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June 10, 2015May 12, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Lifelong Inspiration

The many looms of the Curosty cabin are starting to really warm up as the girls spend more time weaving. Both the table-top and large floor looms all have completed work on them now. Our master weaver Melanie, who serves as the Fiber Arts Program supervisor at Warren Wilson College during the school year, has been teaching the girls several different geometric patterns that are created by lifting groups of warp fibers as the weft is passed between them. This geometry, added to carefully selected colors for the yarns and thread used, magically creates beautiful cloth. Of course, part of the fun is watching the pattern emerge with each added row. Weaving is an example of a specialty activity that’s not ordinarily taught to kids nowadays, but despite being “traditional,” is still very cool because it’s truly creative, deeply satisfying, and for some, a craft that can become a lifelong hobby. In our 19th-century log cabin in the woods, your Rockbrook girls are experiencing firsthand something that may inspire them for years to come.

Whitewater kayaking is really catching on around here as well, with more and more girls choosing to paddle during one of their activity periods. Jamie, Leland and Andria are happily teaching more and more girls about how fun it can be. After an orientation to the equipment and how to use it (properly fitting a PFD, paddle, and spray skirt, for example), the girls first learn how to slip out of their kayaks if they flip over upside-down. It’s a simple technique called a “wet exit” that involves tucking forward, pulling a loop on the spray skirt, and pushing out of the boat. Most girls pick it up right away, and move on to learning how to maneuver the boat in the water. This morning Leland and Jamie taught girls the next, and more advanced skill in kayaking, the “eskimo roll,” which is a technique that uses the kayaking paddle to roll up-right when a kayaker tips over. This takes practice to learn, but with this kind of enthusiasm from the girls, we’ll soon have some popping right up. Like weaving, kayaking can be a source of lifelong inspiration for these girls.

This afternoon was “Cabin Day,” a time when we pause our regular activities to give the campers a chance to do something with their cabin as a group. This could mean making a special treat in the dining hall like homemade ice cream, going for a hike to one of the waterfalls on the camp property, having flip flop races in the creek by Curosty, having a squirt gun battle, or playing another group game of some sort. Today, for example, one of the Middler cabins played a wild game of “Color Tag.” This game is messy. It’s a complicated contest involving colorful (and washable!) paint, little sacks of flour, and enough open grassy space to charge around trying to splash paint on the other players. As you can see, the flour is also thrown, eventually, proudly marking everyone. While not necessarily something we’d recommend trying at home, this is good camp fun.

Meanwhile, all of the seniors in camp, plus their counselors, took a trip into the Pisgah National Forest for a supper picnic and visit to the famous Sliding Rock. Grilled hotdogs and all the trimmings… plus Watermelon! …made an excellent meal high up at one of our favorite grassy spots in the forest. We played a group game of “I’m a Rockbrook Girl” —which is a bit like musical chairs, only played with shoes— before loading up the six buses and making it to the rock.

Sliding Rock is a natural water slide formed by Looking Glass creek as it rolls about 60 feet over a smooth rock and then plunges into a deep pool at the bottom. It’s been an attraction for years, and a perpetual favorite of Rockbrook girls. There’s really nothing quite like it. The crashing roar of the cold water, combined with the piercing screams of the girls sliding down, makes it intensely fun. The girls plunge into the water at the bottom, and pop up wide-eyed and intent on swimming as fast as possible toward the waiting lifeguards. The thrill for some campers becomes addictive, and soon we had a few girls heading back up to slide again and again.

Perhaps the highlight of the night for everyone, though, was our last stop: Dolly’s Dairy Bar. With dozens of (54 to be exact!) unique flavors to choose from, including “Rockbrook Chocolate Illusion,” it didn’t take long for everyone to be holding sweet cups and cones of what some campers call “the best ice cream in the world.” Ice cream after the chill of Sliding Rock? Sure! It’s just that good. And that fun— to be out at night, happily away from the ordinary, and surrounded by your friends. It’s easy to see why it’s great.

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June 9, 2015May 4, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

All This Action

What an absolutely perfect camp day! Completely sunny weather, a beautiful forest setting— the massive rocks, old-growth trees, flowering mountain laurels, cool creeks and waterfalls, ferns, and so many wonderful birds, and so on! —cheerful, encouraging counselors, and the energy of all these great campers, combined to set the day. Then, with dozens of different activities all happening simultaneously, the camp was alive everywhere with happy smiling girls.

Most of our 28 horses met their newest fans while they walked, trotted and cantered around the horseback riding rings. The pottery wheels spun, the looms clicked, while rifles and arrows shot. Sequences of knots became friendship bracelets, and yoga mats lay flat for stretching and relaxing poses. Dots of paint, strips of tape, vibrant dyes and patterns of string decorated paper and cloth. Belay ropes led climbers up the Alpine Tower, and kayak skirts stretched tightly over our colorful whitewater boats. With bright blue skies above, the diving board, waterside, and lake toys kept girls happily splashing and delightfully cool. So much action!

Be sure to get a sense of all this action by spending some time browsing through the photo galleries posted for today. Have you seen them? You access the galleries by logging into your parent account. If you haven’t logged in yet, I think you’ll love the new way the system displays our photos. Each day there are several albums to view, enjoy and share by email or on Facebook. If you see particular photos of your daughter, or others that you like, go ahead and add those to your “Favorites” so you can see them all together at the end of the session. Also, I would suggest checking back often because we are uploading photos multiple times every day!

Over at the Nantahala River today, there was even more outdoor adventure action because almost 60 campers took a trip down in rafts. Led by our team of experienced rafting guides (Clyde, who has more than 30 years of experience, along with Andria and Leland Davis, Nicole, Jamie and Thea), two groups of campers enjoyed bouncing and splashing through the rapids, like Patton’s Run, Delbar’s Rock, the Quarry Rapid, and the exciting Nantahala Falls (also known as “Lesser Wesser”) at the end. Rafting with Rockbrook girls is a little like a floating party, often pretty loud with singing and powerful screams, sometimes involving dancing and acrobatics (like falling into the river!), but always a complete blast because you’re laughing with your friends at every bump of the river.

Dinner tonight brought out the costumes —the first of many opportunities to dress up this session— with the campers and counselors dressing as superheroes. Sure we had Batman, Superman and Captain America to name a few, but we also saw Captain Underpants, Caped Vowels, and several versions of Wonder Woman. The dining hall was filled with strong, powerful, extraordinary woman, all super in different ways. More than that, we also made dinner tonight a celebration of everyone’s birthday by rearranging the tables so we could sit grouped according to our birth month. This mixed cabins to make tables with both younger and older new friends to meet, and, perhaps most importantly, with whom to share a homemade, highly decorated, birthday cake. With songs and shout-outs to different celebrities’ birth months (for example, “Happy Birthday Taylor Swift!”), we kept the whole meal lively, and definitely a little silly. It really was a blast.

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June 8, 2015May 13, 2020 • News • Grace Wallace

Embracing the Weird

A parent asked me recently what it is about Rockbrook that makes it so special–what it is that has their daughter coming home year after year happier, more confident, and more comfortable with herself and her quirks.

I rambled a bit in response, and gave some rote answer about the strength of our community, and our encouraging of independence, and the surprising bits of spontaneity in our schedule that keep the campers on their toes.

The parent nodded along as though satisfied with my answer, but as I thought about the conversation more and more over the next few days, I became more and more dissatisfied with it. It’s not that all those things I mentioned aren’t true–they are, and they are wonderful facets of camp life. But they are not the heart of what makes Rockbrook special. I’ve been thinking for days now, trying to distill all of the magic and wonder of camp down into one phrase that sums it all up. One phrase that explains why everything about camp means so much to so many people.

I don’t know if such a phrase even exists, but I think I’ve come up with a contender: here at Rockbrook, we embrace the weird.

It isn’t so much that we make people weirder exactly; it’s that we provide a place where kids can let their inner-weirdness shine. They spend so much time at school, struggling to be thought of as normal, and learning from their peers that their differences and quirks aren’t something to be celebrated, but rather something to be suppressed. Often it seems that, despite the efforts of all the people who see and love their beautiful eccentricities, children (and especially teenagers) teach themselves to imitate “normalcy.” The logic seems to be that if they look and act like everyone else, their uniformity might earn them acceptance.

The beauty of camp, I think, is that we not only appreciate each other’s differences, we downright celebrate them. The girls that earn the biggest cheers in the Dining Hall aren’t the ones with their hair done up in the latest style, and their makeup done just right: they’re the girls wearing giant banana costumes for no particular reason, and singing a rousing rendition of “Banana Phone” into the microphone during announcements. The girls who begin the fashion trends at camp aren’t the ones sporting RayBans or the coolest swimsuits–they’re the ones that discover that tie-dyed knee socks and duct-tape headbands are without a doubt the most fabulous things since sliced bread.

Most importantly, the ringleaders in the cabin are not the girls who think they have to be catty to impress people–it’s the class clowns, the includers, and the girls who can make even the most boring day fun and interesting who steal the show.

If a girl doesn’t want to be weird, though–if she doesn’t feel comfortable being the only person in the room wearing a chocolate-chip cookie costume–that’s just fine. No one will think she’s boring or, well, weird for not being weird. She can be the person whom she feels most comfortable being, while still learning to love the weirdness of others. Learning to appreciate the eccentricities of others is just as important as learning to express your own, and that’s a skill that is honed here every day.

I don’t know if this phrase is the winner. Maybe it isn’t our love of weirdness that makes Rockbrook what it is–I’m sure the truth of the matter is something much more indefinable. But I know that it’s the quality that has meant the most to me in my time here. It was here that I first learned that it was okay to be a tomboy, okay to have a laugh that is louder than everybody else’s, and okay to spend most of my free time daydreaming about getting my letter to Hogwarts.

No, camp taught me that these qualities were more than just “okay.” They were the parts of myself that I should be proudest of.

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June 7, 2015June 9, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

Instant Enthusiasm

Let’s get started! The day that so many of us have been waiting for has finally arrived. For the directors, all of us who work year round, today begins the unfolding of many plans and the thrill of seeing everything come together— the people, the equipment and supplies, the activity ideas, special events, new camp buildings, and surprises for the campers. For the staff, today is the culmination of their week-long pre-camp training where they learned about the Rockbrook Camp philosophy, protocols, teaching methods, and ways to focus on their campers’ needs in the cabin. And of course, for the campers, today is when their time at camp finally begins, when the fun and excitement of the next few weeks can get started.

Most importantly though, today is the day when we can all come together in “the Heart of a Wooded Mountain” and form the caring, and proudly a bit zany, community that is camp. We can all now begin to do things together— share our meals, dress up in costumes, sing (!!), be creative as we make things, reconnect with nature, truly feel the weather, laugh, and play all day long. It’s this sense of community, energized by all the wonderful people here, that makes the fun of camp life so powerful, and ultimately meaningful.

These blog posts, we hope, will dip here and there into life at camp. They will report items of news, announce special events, outdoor adventure trips, or just what we had for lunch. Please don’t be shy about giving us feedback or asking questions in the comments. We’ll be happy to respond!

Once all of the campers had arrived today, and we finished up a delicious lunch of Rick’s homemade Mac-n-Cheese with fresh fruit and salad, all of the girls joined their counselors for a trip to the lake. It’s been a long tradition to begin each camp session by orienting everyone to Rockbrook’s lake, explaining the various safety rules, and assessing everyone’s swimming ability. With everyone dressed in their swimsuits and with towels at the ready, each girl takes turns demonstrating that she can swim out about 50 feet, back another 50 feet using a back stroke, and then tread water for one minute. It can be a little shocking to first feel the temperature of our mountain stream-fed lake, but it also makes most girls swim that much stronger/faster. Successfully performing the “swim demo” earns each girl a green bracelet and a buddy tag with her name on it for the tag board. If a girl has difficulty with the swim demo, she can still use the shallow area of the lake while wearing a life jacket. With the sun shining, and lots of cheering and congratulations going around from all the counselors, special staff and directors, it was wonderful to see the girls enjoy the lake for the first time this summer.

After changing back into dry clothes, all the girls gathered on the hill in the center of camp for a quick assembly to meet all of the special staff members, sing a few camp songs, and learn a few more guidelines about camp. For example, we demonstrated the lightning prediction and detection system we recently installed at Rockbrook. Called the “Thor-Guardian,” this system is a sophisticated sensor that measures electrostatic energy in the atmosphere near camp, and sends out a loud warning when there is a danger of lightning. It continues to monitor the atmosphere and sends a different warning sound when it is all clear. Everyone at camp will take shelter in a building whenever there is a warning, and stay there until the system indicates it is safe to go back outside.

The other highlight of the day was the activity tour, where the counselors introduced the campers to all of the activity options here at Rockbrook. Split into several groups, the girls toured camp stopping at each activity area to hear a brief presentation from the activity instructors. They saw kayak rolling at the lake, bows and arrows at archery, looms at Curosty, and flips at gymnastics. Many of the counselors made up songs and skits to illustrate what their activity involved, as well. It was a fun and informative afternoon giving the campers what they needed to sign up for their activity schedule later after dinner.

For the first day of camp, this one ranks right up near the top. It seemed like there was instant enthusiasm, loud excitement for everything we were doing and about to do. This session is off to a fantastic start!

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February 13, 2015March 7, 2023 • News • rbc

Rockbrook in New Orleans

Have you seen the latest issue of Inside New Orleans? It’s a bi-monthly magazine published about the arts, events, interests, and people of New Orleans and its surrounding areas. Each issue is full of regular columns about fashion, music, exhibitions, and food, as well as featured articles on unique aspects of the city and culture of New Orleans, LA.

The current issue (February-March 2015), for example, has a painting by Gretchen Armbruster on its cover— a fantastic New Orleans Artist — articles about the Metairie Cemetery and the costumes of the Louisiana State Museum, but also a piece about summer camps for kids. Overall the article describes the difference between day camps, specialty camps, and sleepaway camps, mentioning several examples and promoting many of the benefits kids gain from camp.

It was fantastic to see that the author highlights Rockbrook as an example of an overnight camp, describing it as the “ideal place to explore what it means to live a ‘wholehearted’ life rich with true connections.” Wow! That’s such a nice complement! It’s something that sounds very familiar, and right in line with the philosophy and feel of Rockbrook. Thanks Inside New Orleans!

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August 12, 2014May 14, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

A Night at Pride Rock

Lately the girls have been clamoring for a few of the special trips and activities we offer throughout the session, only now with perhaps some added urgency because they know we are reaching the end of our time together this session. Many of the them have been asking to ride the zip line one more time, for example. When the announcement was made at breakfast that we’ll have the zip line available today, you could hear a fluttery murmur of girls asking each other if they would do it again. Likewise, the trips offered to climb Castle Rock have been easily filled with repeat rock climbers. Since there are five different routes up there, that makes plenty of sense. The particularly avid climbers all want to get on another route, and probably one of the harder ones. Here’s another example: canoeing on the French Broad River. Emily took a group out this week to take advantage of the beautiful weather we’ve been having and to have a chance to just float along together. Horseback Riding is no exception either. Campers who love riding have been eager to spend more time with their favorite horse, to ride Lacy, or Moe, or Smoke, for example, “one more time.” The same can be said for all of the regular activities at camp, for as we move toward the end of the session, we will be holding several special events that preempt our daily camp routines, events like the barn party (a chance for riders to demonstrate their skills and others to enjoy games with the horses), tournaments with Camp Carolina (when we challenge the boys to Archery, Riflery, and Tennis competitions) , the musical production (that’s tomorrow), and so forth.

The main event of the day, however, was something that’s been secreted planned since the first day of the session: the banquet, which is a themed dinner party celebrated by the entire camp. The 9th grade campers, our “CAs,” selected for their secret theme, The Lion King, based on the classic Disney Movie from 1994. Their title was “A Night at Pride Rock.” As the photo below shows, the decorations were awesome, very colorful representations of African animals, the “Pride Lands,” and specific scenes from the movie. They hung colorful lights from the rafters which made the glitter of the posters sparkle. They (again the CA girls came up with all of this!) had souvenir red cups for each camper and candy decorating all of the tables, as well as animal masks, temporary tattoos, and special stickers.

The costumes were also really great with all of the major characters from the movie represented. Of course, they dressed as the lions Simba, Mufasa, and Scar, but also Zazu the hornbill, Timon the meerkat, Pumbaa the warthog, and the “shaman” mandril Rafiki. Several counselors dressed up as hyenas completing the cast. It was a magical moment for the campers as they entered the dining hall and were greeted by these characters. Everyone seemed both astonished and excited as the full experience of the music, decorations and characters combined in the surprise.

The program included a series of skits and dances focused on the main songs from the movie: “Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata,” for example. They served hamburgers and french fries, chicken wings, and “zebra cakes” for dessert. They played music from the movie alternating with well-known pop music, which of course got the campers, dressed proudly in their blue RBC t-shirts, up to dance.

It was a fantastic party overall, a complete experience that everyone really enjoyed. The CA campers had fun, but also worked hard making that happen. Thanks girls!

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August 11, 2014May 13, 2020 • News • Grace Wallace

The Simple Things

Last night, we held my without-a-doubt favorite event of each session: the shaving cream fight. It is an event at which girls leave their manners in the cabin, put aside all their instincts that demand that they stay clean and orderly, and give no thought to the rules–because there aren’t any.

This event is camp’s equivalent of giving a child an expensive gift for her birthday, only to have her play with the empty box for the next month or so. We spend a lot of time and energy putting on elaborate events for the kids throughout the session. And they do enjoy them–but nothing can quite equal the utter, visceral joy of being handed a bottle of shaving cream, and told to just go nuts.

Something about the simplicity of it all–pick up shaving cream, shake can, spray onto as many people as you can, get as messy as possible–lends itself to a beautiful sort of mindlessness. There’s no goal that you must reach, no way to win or lose, and, most importantly of all, no fear that someone might judge you for looking like a walking marshmallow. There is only the can in your hand, the grass between your toes, and the grin on your face.

It’s the simple pleasures such as this one that I believe is camp’s greatest gift to campers. Too often in the real world (and yes, sometimes even in the camp world), we overlook the tiny things in the world around us that can bring us joy. We are too intent on the big picture, on making this world and our lives exactly what we want them to be, to stop and focus on the details that are of no real use to anybody, but still can chance our lives and make them more beautiful. We tend to miss the trees for the forest.

Take the campers I saw in the lake yesterday, swimming back and forth, intent on finishing their mermaid laps in time to get the Dolly’s trip prize. Would there have been any real harm done if they had stopped their swimming, and floated silently in the sunshine for the rest of Free Swim? What about the camper I talked to a few days ago, trying to race through “Hamlet” before the end of camp, so that she would have time to write her report when she got home? What if she had forgotten the deadline, and taken a few moments to slow down and appreciate the mellifluous rhythms of Shakespeare’s language?

But I know it’s not that easy. Of course everyone would prefer to slow down and appreciate the little things, but the big things feel too important, too pressing to ignore even for a moment. Stopping to smell the roses feels like a luxury that simply cannot be afforded.

But at camp, thank goodness, that particular luxury comes cheaper. Camp gives both campers and staff the chance to slow down and focus the significantly less important, and more joyous, things. Of course there are still moments, even at camp, when we too get caught up in the big picture. The completion of mermaid laps, the execution of the perfect skit, the nitty gritty and ins and outs of the daily schedule, even the completion of a blog post–all of these things can draw our eyes away from the joys all around us.

Which is why the shaving cream fight, and other camp events and activities like it, are so important. They strip down our priorities and interests into those that are most vital to our happiness. They train us to look past the things that seem important, and focus on the quieter things that really are. Put more simply, they allow all of us–camper, counselor, and director–to just slow down for a minute and remember what it feels like to just be kids.

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August 9, 2014March 13, 2023 • News • Jeff Carter

Playful Balance

The Rockbrook zip line and swinging bridge is a special camp activity we offer like other adventure trips (e.g., backpacking, kayaking, and canoeing). The girls sign up for it whenever it’s announced in the dining hall, like today after breakfast. This means skipping one of their regularly scheduled activities, but riding the zip is such a thrill, almost everyone does it at least once while they’re here. The girls meet the instructors at “Hiker’s Rock” to gear up with their harnesses, helmets, and special dual-wheeled pulleys. They then hike up into the woods behind the dining hall to the start of the swinging bridge. This is a 100-foot long suspension of steel cable, rope and wooden planks, hung between two huge boulders about 60-feet in the air. The bridge is challenging— some might say “scary” —because it wobbles as you walk on it, but also because we intentionally removed several of the planks leaving gaps to balance across. Once on the far side of the bridge, now perched high on a rock ledge, the girls take turns clipping their pulley into the 450-foot long cable that stretches across the camp, passing in front our new office building and ending on a wooden platform. It takes some courage to step off the ledge, but as the girls feel the ride’s acceleration, they’re immediately smiling, often screaming, and having a great time.

On the flat area near the gym, the archery instructors have been helping girls improve their shooting techniques. There are a few safety rules on the archery range to learn first (e.g., the shooting commands), but then there are tips about how to stand, to draw and hold the bow, to aim, and to release. Archery requires proper balance, breathing and concentration too, so the girls have plenty to work on! It’s exciting when someone gets a bullseye and thereby has her name announced at lunch as joining the “bullseye club.” These girls are really getting good!

Meanwhile, nearby inside the gym, Elaine Trozzo our longtime gymnastics coach has been working with the girls on the balance beams, both the high beam and low beam depending on the skill she’s teaching. She’s going over basic walking techniques with the beginners, but also helping a few girls improve their jumps, turns and dismounts. Elaine does a great job keeping her classes fun and informative by combining drills and games. She always begins with a few minutes of stretching to warm up, and lately has been finishing with runs on the mini tramp with girls taking turns doing tricks like flips and tucks onto the landing pads. It’s nice to think how the skills developed in gymnastics— strength, balance, and flexibility, for example — easily translate to other physical activities and sports.

Like dancing… for, despite a passing band of rainy weather after dinner, tonight we were all excited to dance with the boys of Camp Carolina. We actually held two dances, the Juniors and Middlers staying here in the Rockbrook gym, and our Seniors loading up eight buses and vans to make the trip over to Camp Carolina’s dining hall for their dance. We also offered an alternative activity for those girls who thought dancing wasn’t their thing tonight. These dances are fun for the girls because they are mostly about jumping around with each other, being silly and singing to the music. The boys are almost simply a backdrop (though perhaps less so for the oldest girls). Several of the more popular songs have well-known choreographed group dance moves like the “Cha Cha Slide,” or even that classic, “YMCA.” Overall, this evening was a chance to dress up a little, maybe get your hair “just right,” and enjoy a night of playful dancing.

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August 7, 2014March 18, 2024 • News • Jeff Carter

A Very Cool Setting

The Hillside Lodge, one of the original three stone lodges built in the 1920s from rock quarried here on the property, is the setting for our Yoga activity. It’s a wonderful space— a smooth, hardwood floor, rough-cut stone walls, a 4ft fireplace with stone mantel, paned windows and thick oak doors. It has very simple log furniture, a few low benches, but is otherwise a nice open space for Line meetings, morning assemblies, and evening programs. During the daily yoga classes, the girls spread out their colorful foam mats on the floor, and Mary Alice, the head instructor, plays calm relaxing music while introducing basic yoga poses and positions. The building is itself beautiful and calm, so it’s the perfect place for doing yoga.

Another very cool setting for one of our camp activities is the shady back porch of the “Curosty” cabin. There you’ll find girls doing needle crafts like knitting, embroidery and cross stitching. This log cabin is one of two (the other being the “Goodwill” cabin) that Mrs. Carrier moved here from her family’s plantation in South Carolina when she founded the camp in 1921. We think both cabins date from before 1888, when her father and mother purchased the plantation. Cool and breezy, and with the creek quietly gurgling nearby, the Curosty cabin porch is a great place to hang out and knit, and of course chat. Some of the girls are using traditional knitting needles, but these hoop-shaped “Nifty Knitters” have been very popular lately. Working with colorful yarns, these hoops make it easy to weave tubes that become woolen hats. You may have seen photos of a few being worn around camp, in fact.

The lake also comes to mind as a unique part of the environment at Rockbrook. In particular, it’s neat how gigantic rocks frame it, with the biggest being about 25 feet tall next to the water slide. A waterfall constantly tumbles down on one end, and on the other there are two huge flat boulders where the girls can spread their towels and lounge in the sun after swimming. Hidden in the woods among huge trees, and filled by the cold mountain water of Dunn’s Creek, the lake attracts girls all day long. It might be to catch tadpoles, or to cool off in the water, or just to sit nearby, but the lake is a big part of our day at camp. And we love it!

I can’t not mention today’s lunch because it was amazing. Rick made us black beans and posole, and served it with roasted plantains, queso fresco, salsa, sour cream and tortilla chips. The beans had a wonderful smokey, but not spicy, taste that balanced the mild posole (hominy) nicely. Combined with the sweet plantains, it was delicious. Of course the salad bars (which included pasta, chicken, tuna and rice salads, as well as fresh veggies) and peanut butter and jelly station were also seeing plenty of action, but overall I’d say most of the girls tried this traditional Latin American meal. And by many accounts, really enjoyed it.

Our after dinner, optional “Twilight” activity was a festival of rhythm and dancing tonight as we welcomed back Billy Zanski for another of his west African drumming workshops. Billy has been playing Djembe for years, has studied under master drummer Bolokada Conde from Guinea, and now teaches private lessons from his drum shop in Asheville. He’s great with the girls and is an enthusiastic instructor. Arriving loaded down with different Djembe and Dundun drums, Billy led us through several rhythms up in the Hillside Lodge with campers and counselors taking turns on all the drums. The dundun bass drums kept everyone together with a core beat while some girls slapped their djembes, and others danced with colorful scarves or responded to Billy’s rhythmic chants. This many drums being played together is loud and infectious, somehow obviously social, and uplifting. In the context of camp, already a place of happy enthusiasm, it’s guaranteed to to be really fun as well.

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August 6, 2014March 24, 2023 • News • Jeff Carter

Hands in the Real World

Paging through the Rockbrook photo gallery, it’s quickly obvious that our girls are extraordinarily crafty. In the Curosty Cabin, one end of the dining hall (“Hodge Podge”), Hobby Nook Cabin, the two pottery studios and several of the porches around camp, we’re being creative and making things. It might be with fibers or clay, and it might require a brush or a loom, but dozens of girls have arts and crafts projects in the works.

Throughout every day, in other words, Rockbrook girls are working with their hands. They’re twisting (friendship bracelets), braiding (basket reeds), tying (and dying t-shirts), painting (still life compositions), rolling (coils of clay), gluing (paper collages), sewing (stuffed animals), and weaving (loom fabrics). Here, take a look:

This is great stuff for several reasons. Working creatively with different materials like this encourages kids to experiment, try unusual combinations, and “see what happens.” There’s a joyful attitude toward the process and the end result. Also, though, I think there’s a benefit from simply working with real stuff, as opposed to what modern life ordinarily requires from us, namely a daily experience built upon abstract constructions and virtual representations (think about all those screens!). Perhaps, as we’ve lost our “manual competence” (recalling Matthew Crawford’s argument), we’ve also diminished a basic satisfaction of being human, the feeling of making something useful and beautiful. If so, then camp is a welcome return, making all the arts and crafts at Rockbrook concrete opportunities for girls to be creative while recalling the deep pleasures of interacting with the real world.

This photo shows a few girls playing Ga-ga Ball in our octagonal Ga-ga pit located near the gym. If you haven’t heard of it, this game is all the rage. It’s essentially a form of dodgeball (sometimes called “Israeli Dodgeball”) where players hit a small ball with their hands instead of catching & throwing it. Any number of girls can play, and the goal is to hit other players in the leg without being hit yourself. It’s fast paced, as the ball flies around the pit bouncing off the walls, girls jump wildly out of the way, and players who are hit hop out of the pit. Like other forms of dodgeball, the game continues until one player remains. At that point, of course, everyone hops right back in the pit to start another game. During free times at camp, before lunch and dinner, for example, you can count on a crowd down at the Ga-ga pit.

Our head kayaking instructors, Leland and Andria, have been working with lots of girls at the lake preparing them for river trips. In addition to learning about the gear, the girls are practicing basic kayaking techniques like how to “wet exit” (escape the boat when it flips), and different paddle strokes to maneuver the boats. They are very excited to master these basics and were even more so to sign up for the trip to the Tuckaseegee River today or the Green River tomorrow. These girls can kayak!

Later this afternoon, for our Cabin Day activity, all the Middlers and their counselors took a ride into the Pisgah Forest for a picnic up near the Blue Ridge Parkway. We brought hot dogs (and grilled veggie dogs), pasta salad, fruit and potato chips to eat for dinner, and afterwards spent a little time digesting by playing a huge game of “I’m a Rockbrook Girl” on the grassy field. This name game was even more fun tonight with a group this size (almost 90 campers and staff members). Our next stop took us to Sliding Rock, where the girls had a blast zipping down the 60ft, natural water slide. As you might guess the water of Looking Glass Creek that forms the slide is a “refreshing” mountain temperature (i.e. really cold!), so part of the fun is belting out a scream to match the intensity of sitting down in that water. Just about everyone was daring enough to take the plunge, and some went down 6 or 7 times in all. Very exciting fun… but there was one more stop to top things off— Dolly’s Dairy Bar. With their combination “Camp Flavors” like “Rockbrook Chocolate Illusion” and traditional ice cream flavors, Dolly’s offers a sweet treat for everyone’s taste. The girls happily lined up to select their flavor and then, after that first yummy lick, enjoyed sitting and chatting with one another on the porch or at the tables nearby. When Rockbrook arrives at Dolly’s, like tonight with our big group, it becomes quite a party with the girls singing songs, laughing and posing for photos. Now dark outside and our hair still wet, but happy and excited, we loaded up the buses and headed back to camp finishing an excellent outing.

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