Yak Ball." I'm sure I've described this somewhere in this blog. We took street hockey goals and put them inside rowboats, and anchored the rowboats at either end of a "court" area in the lake, in the area in front of the boathouse. We gave one team yellow helmets and the other team white. Each player got into a little red kayak (a playak), with those long plastic two-sided kayak paddles. And a volleyball was tossed. Abrams led one team and Hildebrand the other. I and several other staffers really got into it - no spectators we.

Paul Merino was one of the avid players. And for that matter, one of the avid fathers of a longtime FV family. Soon the Merino children, including Donny and Rachel, were campers and then staff. Well, yesterday: whom do I see in the dining hall but Paul Merino! And his daughter and his grandkids, who had just finished session 1 at camp. The Merino tradition continues.

Paul and I shared a few wild Yak Ball memories, you can be sure.

Simon Says

Occasionally at Challenge Night I will pull out Simon Says. I'm a rough master of the game, but at least I apologize in advance. Inviting the judges to be persnickity is one of the things that makes the whole thing so funny. Anyway, Sandy Shapiro Bohn took this shot a few nights ago - at the Farm. Simon says put your hands up over your head.

Geron is back

Geron Blackman was a camper of mine, when I was camp director, in the 1980s. Now son Cameron is coming to camp, all these decades later. Amazing. At check-out it was quite a reunion, as, at first, Geron knew who I was but I couldn't quite place him, and then the memories of this activity or that, this incident and that, this counselor or that one, flooded back. I don't have words for what it's like for me to see these "kids" as adults and indeed parents themselves. One thing doesn't seem to change: the memories of their FV summers are precise. Now Cameron has his own.

Zabriskie redux

Zach Zabriskie ("ZZ") had a few homesicky days at the very beginning of the session but then got really into it - and in the end announced to his parents that next summer he wants to come for two sessions. Dad John (now called "Lance") beamed with the pride of someone who himself was a counselor here (in the 80s). We'll see lots of ZZ here in the future.

more on the triumphant return of Tucker/Gordon

Josh Tucker and Ellie Gordon's son Mattie made a huge hit with the Pokey-Totem staff, as you can easily tell from this photo of him and some of them saying goodbye at check-out yesterday.

And here are Sasha and Mattie along with their parents, after the latter made a nice donation to Project 332.

happy staff at the close of first session

another alumna sends her child to camp

Karen Krop was a camper/staffer for many years starting in the late 60s. Now she and her partner were ready to send their son Eli Krop-Siegmur to Frost Valley - and chose to register him for the Farm. He loved it. When they picked him up in the East Valley at the Frost Valley Farm, they didn't need to travel back into the West Branch Neversink valley, to what the Farm kids call "main camp," to sign him out, but they did....to see us. And here they are. Another significant re-connection.

the Schechters, a Frost Valley family

David (now a Pokey-Totem counselor; the little kids love him!) with Liz (just finished her 2014 session as a Windsong camper) and Jeff and Cindy, happy FV parents and consistent donors to our campership fund. We love them all!

Bud Cox: "Lion Hunt" once more

Bud Cox took us all on a Lion Hunt - at closing campfires for Wawayanda (at CIT Point) and Hird (at the end of the Big Tree Field). Here are two shots of Bud, up on his usual ladder, in mid-gesture. One photo captures a classic "TALLLLLLLLL GRASS!" and the other gives you the moment of "hu-MONG-us one"!

the man surveys the scene

Jerry Huncosky reflects for a moment. Responsible for taking good care of much of the land he's seeing here.

counselor and camper reunion

Ellie Gordon (and husband Josh Tucker) visited us last night. And we ran into Erica Kaskel. Well, it turns out that Ellie was Erica's counselor - not once, but twice - at camp. So here was a reunion of a counselor and her camper all these years later.

cool Pokey-Totem cats

It must be Too Cool for School day in Pokey-Totem! (Here they are, preparing to lead Wawayanda in grace.)

an extra pair of hands for the Lakota staff

Marissa and Bridget, Lakota counselors and already good friends, happily assert how Lakota staff lend an extra pair of hands.

Moira Poe visiting

We were all so pleased to spend a day and overnight with Moira Poe ("Mo Poe" to some). She got the full FV dose - wept as she drove in on the road from Claryville, and found it hard to leave a day later. She judged Challenge Night at the Farm and got completely into the thick of it. Nothing really has changed, even though so much looks different and new.

Here she is with various old friends.

What do you do if you are a CIT and waiting for action at the waste station?

What do you do? Well, you percuss - that's what.

A.'s performance: affection flowing both ways

This amazing and brave guy - we'll call him "A." - sang a song for us in the dining hall last night during dinner. The entire place was mesmerized by the deep feeling in the performance. He felt total support and affection - so much so that when he finished he cried from the overwhelming feeling of acceptance. It was "in the room." One of those moments that doesn't translate easily elsewhere. A. knows he has a home here.

hoopla: "The Hill"

Susky and Lakota live on what they call "the hill." That would be cabins 41-50 (or, for "Girls' Camp" veterans, cabins 11-20).

The two villages who live as neighbors on the hill have a cheer together - and naturally it's called "The Hill." Watch the video above for a wonderful version of it performed just today in the dining hall.

theme day in ascendency

Theme day in one of the villages (Outpost?). It's Decline of the Roman Empire Day!

distance from Frost Valley is no obstacle

Liam and his family lived in the New York area and he spent his summers here at Frost Valley. But then they moved to California. Now what? Should he go to a camp out there? He wanted to try to return all the way East to see his camp friends. I asked him, "Are these friends you knew from home and brought with you to camp, and these are the friends you want to see at camp?" "No," he told me, "I met these people at camp here. They are camp friends, and I wanted to be with them here." He persuaded his parents of the importance of this, and--praise them!--they agreed to arrange for the travel. His mother, I think, flew east with him, and is spending the two weeks visiting her family in the region. She'll pick him up on Friday at the end of the session. Meantime, Liam is with his old FV friends and has gained new ones in Hemlock. This morning, as Hemlock and I played Geronimo together, I found myself sitting next to Liam. Here's a photo.

2014 Challenge Night t-shirt

Ryan Haffel, long-time many-session camper, is now a CIT. And this is the week of his 4-week CIT stint when he is (as they say) "in cabin." He's been assigned to Outpost and the campers adore him. Last night he won a staff-only challenge, and in addition to points won for his team (toward the prize of an ice cream sundae party, which in the end everyone shares as winners) he received this new 2014 Challenge Night t-shirt.

July 6th fireworks!

We celebrated the 4th on the 6th here. Yes, tonight Frost Valley's fireworks display was launched from the end of the lake, as always. Campers and counselors were at CIT Point - great view from there. Jerry Huncosky, at the CEO's house, held the annual gathering there, also ring-side seats. Here are some of the folks I saw at Jerry's.