Chris Riley received the second most electronic votes for his memory of the ‘most awesome’ summer ever.
Remember how Awesome this Summer was?
By Chris Riley, Milton
My fondest memory of the Blue Hills was this past summer (2011). Camp Chickatawbut has been my summer home. I have been there for the last 5 years and can’t wait to get back. This summer was so memorable because of all the people at “The Hill” this year. The campers were great and all summer were excited to be there. I have said to many friends who are also camp counselors that this year’s staff would beat all other camp staffs in the country.
Specifically this summer there was one all day hike where my co-counselor and I took our kids from “The Bog” back to Chickatawbut Hill for our overnight. This hike went through most of the habitats in the blue hills, bog to pond, to woods, to hilltop, and field. We also saw a ton of wildlife from lead backed salamanders to garter snakes, to red tailed hawks and more. We stopped at Houghton’s pond for lunch and all of us were hanging out on the playground and just enjoying the summer. After our lunch break we got back on the trail and there wasn’t a single point where any of the kids or my co-counselor or I didn’t have a smile on our faces.
While we were hiking North Boyce Hill we came upon a giant boulder that the kids said looked like a man’s face. They wanted to climb it for a while and since we didn’t really have a plan for being back at camp by any specific time we hung out and just enjoyed the perfect sunny summer day in late July.
That overnight when we got back to camp, since we had 4 kids in our group, some of the other counselors offered to stay over and hang out so we could play more games and enjoy the fire circle even more. Once we were around the fire circle having s’mores, before it got dark, one of the counselors brought out his guitar and we had a sing along moment that was just a stereotypical campfire party. It was the most hilarious campfire because none of us could sing to save our lives and no one cared because we were all singing and the kids were dancing.
Finally the reason that this summer was the most memorable was because most of the staff was new. There were only a couple of us who were returning and that was fine. It was like a new age at Chickatawbut: new faces, new campers, new games, and a whole bunch of new fun. Throughout the rest of the summer we (the staff) would hang out after camp and go see movies, or go for night hikes to previously unexplored parts of the reservation by us and we wanted to hang out together.
Thinking about this past summer and what will happen next summer is amazing. For the first time in my many years at camp, I wouldn’t trade a single day for anything or anyone.
