Author Archives: Jeff Carter

Arriving at summer camp is always a moment of mixed emotions. Whether you are a camper returning after a previous summer, or a new camper stepping into the world of camp for the first time, or even a parent of an arriving camper, it’s an emotional time. There’s plenty of excitement, for sure, and a heap of anticipation for all the fun each day will bring, but there are ordinarily jitters as well.

There’s simply a degree of the unknown to this experience, questions from both campers and their parents that must remain unanswered until it begins to unfold. “Will I like the other girls in my cabin, and will they like me?” “Will she eat enough and sleep enough?” “Will I be strong enough to climb the tower or shoot a bow and arrow?” “Has she packed everything she’ll need?” So many questions! Uncertainty is baked into the whole experience of camp by virtue of it being so different from what’s familiar at home.

While it may be a little scary, arriving at camp is also the beginning of a great adventure, one filled with rich opportunities and new experiences. It’s guaranteed to include meeting amazing people, encountering unique natural beauty, and trying all sorts of new activities. Each day will bring exciting freedoms, and new responsibilities.

All of this means arriving at camp, and afterwards being at camp, takes some courage… again on the part of both parents and campers. It takes a willingness to lean into the experience and overpower those jitters. It takes some confidence and patience to work through things that are unfamiliar and uncertain. It takes an openness to explore and trust that there are answers to all these questions and things will be OK.

The good news is that Rockbrook is exactly the sort of place to inspire this courage. There’s a special power at camp that bolsters and energizes your girls’ best qualities making them more adventurous, more confident and capable. In this camp environment, they can be their “best selves,” as many tend to put it. They can be more courageous because they are immersed in a positive community built upon values of kindness, caring and generosity. At Rockbrook, camp begins with the people and the relationships we form between each other. Right from the start, you feel included, respected, and supported when you arrive a camp. There’s encouragement and shared success around every corner, and reasons to laugh and cheer woven into most things. It’s this special character of the camp community that makes all of this possible.

You’ll see; those jitters will fade. As we get busy at camp, you’ll see it in the campers’ faces as they tackle new challenges and find themselves surrounded by friends. As we cooperate and communicate, striving to understand each others’ personal cares and concerns, we’ll discover new strengths more powerful than those initial uncertainties.

So welcome to camp! We’ve got lots in store, and a host of great folks to do it with. Tomorrow we’ll jump right in, feet first. The water might be chilly, but your girls have totally got this!

Take a look at these photos. Obviously, they are of the shaving cream fights we had on Sunday afternoon. We had three, one for each age group neighborhood— the Juniors, the Middlers, and the Seniors. On a sunny summer afternoon, romping around in your swimsuit with friends, sprinklers and water hoses going, is always a lot of fun. Add in cans of plain shaving cream, and you have a hilarious good time.

Calling this a “fight” isn’t exactly accurate. There’s no aggressive behavior, no goal of conquest. There are no teams or score kept to be announced in the end. For that matter, there’s no defined way for a shaving cream fight to end.

So what is it? Well, it requires only a few things: a grassy field, cans of shaving cream, and a group of fun-loving friends who are comfortable with each other and are willing to get messy. High tempo dance music is optional, but recommended.

It doesn’t take long for a shaving cream fight to begin. Without any prompting in fact, the girls know exactly what to do; squirt the white slippery foam on someone. Splatter the stuff on anyone nearby. Squirt some in your hand and plop it right on her head. Get as much shaving cream on everyone else as possible, even if they try to run away. Chase after them, and spray! Rub it all over their backs. Launch globs into their hair and help them create the most fabulous hairdo they’ve ever experienced.

Of course, as you chase, you’re being chased. As you spray shaving cream, it’s being sprayed on you too. Soon everyone is covered, slippery, and looking pretty silly. Most importantly, everyone is also laughing hysterically. The feeling of being covering in shaving cream, seeing your friends’ reactions, and watching the chaos of it all, are uniquely funny. Outside of camp, you’ll never see girls having this kind of deep, affirming fun, the kind of laughter that makes you pause to take a breath. A shaving cream fight like this taps into the the most genuine of celebratory joy.

With all these slippery kids, what’s more natural than sliding down a wet sheet of plastic? At camp, that’s completely natural! The gentle slope nearby our grassy landsports field makes a great place to spread out the slide. Soon the girls were taking turns sliding two at time. Run, launch, and slide on your belly. It’s a fun challenge to stay upright, but flipping and flopping as you slide is a fine way to go.

An afternoon shaving cream fight like this proves once again that these camp girls know how to have a good time with each other. The shaving cream, water hoses, and sheet of plastic didn’t make it great. Those bits served as a catalyst of sorts for the girls themselves to create the fun. Their positive relationship with each other, the trust and goodwill already proven through days of common experience, made that fun a possibility. You can imagine a group of random people who didn’t know each other would have a hard time having fun in a shaving cream fight. Especially adults! There’s no way that could happen. A camp shaving cream fight is inherently more genuine than what could happen among any other group of people.

Perhaps that’s true about a lot of things at Rockbrook— the authenticity of our relationships, each of us living and showing our real selves, makes us enjoy ourselves more. Knowing each other this well, relaxing into who we really are because we sense this community is here to support and encourage us, opens up a quality of experience that’s just out of reach ordinarily. I do think that’s part of what makes camp life so special and enjoyable for your girls, and truly for everyone here at Rockbrook. Blame it on the culture of camp, but there are real effects… even in something as simple as a shaving cream fight.

One of my favorite things to do during camp is to wander into an activity area and hang out with the girls. As they busily shape their clay, twist and tie white t-shirts prepping them for dyes, or struggle to find the next climbing hold on the tower, they are funny and chatty with each other. Laughter punctuates their conversations. Support and encouragement flow between them. Their instincts are so positive, so cheerful, their friendships so relaxed and natural. It’s a special experience just to witness it. Even better, I’ve found it rejuvenating to join in, if not to do the activity, then to join the conversation.

For example, today I hung out with a couple of 8th graders while they worked on their embroidery projects. It was right before dinner during the 2nd block of “free swim” free time. While I didn’t grab a needle and thread myself, we had a great conversation about how camp was going. I asked them what they thought made camp so special. For them, what do they like about life at Rockbrook (one of my favorite things to think about and ask campers about)? These two girls have been coming to camp for about 5 years each, and were here for the main 4-week session, so they would have a solid perspective to offer. I was expecting them to say how they loved the variety of activities (they did), and enjoyed the food (they did, enthusiastically!), and appreciated their counselors (“easily the best counselors I’ve ever had. I love them so much,” they told me). These clearly are important components of what makes camp life great. But after thinking about it a bit more, one of them said something extraordinarily insightful.

She said, “Being at camp makes me more mindful of things.” By “more,” she meant compared to being at home interacting with her school friends. “When I’m here I pay attention to more things, and appreciate more things,” she explained. When I asked her why that was the case, what it was about life at camp that made her more mindful, she said, “It probably has to do with not having my phone, but I think it’s also that there’s more time to slow down and notice things.”

Wow! That is so true! I think this insightful young person put her finger on one of the most important aspects of camp life— that it provides an environment that encourages us, campers and staff alike, to be more mindful. It inspires us to pay attention to the world around us, to the people, to nature, and to who we really are. So many of the important benefits of camp, I suspect, can be traced to this.

The core experience of making friends at camp, of forging a strong mutual relationship with someone who really knows you and really cares about you, grows from being mindful of each other. The success girls feel when making decisions independently, dozens of decisions each day, builds from paying attention to the details of the environment. Developing social skills depends on an awareness of others, their feelings, expectations, and needs. Tapping into the wonders and beauty of nature requires our mindful attention. To have fun, in some ways, means being attentive to the activity itself, unaware of how your skills compare, or the final score of the game.

I think she is right, also, that the slower pace of camp, along with it being “screen-free,” are important conditions that make us more mindful at camp. Instead of charging full speed ahead, striving to “get ahead,” in the outside world, camp provides free time to “notice and appreciate” more of what’s right next to us. Moving too fast always means skimming over things, as being hectic is the enemy of being mindful. Life at camp is a welcome relief from all that. With less urgency in the mix, camp provides this kind of special permission to notice.

And yes, having instant, easy access to a smartphone is obviously a distraction. The lure of passive entertainment and the thrill of social media trends dull our sensitivity to the nuances around us. That’s surely a recipe for diminished relationships of all kinds. When campers can’t default to their devices whenever things slow down, or become “awkward” for some reason, they are more inclined to pay attention to, and engage with, what’s around them. Ditching their smartphones makes their lives more rich.

Could this be the reason everything seems better at camp— the friendships deeper, the food more delicious, our sense of self more confident, our feelings of gratitude and love more genuine and widespread? Maybe so. Maybe taking a break from the frantic pace of ordinarily life, with all its demands and distractions, is what makes camp life feel so good. Camp is a haven from all that, a safe place to pay attention, enrich your experience, and make connections that might not otherwise form. I think that’s what this needle crafting young person meant. Girls love Rockbrook for all sorts of reasons, but I think its ability to inspire mindfulness is an important part of that positive feeling.

Isn’t that amazing?! Thank goodness for camp! It’s giving your girls firsthand experience of this approach to life. It’s showing them that paying attention is both important and rewarding. It’s demonstrating how to enrich their relationships with just about everything, people and activities alike. Camp is allowing them live these insights and perhaps later at home, to be a little more mindful.

Ordinarily during this part of the summer we are giving lots of tours. It’s quite common for families who have somehow heard of Rockbrook to stop by when they are in the area and get a first-hand glimpse into life at camp. For someone who hasn’t seen Rockbrook girls in their element, a tour is marvelous. This summer, however, as we think about precautions against the coronavirus, we are not offering tours. We are trying to minimize our contact with people outside of camp, and unfortunately, this means camp tours have been restricted.

OK, no tours this summer, but what are they usually like?

A tour of Rockbrook will certainly showcase the facilities— our renovated bathrooms and showers with unlimited hot water, our covered horseback riding arena that’s the biggest of any camp in NC, our 2 19th-century log cabins used for craft activities, our stone meeting lodges, the waterfalls and rock faces on the property, climbing tower, unique lake, dining hall and rustic sleeping cabins. Visitors to Rockbrook are often struck by the organic beauty of the place. With its large trees, creeks and thick forest setting, and really not much “lawn,” it’s immediately apparent that this 100-year old camp has a special depth. Different from the overly landscaped environments common elsewhere, you can feel the close relationship Rockbrook has with nature. That’s all good stuff but being enamored with a camp’s facilities, while interesting, is only part of the story.

Touring during the summer is also a great way to see many of the camp activities in motion, see actual campers clicking their looms, firing their guns, and rolling their kayaks, for example. Being here in the morning, means witnessing the joyful rush toward the dining hall for muffin break. You’ll probably catch a glimpse of a girl flying past the office on the final zipline of the course. You’re bound to see many examples of artistic creativity as girls work with clay, colorful bottles of dye, yarns, paints, wood and wax. You’ll probably spend a little time at the Rockbrook Riding Center watching girls walk, trot, canter and jump, and at the Rockbrook lake marveling at the range of water activity, from screaming down the waterslide to relaxing in a floating tube. Girls are having a lot of fun at camp, clearly, but realizing that is still not the best reason to take a tour of Rockbrook.

The best part of taking a camp tour is meeting the people of Rockbrook, both the campers and the staff members. There are just really great folks here, friendly caring people, all enthusiastic about camp. You can spot these qualities when you see how the girls treat each other so nicely. They’re paying attention to each other, smiling at each other, showing that they care. Meeting girls at Rockbrook is marvelous because they’re so refreshingly silly, genuinely comfortable and happy. Immersed in the Rockbrook camp culture, you can tell that they love camp. Most will tell you that there’s no other place they’d rather be. It feels that good to be at camp. Once again, it’s the people that make the camp, and hence are the most delightful part of every tour.

If you already send your daughter to Rockbrook, you probably know all this. You’ve seen hints of it in the photo gallery, maybe even read something about it in a letter home. You don’t need a tour to appreciate the beauty, the fun, and the people of Rockbrook. For others, we hope our Web site —its photography, videos, and written descriptions— can help, at least until that time when we can offer tours again. Meanwhile, you can also enjoy a virtual tour of camp.

It’s been a very special time at camp the last couple of days, that time between our July Mini sessions when just the full Second session girls are here at camp. After the first July mini session finishes, we go from about 210 campers to 130, turning Rockbrook into a smaller camp filled with well-adjusted camp girls. These are girls who are fully settled into the routines of camp, now comfortable with each other, and able to feel more at home rather than just “on vacation.”

That’s one of the benefits of coming to camp for a longer session. Camp life begins to mean more and matter more. With extra days at camp, these girls have more time to deepen their friendships, strengthen their relationships with the camp staff, develop more advanced activity skills, and begin to absorb some of the more nuanced qualities of the Rockbrook culture. Better habits can begin to form too— for example, being quicker and more cheerfully willing to help with chores, smiling and saying “hello” to everyone, even getting better sleep after our full, active, screen-free days. Some of the things about camp that are different from home, and maybe strange at first— like living this close to the weather, using a flashlight every night, walking up and down the hills, and the temperature of the lake —now become delightfully familiar.

I noticed an example of this familiarity today talking with a couple of 5th graders after lunch. They had hung back to get a drink of water before rest hour, and I bumped into them outside. I said hello, and soon we were having a 10-minute conversation about lunch (They loved the taquitos and guacamole.), their activities (They had swimming next. “That’s good,” they reassured me), and their favorite muffin flavor (Funfetti). I learned that one has a brother who goes to High Rocks, and the other is an only child. For both of them, this was their first summer at camp. They were here for 4 weeks, and they were doing great.

I was struck by how easy going this conversation was, how happily chatty these girls were with me, how relaxed they were talking with an adult. Outside of camp, I find these encounters more rare. On many occasions, I’ve met kids who are instantly uncomfortable talking with adults, who don’t ask questions or offer their perspective into things. Even when prompted with “what do you think?” they can barely squeak out “I don’t know.” I always find that so strange compared to the girls I know at Rockbrook.

At camp, friendly conversation is the currency of our day. It’s a powerful force always humming in the background if it’s not the focus of our attention. It’s the most natural thing in the world for camp girls… a genuine interest in those around them, and a desire to connect with them, and when at camp, to play with them. Camp girls know that everything is better when it’s done with others. With the right attitude, you can have fun with anyone. So, it’s almost an instinct to seek out new friends. This desire and ability to connect with other people is sort of a camp girl super power, and it’s one that I think will serve them very well later in life.

We held a special circus-themed carnival this evening on our landsports field. Scattered about the field there were activities and games for the girls: two large inflatables (One was a waterslide.), giant ring toss, pingpong ball tossing into a jars, water gun shooting pingpong balls, bean bag tossing (plenty of tossing!), face painting, hula hooping, and juggling. Two counselors drew caricatures of the campers. Throughout the event we ate snow cones, and played familiar pop songs, making the event a fun outdoor dance party as the girls zoomed from one activity to the other, pausing briefly to pose for photos. It was a lighthearted and silly evening for everyone. There’s an album of photos in the online gallery where you can see much more.

Let’s take a break, a “muffin break” and talk about that time each morning between the first and second activity periods when everyone in camp scurries back to the dining hall to sample the day’s freshly baked muffin. You might call it a “snack break” or a “mid-morning snack,” but around here everyone knows it as “muffin break.”

Sarah Carter invented the idea of muffin break more than a decade ago when she thought the girls needed a little something to nibble between breakfast (8:30am) and lunch (1:00pm). With all the action happening at camp, the girls were hungry by 11am! Sarah also knew that having something freshly baked was always a welcome treat. A baker herself, she thought, “why not muffins?”

Our head chef Rick Hastings took the idea and whipped it up to a different level, introducing novel flavors and hiring a dedicated baker as part of his kitchen staff. The baker starts early in the morning crafting the day’s muffins so they can be fresh out of the oven before 11am. This is quite a job too! On a regular day we bake 300 muffins to make sure everybody in camp, campers and staff alike, can have one. In addition, the baker makes a gluten-free version each day, adding to the overall number.

In typical Rockbrook fashion, there’s a fun element of surprise to muffin break, as well. The baker works hard to rotate the flavor of the muffins so we never know what “today’s muffin” will be. Walking up to the dining hall at the right time, in fact, you’re bound to hear that question, “What’s the muffin flavor?” The baker will sometimes invent flavors never before served. Over the years, I remember “key lime pie,” “tootsie roll,” and “s’mores.” Also though, there are standard flavors that by popular demand make regular appearances.

So without further ado, here are:

The Top 10 Muffin Flavors at Rockbrook:

1. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip
2. “Funfetti” (colorful sprinkles in a vanilla base)
3. Lemon Poppyseed
4. Blueberry
5. White Chocolate Cranberry
6. Oreo Cookie
7. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
8. Brown Sugar Banana
9. Mint Chocolate Chip
10. Cookie M&M

The exact order of these is highly debatable, with strong preferences breaking out when you ask campers about their favorites. Honestly they’re all good! The girls love being surprised with the day’s flavor and enjoying what the muffins taste like. So delicious!

A parent made an interesting comment to me today. She said that she could tell her daughter was relaxing and settling into camp. Looking at the photo gallery, she could “see it on her face.” After these first couple of weeks at camp, her daughter’s smile was more natural, her body language more comfortable, and her closeness to the other girls more obvious.

That was great to hear! I’ve noticed it too. As we’ve moved along into the session, and spent more and more time together— living in the cabin, playing in activities, and singing at meals —the girls have gotten to know each other better and begun to absorb the camp spirit that guides our relationships here. They’re beginning to intuit what I described yesterday… that the Rockbrook community is uniquely kind and supportive, upbeat and inclusive. It’s a place where being your true self, perfectly imperfect, is celebrated. Your girls are beginning to feel like they belong at Rockbrook, staying happily busy and deepening their friendships. It’s so nice to see this important growth.

We were worried this common experience at camp would be tougher or slower this summer following the social isolation most kids experienced during the pandemic. Social skills are like a muscle that needs both training to be fully formed, and regular exercise to maintain its strength and ability. And like a muscle, social skills can atrophy if neglected. By squashing in-person peer interactions and forcing relationships online, the coronavirus pandemic robbed our kids of crucial social development, potentially weakening their ability to relate positively with one another. Being separated from other kids this last year, our children received very little social-emotional learning.

Fortunately, the power of camp life to bring us together has been proven stronger. The spirit of the Rockbrook community has inspired us all again, helped us understand ourselves and each other. It’s working. We’re rebuilding social muscle and providing it regular exercise. And the results are beautiful!

It was the full session Senior’s turn to visit Sliding Rock tonight. We loaded up six buses after dinner and made the trip to the Rock. Slide after slide, the girls had blast zipping down the rock and splashing into the pool below. The scream-inducing cold water makes things extra exciting even as it makes it hard for the girls to slide more than 3 or 4 times. After that, lips are blue, and there’s so much shivering we have to call an end to the runs. Eating cold ice cream from Dolly’s immediately after sliding may seem odd, but not if you’ve tasted it. One girl said she was excited because it’d been two years since she’d had a Dolly’s cone. Her wait was over!

We also held the closing campfire for our first July mini session campers. Like our traditional session Spirit Fire, the girls took turns talking about their experience of camp this session, singing a few traditional songs, and to finish the evening, lighting a small white candle. It’s always a nice way to finish up a camp session— friends right by your side, thoughtful words about camp, time to recall good times together, and a desire to keep the good feelings going into next year. It means saying goodbye in the morning, but it’s also a recognition that what we’ve shared will certainly last a very long time. Something this good just sinks in like that.